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Upgrading to SSD? Proper way to go about it..

J

josh.v918

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 30, 2014
1
0
I currently have a Macbook Pro MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009)
MacBookPro5,4
Running with 8 gigs of ram.
I used my friends mac air with a 160 ssd and 4 gigs or ram and it blew my mac out of the water. agreed it was much newer but still i wasnt expecting it to be such a night and day difference.
Finally my question is!! Can my mac handle a SSD swap ( i believe so) i currently have a bootable USB of yosemite and ill time machine my mac as well. but what the factors for me to look for when purchasing the right ssd to not have and compatibly issues.
Any and all replys are appreciate..
Hopefully not asking to much but what do i look for as far as the diameter of the hhd.
Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
josh.v918 said:
I currently have a Macbook Pro MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009)
MacBookPro5,4
Running with 8 gigs of ram.
I used my friends mac air with a 160 ssd and 4 gigs or ram and it blew my mac out of the water. agreed it was much newer but still i wasnt expecting it to be such a night and day difference.
Finally my question is!! Can my mac handle a SSD swap ( i believe so) i currently have a bootable USB of yosemite and ill time machine my mac as well. but what the factors for me to look for when purchasing the right ssd to not have and compatibly issues.
Any and all replys are appreciate..
Hopefully not asking to much but what do i look for as far as the diameter of the hhd.
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

FWIW, I just ordered an SSD upgrade kit for my two 17" 2011 MacBookPros. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JQXT904/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The kit includes the special screwdrivers to open the Mac and an external enclosure for the drive so you can clone your current drive to the new SSD drive before installing. I'm assuming the old drive will fit in that enclosure after the swap so I can use it as an external drive. It also gives instructions for swapping the drives and there's a video online as well. Looks like your model is included in the same list as mine so it should work for you and the reviews look promising. I got the 960 gig version because I use it to play very large movies for live shows (if I don't have a MacPro or iMac provided to me). It has software to provide TRIM support.

I think I'm getting the drives tomorrow so maybe I'll update this post after I do the swap.
 
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Your mac has a sata 2 port and that is already slow given that most apple computers now use PCIe SSD which is blazing fast. So even with an ssd, don't expect a dramatic difference.

Also this is the Mac Pro section of forum. If you have further questions about your Macbook Pro, you should consult that section.
 
sebseb said:
Your mac has a sata 2 port and that is already slow given that most apple computers now use PCIe SSD which is blazing fast. So even with an ssd, don't expect a dramatic difference.
Click to expand...
This is nonsense. The standard HDD on that era MBP was a 5400rpm drive but even if it's a 7200rpm option the OP will see a vast performance improvement between any HDD & an SSD. I can confirm this having upgraded a 2008 MBP from a 7200rpm disk to an old Crucial M4 SSD.
 
nigelbb said:
This is nonsense. The standard HDD on that era MBP was a 5400rpm drive but even if it's a 7200rpm option the OP will see a vast performance improvement between any HDD & an SSD. I can confirm this having upgraded a 2008 MBP from a 7200rpm disk to an old Crucial M4 SSD.
Click to expand...

Yes you would notice an improvement, but not so much like the new air where you press the power button and it's on in 10 seconds! He will see improvements but not so much compared to as if he had gone directly to a new MacBook Air or pcie ssd!
 
sebseb said:
Yes you would notice an improvement, but not so much like the new air where you press the power button and it's on in 10 seconds! He will see improvements but not so much compared to as if he had gone directly to a new MacBook Air or pcie ssd!
Click to expand...

The OP asked about upgrading his MBP with an SSD not replacing it with a new MacBook Air. He may not see as much increase as going to an MBA but he will still see a vast improvement in performance.
 
you will see a huge improvement. (really huge)
It doesn't matter the Sata 2 or 3 debate.
You will not get the maximum sustained output of the SSD but you will benefice from the random read and writes massive speed. (This is the important part of the SSD).
Get a nice crucial MX100, and give back life to your machine.
 
dollystereo said:
you will see a huge improvement. (really huge)
It doesn't matter the Sata 2 or 3 debate.
You will not get the maximum sustained output of the SSD but you will benefice from the random read and writes massive speed. (This is the important part of the SSD).
Get a nice crucial MX100, and give back life to your machine.
Click to expand...
Totally agree ;)
 
josh.v918 said:
Finally my question is!! Can my mac handle a SSD swap ( i believe so) i currently have a bootable USB of yosemite and ill time machine my mac as well. but what the factors for me to look for when purchasing the right ssd to not have and compatibly issues.
Click to expand...

Yes it can. Is uses a standard 2.5 inch form factor SATA SSD. About the best bang for the buck right now is the Samsung EVO or the Crucial MX100. Just swap in the drive then option key boot to your Time Machine disk and use Disk Utility to format the new disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then quit Disk Util and click restore. That will move the OS and all your apps and data onto the new drive.

Then restart and in System Preferences go to the Startup Disk pane and select the new SSD as the boot drive.

Finally, use this tool to enable TRIM on the drive. Read this warning first.

It won't be as fast as your friend's Air, but you will notice a big difference.
 
sebseb said:
Yes you would notice an improvement, but not so much like the new air where you press the power button and it's on in 10 seconds! He will see improvements but not so much compared to as if he had gone directly to a new MacBook Air or pcie ssd!
Click to expand...

Maybe a whole 12-15 seconds... a bona-fide massive improvement from the minute+ boot times provided by a spinner.
 
