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Preparing for SSD?

jafingi

jafingi

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 3, 2009
1,470
158
Denmark
Hi guys,

I'm totally up for putting an SSD in my Macbook Pro 15" (mid 2009 - 2,66GHz, 4GB DDR3).

As I have a pretty hefty music collection (around 150GB), I would be up for a pretty big SSD. I don't have the money for that (as they're on the wrong side of $500), but I stumbled upon the MCE OptiBay, which let's you replace the optical drive (which I never use) with an SSD slot.

Then I could have the OS and main applications on the SSD, and my iTunes library on the 320GB 7200RPM, right? :) That would still make a difference in speed I guess.

So, I found a 40GB SSD from Intel: Intel X25-V Value SATA Solid-State Drive 40 GB

It's cheap, and seems robust enough.

Would you suggest me going that way? I'm totally new in the SSD world, but I feel that my Macbook could be faster, and I guess that SSD would be the easiest way to speed things up.
 
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Definitely. There are a ton of folks who have gone that exact same route. Many of them have discussed it on these boards. Browse through the first five pages of threads on here to read about it.
 
bozz2006 said:
Definitely. There are a ton of folks who have gone that exact same route. Many of them have discussed it on these boards. Browse through the first five pages of threads on here to read about it.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll have a read :)
 
I'm looking to pick up a 2011 MBP 17" within the next month and have been researching SSD+HDD setups (SSD for OSX/Apps and HDD for data).

From what I've read... seems like OWC SSD drives are popular and recommended by many.

They also have their own bracket for optibay mounting solutions... the DataDoubler.

I'll most likely go with OWC.
 
But how reliable are the OWC's after a few years? Have never heard about OWC before, but Intel is something that I know, and trust.

But yeah.. That $169 combo for adapter and 60GB SSD seems like a bargain to me! :cool:
 
I ultimately decided to go with Intel when I took the plunge a few weeks ago. Reliability and compatibility were high on my list of priorities. It's too early for me to give a full opinion and review but I haven't felt one bit of buyer's remorse yet, so take that for what it's worth.

The OWC optical bay caddy is good and it's basically the exact same product as the Maxupgrades caddy I purchased. The Maxupgrades caddy was around $80, I believe, and you can get the 40GB version of the newly released Intel 320 SSD for less than $100 on newegg.com.
 
Didn't see the Intel 320. Think I'm going for that :) Looks pretty neat for that price.
 
bozz2006 said:
I ultimately decided to go with Intel when I took the plunge a few weeks ago. Reliability and compatibility were high on my list of priorities. It's too early for me to give a full opinion and review but I haven't felt one bit of buyer's remorse yet, so take that for what it's worth.

The OWC optical bay caddy is good and it's basically the exact same product as the Maxupgrades caddy I purchased. The Maxupgrades caddy was around $80, I believe, and you can get the 40GB version of the newly released Intel 320 SSD for less than $100 on newegg.com.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised that you don't see the 40GB too small. I don't view myself as a power user and my applications folder is ~50GB.
 
It would be too small for me. I bought the 120GB version. But he mentioned going with the 40GB so that's the one i looked at. I'm assuming he knows what size he needs.
 
bozz2006 said:
I ultimately decided to go with Intel when I took the plunge a few weeks ago. Reliability and compatibility were high on my list of priorities. It's too early for me to give a full opinion and review but I haven't felt one bit of buyer's remorse yet, so take that for what it's worth.

The OWC optical bay caddy is good and it's basically the exact same product as the Maxupgrades caddy I purchased. The Maxupgrades caddy was around $80, I believe, and you can get the 40GB version of the newly released Intel 320 SSD for less than $100 on newegg.com.
Click to expand...

I see optical bay caddies on ebay for around 10-20 dollars. Do you know anyone who have tried one of those. It just feels a bit much for a bracket.
 
Ca$hflow said:
I see optical bay caddies on ebay for around 10-20 dollars. Do you know anyone who have tried one of those. It just feels a bit much for a bracket.
Click to expand...

Yes, there are folks from these boards that have used them. Some are happy with them, some are not. There's a decent amount of discussion on eBay optibays in the Cheap MCE thread.
 
So I would actually be fine going with the cheap eBay ones?

Regarding space, I think that 40GB is just enough for me. However, with that pricetag, I'm thinking about just buying a 80GB Intel 320.

My application folder just needs to have the standard apps and Photoshop and Ableton Live. So that would be about 10-12gb. The OS itself is about 8GB I think. So with all other applications on the 320GB 7200RPM and my music+photos, I don't think I need more than 40GB?
 
jafingi said:
So I would actually be fine going with the cheap eBay ones?

