Samsung 840 EVO SSD

[gawoods]

I messed up and ordered this drive for use in a Dell XPS notebook I have which I found out too late has the older eSATA connector that has a separate power connector on the board.

Can anybody say if this drive will work in my MacBook Unibody (2008)? Is there a special SSD for a Mac?

Thanks

 

[Weaselboy]

I messed up and ordered this drive for use in a Dell XPS notebook I have which I found out too late has the older eSATA connector that has a separate power connector on the board.

Can anybody say if this drive will work in my MacBook Unibody (2008)? Is there a special SSD for a Mac?

Thanks

That drive will work just fine with your Macbook.

 

[gawoods]

That drive will work just fine with your Macbook.

Thanks for the info I will try it tonight.

 

[fig]

That drive will work just fine with your Macbook.

I actually just tried this drive in my 2008 13" Aluminum MacBook and it in fact does not work, from what I'm reading it appears that the SATA speed is too fast for the MacBook to see the drive. If that isn't the case I'd be interested to hear how the OP got it working.

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Thanks for the info I will try it tonight.

So were you able to get it working? Want to make sure there's not something I'm doing wrong.

 

[Weaselboy]

I actually just tried this drive in my 2008 13" Aluminum MacBook and it in fact does not work, from what I'm reading it appears that the SATA speed is too fast for the MacBook to see the drive. If that isn't the case I'd be interested to hear how the OP got it working.

SATA is backwards compatible, so that would not be an issue. A SATA III drive would work fine in a SATA I or II Mac. Perhaps you have a bad cable? Can you see the drive at all in Disk Util?

 

[fig]

SATA is backwards compatible, so that would not be an issue. A SATA III drive would work fine in a SATA I or II Mac. Perhaps you have a bad cable? Can you see the drive at all in Disk Util?

It's not the cable as the previous drive works fine, I swapped it back out and am able to access and install on the original drive. The SSD doesn't show up in Disk Utility at all.

I thought it was backwards compatible as well, but I've been doing some research and it seems like other have had a problem with this drive in older MacBooks as well. Still trying to find out more info, any ideas are appreciated.

 

[Weaselboy]

It's not the cable as the previous drive works fine, I swapped it back out and am able to access and install on the original drive. The SSD doesn't show up in Disk Utility at all.

I thought it was backwards compatible as well, but I've been doing some research and it seems like other have had a problem with this drive in older MacBooks as well. Still trying to find out more info, any ideas are appreciated.

Do you have an external enclosure you can pop the SSD in and see if Disk Uitl can access it then?

There is a thread here with a user who reports the EVO works in his 2008. So they do work.

 

[fig]

Do you have an external enclosure you can pop the SSD in and see if Disk Uitl can access it then?

I don't unfortunately.

In doing some more reading there are a number of people who seem to have had the issue with this drive, it seems like it may just be an incompatibility with the Nvidia MCP79 SATA controller in the MacBooks and this particular hard drive. That chipset was apparently kinda buggy.

The link you just found got it working though so go figure...

 

[fig]

Potentially relevant link: http://discussions.apple.com/message/24775643

I do have a PC here that I might try to connect the drive up to just to see if the drive does in fact work, don't know if there's any available bays though.

 

[gawoods]

SATA is backwards compatible, so that would not be an issue. A SATA III drive would work fine in a SATA I or II Mac. Perhaps you have a bad cable? Can you see the drive at all in Disk Util?

Just wanted you to know that the worked just fine in my 08 Macbook.

 

[fig]

Just wanted you to know that the worked just fine in my 08 Macbook.

Good to know, thanks. Did you have to initialize the drive via USB before it was recognized?

 

[fig]

So after getting a USB to SATA cable to initialize and format the drive, I was in fact able to get it working and installed Mavericks. So far so good.

Thanks for the help guys.