Upgrade RAM Macbook Pro 2009

[opinionhated]

Hi,

Friend of mine wants to upgrade a 2009 macbook pro 13". That's quite old, and I have no experience with Mac. So wanted to know what RAM to purchase. Will any DD3 ram 204Pin laptop ram work? Can I go over 4GB (currently there's 2, so I am suggesting 2x4). What's the best value choice in terms of ram spec.

Any SSD? Can I just clone the HDD?

(PS: I suggested she just buy a PC)

Looked at this: https://support.apple.com/en-za/HT201165

 

[vinodh]

That Macbook supports DDR3 1066 but 1333 should work fine. It supports a maximum of 8GB. The following Kingston RAM is confirmed to work on this Macbook: http://www.wootware.co.za/kingston-value-select-4gb-ddr3-1333-laptop-memory-retail.html

Any SATA SSD will work, however it will run at 3 Gbit/s instead of 6 Gbit/s. That's still a truckload faster than the existing HDD.

Use Time Machine to backup the entire drive to an external drive and once the SSD is installed, boot from the Time Machine drive by holding down the Option(Alt) key on startup. Restore from the Time Machine backup and you should be good to go.

 

[bwana]

Use Time Machine to backup the entire drive to an external drive and once the SSD is installed, boot from the Time Machine drive by holding down the Option(Alt) key on startup. Restore from the Time Machine backup and you should be good to go.

If you do it this way you may find yourself missing the recovery partition on the new drive.

 

[opinionhated]

Thanks @ vinodh

@bwana what's the alternative?

 

[vinodh]

The alternative is to install OS X on the SSD, then restore from Time Machine when you are given the option during the user account creation.

Another option would be to use Carbon Copy Cloner to image the HDD to the SSD.