SSD in White Macbook 6,1

The Samurai

The Samurai

macrumors 68020
Looking to upgrade a friends 08/09 Macbook 6,1 - wanting to get a Samsung SSD (this one). Will this be fine for use on this machine?

Recently got a Samsung one for my iMac and its been running a charm! Just want to make sure I get the right one for this model of Macbook.
 
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The 840? Yes. It works wonderfully on a Mac. If you want it for a Windows based computer, there are several other options.
 
Thats perfect (windows... pfft!) lol.

As its 4 year old Macbook, wasn't sure how well it would cope with the drivers and new tech but you've just confirmed that it will be fine.

Cheers ;)

Zen
 
Bear in mind you won't notice much difference between SSDs since the 6,1 doesn't have a SATA 3 controller.
 
Brian Y said:
Bear in mind you won't notice much difference between SSDs since the 6,1 doesn't have a SATA 3 controller.
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This is not necessarily true. For instance, the random 4K writes (which matter a lot to everyday use) do not even reach the limit of SATA I in the best SSDs!
 
Brian Y said:
Bear in mind you won't notice much difference between SSDs since the 6,1 doesn't have a SATA 3 controller.
Click to expand...

Last time I checked the Late 2009 MacBook has SATA II which can support faster read speeds than a SATA II drive can provide, but a SATA III can offering a speed boost
 
The SanDisk Ultra is probably the worst choice you can make. It's SandForce-based, which means it gets slower, the fuller it is. Secondly, it has 2100 write IOPS at 4k, so it will be terribly slow even when it's empty. Slower than the Crucial v4, even that one has 4000 write IOPS. And the v4 was dubbed "slower than a hard drive" already.

Get a SanDisk Ultra Plus instead. For the purpose of SATA-II, it's about as fast as a Samsung 840 Pro(!), and it's shortcomings will still be above SATA-II level.
reads.png
writes.png

(Images from AnandTech, SATA-II tops out at 250-275MB/s)

And, it's about £20 cheaper than the Samsung 840 Pro for the 128GB one.
 
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Jaben3421 said:
Last time I checked the Late 2009 MacBook has SATA II which can support faster read speeds than a SATA II drive can provide, but a SATA III can offering a speed boost
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What? How can a SATA II controller read speeds than a SATA II drive???

A SATA III with a SATA II controller will operate at SATA II speeds.
 
Giuly said:
The SanDisk Ultra is probably the worst choice you can make. It's SandForce-based, which means it gets slower, the fuller it is. Secondly, it has 2100 write IOPS at 4k, so it will be terribly slow even when it's empty. Slower than the Crucial v4, even that one has 4000 write IOPS. And the v4 was dubbed "slower than a hard drive" already.

Get a SanDisk Ultra Plus instead. For the purpose of SATA-II, it's about as fast as a Samsung 840 Pro(!), and it's shortcomings will still be above SATA-II level.
reads.png
writes.png

(Images from AnandTech, SATA-II tops out at 250-275MB/s)

And, it's about £20 cheaper than the Samsung 840 Pro for the 128GB one.
Click to expand...

The Ultra Plus isn't the fastest drive ever tested, and most other drives in its price range tend to deliver better performance. Worst case performance consistency isn't great but it's better than Samsung's SSD 840 Pro, so you're going to want to leave at least 25% of the drive free in order to avoid annoying performance variation. I would rather say, new series of SF controllers with better OP might have been a better choice than Marvel controller used in Ultra Plus.
 
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peterson12 said:
The Ultra Plus isn't the fastest drive ever tested, and most other drives in its price range tend to deliver better performance. Worst case performance consistency isn't great but it's better than Samsung's SSD 840 Pro, so you're going to want to leave at least 25% of the drive free in order to avoid annoying performance variation. I would rather say, new series of SF controllers with better OP might have been a better choice than Marvel controller used in Ultra Plus.
Click to expand...
You have something confused here. Bad performace when filling the drive up is a specialty of SanForce drives. Also, most of them don't work very well on Macs, hence you should avoid them.

On SATA-II, everything above 250MB/s is wasted anyways. And the SanDisk Ultra Plus performs great in areas where any SSD won't reach 250MB/s, ergo it's suited well for that particular purpose.
 
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