Regarding space, I think that 40GB is just enough for me. However, with that pricetag, I'm thinking about just buying a 80GB Intel 320.

My application folder just needs to have the standard apps and Photoshop and Ableton Live. So that would be about 10-12gb. The OS itself is about 8GB I think. So with all other applications on the 320GB 7200RPM and my music+photos, I don't think I need more than 40GB?
Click to expand...

Don't forget iLife. Adds about 4-5 more onto the 8GB for the OS. Plus web browser cache folders (Chrome adds up).
 
Hello!

I'm in the same boat has you are, but more since i need some space free for photoshop scratch, i've bought a g drive mini from the apple website when i ordered this and i keep most of my files there, including itunes musics. on my main hardrive i have all my apps, and i've even partinioned 20 gb for the windows partition, turning off hibernation on windows saves you x(x=the amount of ram you have), i keep some games on my external by using paragon tools for pc, which allows for read and writes on HFS + partitioned drives.

i gotta say i have x code installed, a number of photoshop processing plugins (some are 5gb big), and im only using 46gb.

edit: i got sc2 installed there too.
 
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jafingi said:
But how reliable are the OWC's after a few years? Have never heard about OWC before, but Intel is something that I know, and trust.

But yeah.. That $169 combo for adapter and 60GB SSD seems like a bargain to me! :cool:
Click to expand...

I got my ocz vertex 2 60 gb ssd from newegg on a sale. $25 off $100 coupon. it was $125 - $25 -$15 rebate= $85 shipped :). You can find cheap optibay's for aroudn $20-$30 on ebay; etc.
 
So, I just bought an optibay from eBay, $18 incl. free intl. economy shipping.. That's pretty nice.

Also, I'm buying a 80GB Intel 320 next week when I get paid :)

Looking forward to seeing how it'll work :p
 
I've just ordered the intel 320 120gb for my late 2009 mbp (€190), obviously the next logical step would be installing the optibay. I cannot wait to experience the speed bump, I'm guessing this will definitely extend the life of this machine, and possibly thwart the urge to buy new tech for another while:):
 
Frankydan100 said:
I have an optibay from ebay and it looks fine, nicely built etc, no problems.

When you install the ssd you need to put it where the originall hdd is and move the hdd to the optibay otherwise you will have problems waking your MBP from sleep.

This is the best and most solid guide on the whole procedure I have found http://m.lifehacker.com/5541774/how-to-install-a-solid+state-drive-in-your-macbook

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for mentioning that! I would have put the SSD in the optibay, but now I'll just put it in the main slot :)
 
Its only worth putting your SSD in the HDD bay if you have the new 2011 mackbook pro and you have a SATA III drive.

I have the HDD (500GB) in the bay it came in when i bought it and installed the SSD (240GB OWC) in the optibay. Installed fine and runs fine, installed OSX via USB, after the install it noticed my HDD and i migrated everything i wanted over.

The reason i did this is the HDD still has the motion detection and spin down, moving the HDD around in your MBP would make no difference in speed or how it runs.

As for set up i have all my applications on the SSD but like you my music, movies and photo collection is 300GB+ so its all stored on the HDD. I did try an install where the users folder was on the HDD but i didnt like this as the HDD had to be mounted all the time, setting up short cuts in the Users folder for music ect works much better and faster.
 
I think it's interesting how many people of varying levels of technical capability are doing the Optibay thing. I guess the combination of cheap SSDs and a much more accessible internal layout of the machines (compared to an Aluminum) have made it very accessible to a large group of people.

When I bought my first IDE one from Tekserve they had no idea what it was. The guy came back with it and asked me if i was sure this was the right thing because it was like $125 or something and it was just this piece of metal in a plastic bag. :)

I think it's also interesting that putting identical drives in as RAID0 seems to be almost unheard of. I used the SSD/HD combo with my first dual drive setup mostly because the 1st gen SSD had some.. umm.. problems. It was like a car that could go really fast in a straight line but if you turned on the radio it'd stop for a while and then start up again, until you turned the headlights on. Offloading stuff like VM and files made a big difference.

John
 
jafingi said:
How about virtual memory in OSX? Is it a good idea to disable it when running SSD?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't know. I've heard some drips and drabs a while ago, but wouldn't use that as a basis to make a decision. I personal don't mess with it and 99% of the time the swap file is 64 megs with 0 used. Sometimes it goes up to 2 or 3 megs. That's MEGS not gigs.

OSX expects it to be there, so I'd just leave it alone.

John
 
I've just heard that it's not a good idea to have virtual memory enabled when running SSD because they can't do as many read/write cycles as a normal HDD.

But maybe that were the old SSD's that have that particular issue..
 
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