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SSD - is it worth it?

N

Ne0the1

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 5, 2013
77
2
Hey all,

I'm considering upgrading my hard drive, for both my Macbook Pro and iMac.

I've already upgraded the RAM, I heard upgrading the hard drive to an SSD would increase the performance a lot. How true is this? Is it worth it?
 
Huge improvement.....just recently I installed it on my daughters MBP 2011. Unreal difference.....go for it. Period.
 
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Ne0the1 said:
Hey all,

I'm considering upgrading my hard drive, for both my Macbook Pro and iMac.

I've already upgraded the RAM, I heard upgrading the hard drive to an SSD would increase the performance a lot. How true is this? Is it worth it?
Click to expand...
It's a huge difference in performance and well worth the money spent.
 
It's much faster and is more resistant to bumps and drops than a HDD.

Whether it's worth it or not is subjective. Personally, I don't find them worth it. After using SSDs exclusively for years, my current main laptop doesn't have one and I haven't really missed it. YMMV.
 
Absolutely without a doubt worth every penny. That said make sure you do some homework. Some SSD drives get their performance benchmark by compressing data you don't want that. I use Samsung EVO drives.
 
Since the price has dropped significantly in the last few years, it is well worth it. My 13 nrMBP boots in 11 sec, and my buddies is over 2 minutes for the same machine. I just installed a Samsung 850 Evo 256G for $97 on Amazon. The drive makes NO NOISE and the MBP is much cooler. And even with everything on my SSD that i use, I still have 175G go free space. Didn't really need the 512G, but I think they were around $160. Way less expensive than Apple, for those few people these days that have upgradable computers!
 
Rhinoevans said:
Since the price has dropped significantly in the last few years, it is well worth it. My 13 nrMBP boots in 11 sec, and my buddies is over 2 minutes for the same machine. I just installed a Samsung 850 Evo 256G for $97 on Amazon. The drive makes NO NOISE and the MBP is much cooler. And even with everything on my SSD that i use, I still have 175G go free space. Didn't really need the 512G, but I think they were around $160. Way less expensive than Apple, for those few people these days that have upgradable computers!
Click to expand...
We can just continue upgrading them forever ;). Who needs any of that retina rubbish?
 
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I put an SSD in my 2010 Macbook Pro and it runs like a champ now. Made a huge difference in mine. Just do it!
 
Hi guys i'm considering getting an SSD hard drive for my Macbook Pro and my iMac.

I heard that they will really increae the speed, but is it very noticable?
 
Very much so. The benefits of an SSD in a laptop are: reduced noise, reduced heat, increased battery life, and increased data access/loading speed. It is literally the best upgrade for any laptop.
 
Honestly, it is one of the best upgrades you can do and one of the few that you'll actually feel in everything you do. Booting up, shutting down, opening apps, video transcoding, game load times. Everything sees a drastic improvement and it's very noticeable.
 
It is noticeably faster for booting, large file transfers, opening applications, or anything else that uses the disk heavily. It does not help with tasks that are not disk intensive, such as web browsing.
 
It is, to put it in the words of the late and great Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, "the bee's knees".
 
Massive difference. Like from the speed of photosynthesis, to Warp. And then some.

But beware. Once done, the next time you work on any machine that still spins a HDD, you will cry from frustration. At least I do.
 
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Without a doubt, I would highly recommend a SSD. The biggest thing they help with is the wait for the physical head platter to get to the data. If you are doing virtualization, you will notice, because when you have 2+ operating systems contend for just one read/write stack of heads, it adss a big performance penalty. SSD, this is gone.

I will state one caveat though: SSDs can lose all your data all at once, with zero hope of recovery. If you have not already, buy yourself either an external HDD or a Time Capsule, and consider a service like Mozy. You want at least two lines of defenses for your files if possible.
 
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mlts22 said:
Without a doubt, I would highly recommend a SSD. The biggest thing they help with is the wait for the physical head platter to get to the data. If you are doing virtualization, you will notice, because when you have 2+ operating systems contend for just one read/write stack of heads, it adss a big performance penalty. SSD, this is gone.

I will state one caveat though: SSDs can lose all your data all at once, with zero hope of recovery. If you have not already, buy yourself either an external HDD or a Time Capsule, and consider a service like Mozy. You want at least two lines of defenses for your files if possible.
Click to expand...

Yep this is excellent advice a good backup system is fairly essential with SSD's.
 
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Thanks for all the replies.

How can I make sure I get the right drive for my Macbook Pro and iMac? Both Mid 2011.
 
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