Upgrading Macbook Pro early 2008 HDD to gain speed

[docbot]

Hey There,

I have a early 2008 Macbook Pro with the Nvidia chip issue (baked the logic board twice already and still working).

I was thinking about upgrading the HDD from the 200 GB to something like the Seagate 750 XT with SDD or a WD Black 750 GB drive.

Only questions is, if I can expect the Macbook to work faster after the upgrade. It's been a little slow lately and often hanging when using a browser - my harddrive was quiet full in the last month, so I am not too sure if this is a HDD thing or something else.

Anyway Blackmagic Disk Speed Test says the write and read speed of my 200 GB HDD is about 50 MB/s. Is this perfect working condition or can I expect one of the two HDDs mentioned above to perform better in this regard!

thx"

 

[CortexRock]

I upgraded my MBP 2008 with an SSD, haven't looked back since. Prices are much less now than when I did it too, so you've got nothing to lose.

 

[GGJstudios]

Only questions is, if I can expect the Macbook to work faster after the upgrade. It's been a little slow lately and often hanging when using a browser - my harddrive was quiet full in the last month, so I am not too sure if this is a HDD thing or something else.

It will certainly perform better overall with a SSD. You may also benefit from increasing RAM, if you haven't done so already.

If you're having performance issues, this may help:

Performance Tips For Mac OS X​

 

[sweetbrat]

An SSD will make it faster. Do you have as much RAMin it as it will take? If not, upgrading the RAM may be helpful, as well. If I remember correctly the early 2008 MBP can take 6GB.

Ah, I see GGJ beat me. No surprise there !

 

[themumu]

SSD is a good idea, as others have noted, but a "better" HDD is probably a waste. Higher rpm hard disks consume a lot more battery power, but give only a slight speed up. Not worth it, in my opinion.

On a side note, my early 2008 mbp is finishing up its last TM backup before I pull it open and install a new SSD

 

[kmpoboy2]

SSD is a good idea, as others have noted, but a "better" HDD is probably a waste. Higher rpm hard disks consume a lot more battery power, but give only a slight speed up. Not worth it, in my opinion.

This. Last year I changed the stock HDD for a 7200 one. It consumes a lot more power compared with the 5200 one.
I'm now waiting on the released of ML to install my new 830 SSD.

 

[Rajpdx]

Ssd.

 

[sofianito]

I did some Benchmarks on my late 2008 MBP with a Crucial M4 64GB SSD. It is much faster than a spindle hdd or hybrid one such as the Seagate Momentus XT . The SSD will allow you to boot and load your applications faster. It doesn't have to be very big, I would say 256GB as a maximum. I would store in it data that does not change frequently in order to increase its lifespan. You can replace your DVD with a bigger hdd such as the Momentus XT to store you personal data, and data that changes frequently...