SSD upgrade on MBP?

Priapus

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Hi all,

For those of two who have SSDs in their MBPs - was it worth the upgrade and do you notice a speed difference?
 
Oh it's absolutely worth it.

It makes a world of difference in boot up times (not that I ever switch mine off) but it's in simple day to day tasks that you really feel it.

Excel now opens in 2 seconds instead of 30 and everything is generally much much more responsive.


Only problem is that 256GB really doesn't go very far so I put the old 756GB drive in an external bay and use it for Time Machine backups as well as any non-critical data like ISO files and other stuff I don't use every day.
 
Agree its worth it.
I put a Vertex 3 256gb in my Macbook Pro best R3k spent.
Could never think of going back.
 
Thanks guys. Once I have enough pennies in the bank I will grab a 256GB SSD. :D :cool:
 
How many of you did it on your own - as opposed to dropping it off at a trusted Apple store (Digicape etc.) to have them do it for you?
 
How many of you did it on your own - as opposed to dropping it off at a trusted Apple store (Digicape etc.) to have them do it for you?

Depending on the model, Apple gives you the instruction on how to change hard drives and memory.

Regards, SSD. My wife has the state of the art MBP 15" with all the bells and whistles. I haven't seen anything that fast in a while.
 
I did it on a late 2011 Macbook Pro watched a youtube video and its pretty straight forward.
You will maybe need a Torx screwdriver.
 
Added a neutron GTX to my MBP 2011, so much of awesome. :love:
Searching for function calls throughout the code base is one of the biggest improvements I've noticed other than what's listed above.
 
Added a neutron GTX to my MBP 2011, so much of awesome. :love:
Searching for function calls throughout the code base is one of the biggest improvements I've noticed other than what's listed above.

This is where my interest regarding SSD comes from.
I will be doing a lot of development with xCode and I wondered if an SSD will improve things in that area. At the moment, I find the iOS simulator takes a while to load up and also going through code can sometimes be delayed.
 
How many of you did it on your own - as opposed to dropping it off at a trusted Apple store (Digicape etc.) to have them do it for you?

It's a user serviceable part so do it yourself.

Instructions are on Apple's Support pages, but even better would be using iFixit as their pictures and information is much more detailed.


After the physical installation pop the old hard drive in an external bay and run the OSX setup from a disk/usb/Recovery and then either fresh install and do a migration from the old hard drive (recommended since you are going down in size more than likely) or simply do a Disk Utility clone from the old drive to the new one.


Also I highly recommend that after the fact you get one of the various tools to strip all additional languages and PowerPC binaries from your OSX system to save even more space.
 
Do it yourself = easy and free
Drop it off at an Apple Service centre (core) = expensive and you walk out being shafted
 
Since I have and SSD and a HDD in my MacBook Pro, I decided today to make my own Fusion drive. I first did a Time Machine backup, then made a Mountain Lion USB installer and booted from it. I used the installer's Disk Utility to erase both drives, then opened Terminal and followed this guide. Once that was done, I chose the option to restore from Time Machine and selected my last backup. It's busy restoring now.
 
Time Machine completed the restore and everything seems fine. Disk Utility shows one drive with the capacity of the total of both drives. Works great so far.
 
I did it on a late 2011 Macbook Pro watched a youtube video and its pretty straight forward.
You will maybe need a Torx screwdriver.
Flat screwdriver can also be used in a torx screw.
 
Hi all,

For those of two who have SSDs in their MBPs - was it worth the upgrade and do you notice a speed difference?

It is useful and things load fast. But at times I do see slow downs too.
 
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