Does anyone have any recommendations for an SSD for a MacBook Pro (Late 2008)? It's only a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) interface, so it's easy to have something that's overkill.
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SSD recommendations for a MacBook Pro (Late 2008)?
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I swapped out my MacBook Pro and my wife's MacBook hard drives with this one from Samsung... I believe I got it on sale back in January for a little cheaper... Most likely overkill but we both definitely noticed a difference in performance/boot up time As well
But here's a link
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-75E250B/AM) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OAJ412U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_LCEzxb5XE33F6
But here's a link
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-75E250B/AM) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OAJ412U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_LCEzxb5XE33F6
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Your cheapest option will be the bx200 range from crucial I expect but just about any modern SSD should be fine for you.
- Those are also the slowest SSDs in existence. Even on SATA II it will be terrible for any file transfers above a few GBs.
It'll still boot fast open apps fast and feel snappy, for general use on an 8 year old laptop it will make very little difference.
Second vote for Samsung EVOs!
I have one in my early 2009 whitebook along with 4gb and it's actually still a very usable machine...
--rob
I have one in my early 2009 whitebook along with 4gb and it's actually still a very usable machine...
--rob
- Correct before the comma. But if general use includes file transfers above about 2 GB, a BX200 vs. a fast SSD will make a quite large difference.
- Really not true. The BX200 has so poor sequential write performance (around 60-80 MB/s) that it doesn't even come close to maxing out SATA II.
Your MBP likely has the NVidia MCP79 SATA chipset. You can check by going into the System Information app, under Hardware -> SATA ... The name of the chipset appears on the right side. (If you don't know how to open System Information, go into Spotlight and type it in.)
If you do have the MCP79 chipset, some SSD's don't work well or at all with it. Recent Crucial's (those generally available) and the Evo 850 are known to work (albeit at SATA2 speeds) with the MCP79. There are issues with some SanDisk SSD's (Ultra, Plus) but a poster in another thread said the X300 and X400 SSD's work. If you want to get a SanDisk, do a web search for the model name and "nvidia mcp79" before buying.
What size SSD are you looking at and what are you willing to spend?
If you do have the MCP79 chipset, some SSD's don't work well or at all with it. Recent Crucial's (those generally available) and the Evo 850 are known to work (albeit at SATA2 speeds) with the MCP79. There are issues with some SanDisk SSD's (Ultra, Plus) but a poster in another thread said the X300 and X400 SSD's work. If you want to get a SanDisk, do a web search for the model name and "nvidia mcp79" before buying.
What size SSD are you looking at and what are you willing to spend?
The 200-250gb range, ~$100 or so. This is for a relative who is not particularly tech savvy (at all) but is short tempered and gets frustrated with technology (and doesn't have money to spend on an up to date machine). I figured I could swap out the current 5400 rpm drive and get him an SSD to give a boost in performance.
It's only SATA II so Crucial may be fine. What's the difference between MX200 and BX200?
[doublepost=1466698716][/doublepost]Meanwhile, I have another relative who may want to put an SSD in a 2007 MacBook, which only has SATA I. I figure I would suggest swapping out the 5400 rpm drive with an SSD so that using the Mac just feels faster.
- As I've discussed, the BX200 is very slow for file transfers. Slower than some hard drives. But for other tasks and general use not including file transfers, it's perfectly fast and provides the SSD advantage. MX200 is much faster.
Samsung 850 EVO can also be found for under $100.
On Amazon, MX200 is $80 , BX200 is $65, Evo 850 is $99.
I have MX200 in a couple of machines and they are pretty quick.
I have MX200 in a couple of machines and they are pretty quick.
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Definitely will be, I remember when I first changed out a HD to a SSD, and boy, was I shocked at how fast that bad boy booted up.
The Evo is a good SSD, good luck
Definitely will be, I remember when I first changed out a HD to a SSD, and boy, was I shocked at how fast that bad boy booted up.
The Evo is a good SSD, good luck
And I guess I should use the trimforce command to manually enable trim support.
Definitely will be, I remember when I first changed out a HD to a SSD, and boy, was I shocked at how fast that bad boy booted up.
The Evo is a good SSD, good luck
So I installed it this weekend and everything is working but there were a couple of hiccups.
I wasn't sure at what point to enable TRIM support. I did it right after formatting the drive. I had some trouble too - I could use sudo on his login because he is just a standard user, so I had to switch to an admin account and run it. It seemed to work OK but it wasn't clear if it was per-device, per-user, or just a one time global thing. I confirmed in system profiler that trim is enabled.
Carbon Copy Cloner didn't clone the whole drive; it cloned the main partition. So I had to separately tell CCC to also create the recover HD partition. I discovered this because it wouldn't let me turn on FileVault without the recovery partition.
His Mac seems to have some trouble auto-restarting, such as after enabling TRIM and enabling FileVault. Turning the functions on would work but the restart wouldn't. I would have to force it.
Anyway, it's about 20 times faster now. Still a far cry from my 2015 15" MBP.
- It is a one time global thing on the OS X installation. Once it's done it's done and enabled for all SSDs attached.
If System Profiler confirms, all's well.
- Yes, that's the way it works. When cloning, you're selecting a volume ("Macintosh HD" presumably), and that volume doesn't contain the OS X Recovery partition. However, after a successful clone of the main volume, CCC will ask if you would also like the recovery partition cloned.
- All resolved now?