SSD*upgrade? for MacBookPro 2008 Late 5,1

[DanielKinney]

MBP 2008 5,1 Late October
*I need a Really Good SSD for an upgrade. OWC (macsales) is telling me the only SSD for this model is OWC (240GB or 120GB or 480GB)) Mercury Electra 3G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 7mm Solid State Drive. In 2011 I took this MBP 2008 in for repair and the mother board needed replaced. I have no issues now except needing or wanting this puppy to run the fastest i can get it to. I did install OWC 8GB of RAM into this machine although apple says it can only take 6GB RAM. OWC said it can take 8GB. I need thoughts on that as well. Did i get taken by OWC, is there a way to know if I am really getting the benefit of the 8GB Ram?

*Can someone explain SATA 1, 2 & 3 to me. How do I know which SATA this drive is by (OWC 240GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 7mm Solid State Drive) their site and how do i find out what SATA i have in the MBP 2008 5,1 Late?

*They told me that the 6G would not work, because it would slow down the performance to much so my only choice is the 3G.
What about other brands of SSD?

*Anyone know how to answer this?
Thanks.
Daniel
PS: i bought new MBPR2013 10,1 Early & iMac2012 Late my new MBPR is a beast.

 

[Bruno09]

Hi,

SATA 1 = 1.5 Gbps
SATA 2 = 3 Gbps
SATA 3 = 6 Gbps

Your Macbook Pro 5,1 has a SATA 2 connexion.

Any SSD (SATA 2 or SATA 3) will work fine in your Mac (at SATA 2 speed).

Take a look at Crucial or Samsung websites.

*They told me that the 6G would not work, because it would slow down the performance to much so my only choice is the 3G.
What about other brands of SSD?

NEVER heard that before...

 

[DanielKinney]

MBP 2008 5,1 Late October
*I need a Really Good SSD for an upgrade. OWC (macsales) is telling me the only SSD for this model is OWC (240GB or 120GB or 480GB)) Mercury Electra 3G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 7mm Solid State Drive. In 2011 I took this MBP 2008 in for repair and the mother board needed replaced. I have no issues now except needing or wanting this puppy to run the fastest i can get it to. I did install OWC 8GB of RAM into this machine although apple says it can only take 6GB RAM. OWC said it can take 8GB. I need thoughts on that as well. Did i get taken by OWC, is there a way to know if I am really getting the benefit of the 8GB Ram?

*Can someone explain SATA 1, 2 & 3 to me. How do I know which SATA this drive is by (OWC 240GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 7mm Solid State Drive) their site and how do i find out what SATA i have in the MBP 2008 5,1 Late?

*They told me that the 6G would not work, because it would slow down the performance to much so my only choice is the 3G.
What about other brands of SSD?

*Anyone know how to answer this?
Thanks.
Daniel
PS: i bought new MBPR2013 10,1 Early & iMac2012 Late my new MBPR is a beast.

OWC says that 1.5G is SATA I
3G is SATA II
6G is SATA III

 

[Apple_Robert]

OWC says that 1.5G is SATA I
3G is SATA II
6G is SATA III

What Bruno said is true.
"Any SSD (SATA 2 or SATA 3) will work fine in your Mac (at SATA 2 speed)."

This will work in your Mac. Depending on budget, you can go smaller or larger. Even at SATA 2 speed, it will still be a heck of a lot faster than the stock HDD.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100...&qid=1419797475&sr=8-1&keywords=crucial+mx100

 

[mac-slap-happy]

I have a late 2008 MBP 5,1. I first installed a Kingston SATA3 SSD, and while it worked it would only negotiate a SATA 1 link (1.5G). I did some research and it had something to do with the SATA controller not being fully compatible or something along those lines. I replaced it with an OWC Mercury, and it always links at proper SATA 2 speeds now. Just FYI ... not all drives will link at the SATA 2 speeds your chipset is capable of.

 

[mneblett]

I also have a late '08 MBP. I put a Samsung 840 in the machine a couple years ago. There is nothing special about the machine, despite the OWC comment you reported. The 840 is backwards-compatible with the SATA I bus in the late '08. The drive read/write response is much faster than a spinning hard drive; I doubt you'd be able to notice a difference between SATA I and SATA II SSDs, unless you are constantly using your machine for highly-disk-intensive tasks (which 99% of users do not, let alone doing such heavy work on a six year old machine).

On the RAM, the original late '08 firmware only permitted 6GB of RAM; a later firmware update allowed 8 GB.

 

[Bheleu]

Trim

OWC drives do not use TRIM which is broken for 3rd party SSDs. If you really need lots of space for this Era of MacBook - setup a fusion drive (google how to do it).

Just setup a 2.06TB fusion drive this weekend, holding my breathe to see how well it speeds it up.

2TB - 5400rpm platter drive (just pop the case off)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FRHTTJE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Stick your Superdrive in this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005RFOJT6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Stick the hard drive in this:
http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody...8668&sr=8-1&keywords=macbook+hard+drive+caddy

And replace your existing drive with the SSD (you'll need a 6mm Torox to remove the screws).
http://www.amazon.com/Leegoal-Phili...e=UTF8&qid=1419898821&sr=1-5&keywords=T6+torx

If you want to use a SSD other than OWC, I am assuming that you just do not enable the TRIM - uncertain of this so far. Hoping my new beastie will do everything I want it to do again (mainly update all our iPad's so I can jailbreak the new iOS) and have plenty of room I can move all my iTunes data back off the external storage drive.