This past weekend, I upgraded my girlfriend's and her sister's 2009 MacBooks to SSDs. It's a world of a difference, and those run at SATA 3Gbps speeds. The procedure I use is:

Boot up with current hard drive.
Install Carbon Copy Cloner (Free trial for 30 days, well worth the purchase)
Insert new SSD into USB enclosure.
Use CCC to clone your install to the new SSD.
Remove HDD, install SSD.
Reset PRAM, boot into new SSD with your OS X install the way you left it just moments ago.

Depending on how much data you have, the process typically doesn't take more than a few hours, and that's just waiting for the data to copy.

Hope this helps.
-N
 
NOTNlCE said:
This past weekend, I upgraded my girlfriend's and her sister's 2009 MacBooks to SSDs. It's a world of a difference, and those run at SATA 3Gbps speeds. The procedure I use is:

Boot up with current hard drive.
Install Carbon Copy Cloner (Free trial for 30 days, well worth the purchase)
Insert new SSD into USB enclosure.
Use CCC to clone your install to the new SSD.
Remove HDD, install SSD.
Reset PRAM, boot into new SSD with your OS X install the way you left it just moments ago.

Depending on how much data you have, the process typically doesn't take more than a few hours, and that's just waiting for the data to copy.

Hope this helps.
-N
Click to expand...

I am in the process of cloning to the ssd I mentioned above and in their instructions they tell me to use Restore in Disk Utility to clone my current drive to my new drive. I also had to make a Bootcamp partition to clone into and I'll do that next. Is there a reason to use a 3rd party cloner rather than this method? Seems like Restore is specifically designed for this purpose.
 
I had to use Winclone. My Disk Utility copy wouldn't get to Windows. Would be thrilled to be proven wrong. Also very important to create and partition disk in a very specific fashion.
 
MacVidCards said:
I had to use Winclone. My Disk Utility copy wouldn't get to Windows. Would be thrilled to be proven wrong. Also very important to create and partition disk in a very specific fashion.
Click to expand...

After I wrote that post I did some searching and found that to be true as well. So, I guess I'll have to buy Winclone. I don't want to have to redo the entire Bootcamp Windows 7 plus Office.

I read that I shouldn't have already done the partition. I should have kept it one and then partition with Bootcamp utility THEN Winclone. Sigh.
 
laurim said:
After I wrote that post I did some searching and found that to be true as well. So, I guess I'll have to buy Winclone. I don't want to have to redo the entire Bootcamp Windows 7 plus Office.

I read that I shouldn't have already done the partition. I should have kept it one and then partition with Bootcamp utility THEN Winclone. Sigh.
Click to expand...

Winclone works... It's been a bit finicky for me, and I might not have had the best experience as I believe my disk was faulty when I was trying to use it, but it gets the job done. I do think that it's the only option, however. It preserves the MBR edits that are needed to boot via the Mac EFI, while other utilities do not.
 
NOTNlCE said:
Winclone works... It's been a bit finicky for me, and I might not have had the best experience as I believe my disk was faulty when I was trying to use it, but it gets the job done. I do think that it's the only option, however. It preserves the MBR edits that are needed to boot via the Mac EFI, while other utilities do not.
Click to expand...

Got the first ssd installed! Had a little trouble making the Bootcamp partition with the assistant because I had to put the Windows 7 install disc in before it would make the partition and then I couldn't stop it before it started to install Win 7. But, eventually I figured it out and got it all installed. I was surprised how clean my 2011 MBP still is inside! It is definitely faster now and I have almost twice the drive space and a bigger Bootcamp partition. Nice.

Be sure to install and use Winclone to image the Bootcamp partition to the desktop of the old drive BEFORE you clone the old Mac partition so you'll also clone Winclone and the Bootcamp image to the new drive when you do Restore or Carbon Copy Cloner. I wasn't sure how draconian the two computer install limit on Winclone was so I didn't want to chance blowing both licenses on one computer.
 
laurim said:
I am in the process of cloning to the ssd I mentioned above and in their instructions they tell me to use Restore in Disk Utility to clone my current drive to my new drive. I also had to make a Bootcamp partition to clone into and I'll do that next. Is there a reason to use a 3rd party cloner rather than this method? Seems like Restore is specifically designed for this purpose.
Click to expand...

Disk Util won't do anything with the Windows side of things like you mentioned, but to just clone the OS X volume, it works exactly the same as CCC so there is no need for utilities like CCC.

The only limitation with Disk Util is the restore destination has to be the same size or larger that the source. You can work around this though by using Disk Util to shrink the source volume down to below the size of the destination.

Also, DU is all or nothing where CCC would allow you to not clone over the Music folder for example if you wanted to do that.

But for a normal clone, DU works fine.
 
Weaselboy said:
Disk Util won't do anything with the Windows side of things like you mentioned, but to just clone the OS X volume, it works exactly the same as CCC so there is no need for utilities like CCC.

The only limitation with Disk Util is the restore destination has to be the same size or larger that the source. You can work around this though by using Disk Util to shrink the source volume down to below the size of the destination.

Also, DU is all or nothing where CCC would allow you to not clone over the Music folder for example if you wanted to do that.

But for a normal clone, DU works fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks everyone! I got both MBPs ssd upgraded and they are running great. Hope the OP does as well.
 
Every Mac deserves a SSD. No exceptions. If it's in working condition, SSD it!

In the PowerPC Mac forum there are people installing IDE SSDs on their computers and they're also getting night and day improvements.
 
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