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Wow! MacBook 13" 2006 with upgrade to SSD

I did the same thing as you for cost reasons

Hello eteseeyou,

I did the same upgrade as you. While I was in there I figured I would upgrade the RAM to but could only afford to go to 6GB of RAM I cannot wait to get to 8GB. I have only had my MacBook for about a year and that upgrade was worth the money. Yes, I dont have the speed of the ssd but it is way better than just having the old 5400 hdd. I really would like to go with the ssd but that will have to wait until the price drops. I have run some boot tests (no bench marks) and the boot time that I am getting is 24 seconds. That is pretty good if you ask me. I do like the fact that I can get faster boots and loading of programs with the storage space of an regular HDD. I also love the fact that we can upgrade our machines unlike the MBA.

eyeseeyou said:
Just installed a seagate momentus xt hybrid hard drive. (4 gb ssd/500gb disk 7200)

Not close to full ssd speeds but my macbook does boot up pretty fast now. Including the thousands of fonts I have installed plus photoshop/illustrator it boots up under 50 seconds.
Click to expand...
 
My only concern with ssd's is that lots of reviewers say that there are reliability issues. At least that what it seems like with reviews on newegg
 
eyeseeyou said:
My only concern with ssd's is that lots of reviewers say that there are reliability issues. At least that what it seems like with reviews on newegg
Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying but one would have to look at the price of the ssd as well. After doing a little research and seeing that the ssd has been around since the 1970's and the cost of this tech has always been high I wonder why has this not been used earlier. I also know that the ssd has a limited amount of reads and writes. So that would support your thoughts on reliability. I just wish they could figure out how to make this cheaper and make it last longer. The only thing that will help the ssd is going to be time. I do like how they had merged the ssd with the hdd, and that is why I went with the seagate momentus xt it give the user the best of both worlds. Heck who would not like getting a 28 sec boot time and a 15 sec program load time.
 
Was going to start a new thread but since we have the same macbooks(06) I figured I'd try to get feedback here.

I'd like to remove the optical drive and install a ssd in addition to my already installed hybrid hd. I'd use the ssd primarily for the OS/aplications.

Anyone ever heard/done this before? Any input? Is it even possible?
 
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It's not worth it as your ODD interface is IDE and not Sata.
 
I have a 2006 Macbook 1,1 (Core Duo, 2GHz, 2GB RAM) and was curious if I want to make the jump to optical-drive-SSD. After some digging through a number of forums and websites I had a few questions:

*TLDR:
1) Will installing SSD on optical bay create another bottleneck to speed?

2) $99 (OptiBay) + ~$100 (SSD) = ~$200. Worth putting down extra $200 on a 5-year old Macbook?

3) OptiBay SSD has problems waking from Sleep?

4) Or should I just sit tight and hold on until the MacBookPro refreshes in 2012 :) - My Macbook currently does everything that I need it to do currently, but more speed is always good, right? :)

Thanks!
------

1) @igouroum just noted that the upgrade isn't worth it since the optical bay is set up with IDE. Would this be an additional(?) bottleneck that I need to consider?

2) I foolishly thought that I could just pick up a Corsair or OCZ 60GB SSD and install; however it looks like I have to put down an additional ~$99 (MCE OptiBay) just to have the brackets to install the SSD :( Now I know the deal with 'if you can afford it, go for it', but while I thought that putting down ~$100 for the SSD itself was reasonable, I'm not sure putting down another $100 for the bay is something that I want to do on a 5-year old Macbook. Thoughts for those of you who ended up upgrading?

3) I read somewhere that the Macbook won't recognize the SSD after it comes back from Sleep (apparently the computer recognizes the original HDD bay and not the Optical bay when it comes back from sleep?). Can anyone confirm?
 
Very nice upgrade.

I didn't think Lion would run on a 2006 MB.

My 2007 MB boots in 37.3 seconds with the original 5400 RPM drive.
Something must have been wrong with the drive if it was taking that long to boot.
 
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2007 macbook 2.2Ghz core2 HDD vs SSD

Current set up: 2007 Macbook (white) with 2.2 Ghz care 2 duo and 4Gb RAM.

I replaced the old 5,4000rpm HDD with a Seagate hybrid 7,200 rpm 500Gb HDD earlier this year.

Now:
Boot time 38 secs
Start FCP takes 24 secs

Plannning to install Crucial 256Gb CT256M4SSD2 SSD in a few days.

