^ i brought it to ynzal. since our Macs use a 3.5" drive, you'll need an adapter bracket like this to accommodate 2.5" SSD drives: i'm not sure about the other brands, but Intel bundles this bracket with its retail SSD boxed set. good luck!
Here are a few links that recommends placing SSD boot disk in the HD slot instead of superdrive slot to avoid boot/sleep/wake issues. How to Install a Solid-State Drive in Your MacBook How to Install an Additional SSD Drive in Your Mac | ChrisWrites.com Simon Fredsted Increased read/write speed will definitely improve the user experience of your mac, but don't expect to speed up completion of intensive tasks in aperture and imovie where the limit of CPU/GPU/RAM is the bottleneck, not the SSD read/write speed. TS, apologies for going off-topic as this thread should be a SSD Upgrade Database.
^these are actually issues very pertinent to the original post and the whole thread. any issues as to regards to installation and performance is to be voiced for the benefit of everyone. thanks for the links, but I asked for current links. The lifehacker link is from 2010, and the Simon Fredsted link is from 2011, with corresponding comments on those posts still in years 2010 and 2011. Its an issue that has many variables (as to version/year of the MBP) and resulting connector capability per port (some year/versions have faster ports in the HDD bay and others have the same for both). the macrumors forum link/thread was created in march 2012 and was subsequently updated July 9, 2012 has different configurations needed per year/version of MBP and has positive user experiences using the different configurations (SSD in optical drive and vice versa). There's no other way to see what will really work or not but to actually do it, so well see. All the stuff for the upgrade arrives tomorrow. My fingers are crossed.... my dreams of instant 0.00000001 second boot up times and 0.00000000000001 second aperture edits with 100,000 browsers open may come true!
For the SSDs, would it be more cost effective to source it online and have it delivered here? Are there reputable or recommended local sources of SSDs? thanks.
this, i totally agree with. there aren't enough information on this subject online and anyone who's planning this type of project will really find all of this stuff useful.
MAC: MacBook Aluminum Unibody 2.4GHz, Late 2008 SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA III INSTALLED: August 2012 COMMENTS: (1) My goal is to use the SSD as my OS disk & re-purpose my 500GB 7200rpm HDD as data disk. (2) I replaced my SuperDrive with a caddy to host my old HDD. (3) I am aware that my MacBook's bus speed is SATA II 3 GB/s only. However, I still bought a SATA III 6 GB/s SSD that is backward-compatible with SATA II. The main reason for this is future use, in case I decide buy the latest MBP that supports SATA III 6 GB/s bus speed. (4) No problems installing the SSD & a fresh Mountain Lion OS. The difficulty however, was on optimizing the system to set 3 GB/s speed. System Information displays that the 'Negotiated Link Speed' is only 1.5 GB/s. OCZ's solution, which included a Linux image wouldn't boot on my MacBook. So, I had to download the command-line tool buried deep in the forums, configure my own EFI-bootable USB that runs Ubuntu to get access to the command line & apply the patch. This was the hardest part. (5) I also went through the blog links posted by Leo with all the tips there. But I decided to apply only one tip, which is to enable TRIM support. TRIM Enabler works flawlessly with the latest ML 10.8.1. The results are well-worth the effort. Somehow, I think my 4 year-old MacBook is snappier than the latest 13-inch MBP i7 8GB i use at work with a 750GB 5400 HDD. It feels more like my iPad in terms of boot times, launching apps, opening files, etc. I hope this helps.
If your Vertex 3 has been flashed with V2.22 Mac firmware, that will "force" a sata2 3.0Gbit link speed upon boot initialization. Also for multi OS boot selection, try with ReFIT as a boot manager. It gives better choices for multiboot. Even on USB connected bootable volumes. Yes, SSD i/o beats any HDD anyday on a fast enough processor.
@fteoOpty64 I actually have v2.22 firmware. But it is still downgrading it to 1.5 GB/s. I then learned that the problem is with NVIDIA chips of my MacBook having the option to 'select' given that the SSD setting is 'auto'. The patch I applied fixes the setting to 3 GB/s.
swapped the 500gb hdd of an md103 to a samsung 830 256gb ssd. replacement was fairly easy. unscrew and remove the bottom cover, unscrew hdd mount, transfer the mounting screws from the hdd to the ssd, put it all back and you're done. before the swap, i cloned the installed hdd to the ssd using restore in disk utility. my initial boot took me probably 40 secs. the initial shutdown took 12secs. not as expected. i tried again, same result. googled it, and found the answer. i should have explicitly pointed the newly installed ssd as the primary startup disk since the mac is still waiting for the previous disk to run until it times out. it then boots in 10 secs, but shutdown was still 12secs. turns out, i missed another process, repair disk permissions under disk utility. boot 10 secs shutdown 2 secs restart 30 secs not to mention the overall user experience after the ssd install. cuts 'work time' in half!
