SSD Drive For Macbook Pro Late 2008 Unibody

[JonnyAlpha]

Hi;

I have read part of the Wiki but as it is pretty old so I thought I'd ask in my own thread.

Can anyone help me choose the correct brand of SSD Drive for my Late 2008 Unibody Mackbook Pro? I have been looking at the Kingston V Series Drives and can get a 240GB V300 Upgrade Kit for £85 here

Its 10GB less than my current Drive but the price is reasonable compared to the jump to the 480GB Model at £175.

What do I need to consider? I have read somewhere about Firmware being Mac and not Windows upgradeable? and SATA speed restrictions (I understand that speed will be limited to SATA II 300MB/Sec but could fit an SATA III Drive?).

My specs:
A1286 Model
Late 2008 Unibody
2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
8GB 1067 Mhz DDR3 Upgrade (Think it was Crucial or Kingston Memory)
250GB SATA II HDD (160 Mac / 80 Windows XP Pro)
OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks

Many thanks

 

[SkimMilk168]

This should be a better choice. And then there's the Samsung 840 EVO that everyone loves.

 

[JonnyAlpha]

This should be a better choice. And then there's the Samsung 840 EVO that everyone loves.

Thanks for the options, I had just been looking at the Samsung 840 EVO after finding this link.

Why would the Crucial MX be better than the Kingtson?

Choices so far:
Crucial CT256MX100SSD1 256GB - £74.99
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB - £91.00
Kingston Technology 240GB Solid State Drive V300 - £84.95 (Comes with upgrade bundle 2.5 enclosure, cables etc)

So far I am edging towards the Crucial MX SSD Drive?
Would there be any advantage in going for the Samsung 840 Pro Series on a Macbook with SATA II?

Any info on a good quality / reasonably priced SATA conversion kit that comes with a USB enclosure so I can use my old 2.5 SATA II Drive as external storage?

Any info on data transfer and installation?
Not sure how I would do a clean install of Mavericks unless I go back and install Snow Leopard (It was not Mountain Lion as I posted earlier) and the download and install Mavericks?)
I back up regularly to Time Machine or should I use something like Carbon Cloner?

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for the options, I had just been looking at the Samsung 840 EVO after finding this link.

Why would the Crucial MX be better than the Kingtson?

Choices so far:
Crucial CT256MX100SSD1 256GB - £74.99
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB - £91.00
Kingston Technology 240GB Solid State Drive V300 - £84.95 (Comes with upgrade bundle 2.5 enclosure, cables etc)

So far I am edging towards the Crucial MX SSD Drive?
Would there be any advantage in going for the Samsung 840 Pro Series on a Macbook with SATA II?

Any info on a good quality / reasonably priced SATA conversion kit that comes with a USB enclosure so I can use my old 2.5 SATA II Drive as external storage?

Any info on data transfer and installation?
Not sure how I would do a clean install of Mavericks unless I go back and install Snow Leopard (It was not Mountain Lion as I posted earlier) and the download and install Mavericks?)
I back up regularly to Time Machine or should I use something like Carbon Cloner?

That Kingston uses a Sandforce controller and IMO those are not particularly reliable. I would stay away. The MX100 and Evo are about the best bang for the buck right now. Get whichever you can find cheapest.

For your purposes, the 840 Pro is not worth the extra money, especially with a SATA II connection.

This is a really good external enclosure with UASP support and USB3 in case you ever upgrade to a newer Mac.

Is you Mac working okay now? If so, there is no need to reinstall the OS and everything. Just copy over what you have to the new SSD. You can do that with your Time Machine backup. Just option key boot to the TM disk then use Disk Util to format the new SSD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) then click restore. That will put the OS and all your apps and data on the SSD.

Once you restart off the SSD go to System Prefs and in the Startup Disk pane select the SSD as the boot drive.

 

[tcphoto]

I have had the Samsung EVO in my Late 2008 MBP for a year now and could not be happier with it. The install was easy and it is a noticable speed bump. I put my old drive in an enclosure and use it for Time Machine.

 

[tonyunreal]

I went for the the Crucial MX100. If you are wondering why its cheap and whether it has competitive performance, be sure to check out Anandtech's review here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8066/crucial-mx100-256gb-512gb-review

or the user reviews on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100-adapter-Internal-CT256MX100SSD1/dp/B00KFAGCWK

 

[alex0002]

If you're on a real tight budget, and don't need the fastest SSD because you have an older Mac which is SATA-II anyway, this might be an option:

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/store-ssd-factory-recertified

Might be better to pay a little more and get an MX100 which has 3 years warranty.

 

[JonnyAlpha]

OK as an update I have taken delivery (for Chrimbo) of a Crucial MX100 500GB SSD.
It is obviously more expensive than the 250GB which I was going to get but I thought what the heck and I need the extra space.

Anyway a couple of questions:

I have a Boot Camp partition Windows XP Professional and would like to either keep it intact or have Windows 7 on the new machine Bootcamp?

Should I:
(a) Go for a clean install (I am on Mavericks 10.9.5) but not sure what steps to follow, to get the build I had I upgraded Leopard to Snow Leopard and then upgraded to Mavericks from the App Store. How would I proceed with a new build on the new Drive?

(b) Clone my drive using Carbon Copy Cloner (will this clone the Bootcamp Partition? If CCC is the way to go can someone point me to a guide?

Thanks