I'd like the Mac to run faster, but also noise and power are concerns... hoping the new SSD will be cooler (so less fan noise) and will be quieter (no spinning HDD) ... and all that will help the battery charge last longer.

I'll post the results once I have it installed at Christmas

Phil
 
One thing I upgraded to an SSD on my early 2008, is that I am travelling, and moving the laptop every so often would have an undesirable impact on the hard drive. An SSD has no moving part that I don't have to worry about lugging my laptop bag and throwing it over security tables in the airport.

Another is that since it doesn't have to spin, I might be saving battery life.

Downside is that you are storage capacity limited, but performance is far more better than a spinning disk.
 
Just bought an OCZ Vertex 60GB for my 2006 MBP. I can't wait to receive it! :)

Update: I had to upgrade the firmware of this SSD from 3.50 to 3.55 to make it work. Before it wasn't recognized by the mac (folder when booting).
 
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Amen! I just replaced the stock Hitachi 5400 RPM HDD with an Intel 320 SATA 3GB/s 120GB SSD and the results were nothing short of stunning. Increased the RAM to 8GB and it feels like a new machine. I did this on both my wife's MacBook and my MacBook Pro 13, both mid 2010.
 
Macbook3,1 (late 2007) 2.2 GHz & 4gb ram

is the MCE OptiBay the only option for a 2007 13" Macbook3,1? It's $100 for the bracket, whereas Other World Computing offers a bracket for $70 but only for the unibody.

Does anyone know of a better/cheaper solution for replacing the optical drive with a SSD?

OWC Bracket
MCE Bracket
 
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Or would it be cheaper/faster to move the SSD where the HDD is and then move the HDD to where the optical drive was. I think the optical drive is PATA whereas the HDD is SATA connection. Put the most speed into the SSD, right?

Has anyone done this on this model of MacBook or know a link?
 
SSD and CoreDuo

pjarvi said:
I put a Kingston 80GB SSD in my 2006 Blackbook, gave it a whole new lease on life to such an extent that i'm genuinely pissed I can't run Lion or VMWare 4 on it (CoreDuo not supported by either). While the performance improvement is worth it alone, the other big reason to go with SSD over a regular drive is the SSD has no moving parts.

As someone that fixes laptop as a part of his job, I see failed hard drives every week from people that man-handle their laptops completely failing to realize there are disks spinning at 5400-7200RPMs inside.
Click to expand...

I have an original Macbook Pro 1.1 (Early 2006) core duo. Was under the impression that core duo will not support booting from an ssd (core2duo does obviously). I'd love to be incorrect about this since a $120 upgrade to a SSD would give me another year of life from the unit. It gets bogged down pretty easily these days and since the RAM is limited to 2gb. An SSD is really the only way to speed it up.
 
jjniss said:
I have an original Macbook Pro 1.1 (Early 2006) core duo. Was under the impression that core duo will not support booting from an ssd (core2duo does obviously). I'd love to be incorrect about this since a $120 upgrade to a SSD would give me another year of life from the unit. It gets bogged down pretty easily these days and since the RAM is limited to 2gb. An SSD is really the only way to speed it up.
Click to expand...

All Intell Macs support booting from an SSD.
 
It still lives, and now for a new upgrade!!!

As the original poster it is nice to see it reborn!

I am still happily using the 2006 macbook and am now planning to replace the optical dvd drive with a 1tb hard drive.

Any ideas if it is worth it and is there anything i need to be aware of like, IDE not SATA on this age of mac.
 
markjns said:
As the original poster it is nice to see it reborn!

I am still happily using the 2006 macbook and am now planning to replace the optical dvd drive with a 1tb hard drive.

Any ideas if it is worth it and is there anything i need to be aware of like, IDE not SATA on this age of mac.
Click to expand...

You could check to see what the optical connection is for sure if you go on the system profiler, but I think the optical drive is IDE. (In other words, you are out of luck for 1TB and the max is 320GB). IDE HDDs are also going to be more expensive for a much smaller capacity. The computer isn't worth it.
 
brop52 said:
You could check to see what the optical connection is for sure if you go on the system profiler, but I think the optical drive is IDE. (In other words, you are out of luck for 1TB)
Click to expand...

Can I use a IDE to SATA convertor / bay ?
 
jchase2057 said:
Yes. I had one in an old iBook. Your read/write will suck. For file storage it's fine though.
Click to expand...

thanks,

got me thinking now, if it is worth putting the 1TB HD back in the HD slot. I was planning on putting all my movies on the HD would there be a problem with playback from a HD via IDE?
 
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