@LeoCastillo I heard Apple enables TRIM for its own SSDs that come with MBAs, etc. But not on customer-installed SSDs. It must be OK.
I was just wondering, did you upgarde your firmware prior to cloning the SsD? If ever how did you go about it sir (via windows?) since i am planning also to upgrade with the brand of SDD. TIA ...and how do you appoint the SSD as a startup disk? Would the oS do it automatically for you?
Afaik, You won't feel the effects of trim in real time. Mostly this is for wear leveling of the ssd. It is supposed maximize the life span of your ssd but, since most ssd's have implemented their own garbage collection algorithm, I don't think this is necessary. Just a nice option to have for third party ssd's
good day everyone, i'm planning to upgrade to ssd soon. i found an intel 330 series in the market and i would like to ask to you sir's if it is compatible to my mac? i own a MacBook 2,1 (Late-2006), thank you.
May I ask how was the battery life after installing ssd with HDD as a second hard drive installed inside optical bay? Specifically with mid 2009 MBP with 4 GB of RAM running on ML.
There won't be any immediate noticeable difference until the drive gets older and space starts filling up. GC and TRIM are two different things. TRIM complements GC. To explain a bit further, GC resides in the SSD controller while TRIM is in the OS. When a file is deleted on the OS, the data is not itself immediately deleted on the SSD, only the pointer to the data is removed. Then while idle, the SSD will do garbage collection which collects data from partially written blocks and groups them together in a blank block and erases the partially written blocks so the next data has a place to go to. Without TRIM, the SSD still sees the data without a pointer that is grouped in a block with data that has not been deleted in the OS so it is still included in the data that is grouped into blocks by GC. The only time it is totally erased is when the OS tries to write new data on it. With TRIM, the OS sends commands to the SSD to let it know that the file has already been deleted in the OS so the data does not need to be grouped into blocks and does not need to be moved by GC. So basically TRIM helps GC performance better and helps reduce wear on the SSD.
in theory, it should because your mac's sata1 controller is made by Intel like my 2006 imac, i assume. Why don't you try it out anyway and post your result here? Many will appreciate your feedback.
Mac: 2.53 GHz i5 15" MBP (Mid 2010) 8gig RAM with Leopard. SSD: 256GB Crucial M4 SSD Installed: 9/8/12 Comments: This is a combo set up (SSD + HDD) with the SSD in the main bay and the HDD in the optical bay with a caddie. I used this guide Mixed Drive Setup (SSD+HDD) in Macbook Pro - MacRumors Forums I formated the SSD using my old CDR-King external enclosure, then installed both the new SSD into the main HD bay, and the HDD + optical bay caddie swap with the superdrive simultaneously following the OWC guides on youtube. Initial clean install using Mountain Lion (through a bootable 8gig thumb drive) was pretty fast... totaled around 16min. From there I installed the applications/user files/setting from the HDD in the Optical bay using migration assistant. That was a lot slower at around 1.5hrs. From there I set up the pictures/music/video (then later) document folders in the HDD with iTunes/iPhoto/Aperture/iMovie. Shut down time is 6 seconds. Boot-up time is 16 seconds and reset is around 26 seconds. Applications like safari, quicktime, and VLC are instantly opened. I'm paranoid about running a benchmark test program so these are just rough times using a watch. If you have fast internet speeds you can really see how fast things like youtube videos load up and play instantly. Apature/iPhoto is a lot quicker to open than before. The application opens instantly and pictures load a lot faster (even from the HDD), once the pics are loaded everything is very zippy. The only thing that really took a long time was backing up the whole computer before the swap (using Carbon Copy Cloner), then the initial back up after everything was done. backing up 600+gigs with Time Machine Backups was like 5 hours even using a 2TB external drive with Firewire. Thanks for the tips in this thread, like avoiding data/sleep issues. The only problem I see with this new very fast SSD, is that you pretty much instantly get used to the faster speeds. Its not really impressive after a short while. Its only really evident when you use a slower computer again for reference.
