Installing a SSD in an old Mac Book

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kiwisoma

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#138575 9-Jan-2014 12:00

Hi. Anyone had any experience replacing an exsisting HDD with a SSD in a Mac Book?

Paid up member of the cult of "Mac", iMac, MBP(R), iPhone(s), AirPlay, Air Port Time capsule, iPad and iPad mini........

gehenna

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#963815 9-Jan-2014 12:03

By MacBook do you mean one of the older polycarbonate ones?

I've done it in a 2010 13" MacBook Pro easily enough just had to get a OptiBay mounting kit to remove the DVD drive and slot the SSD in there. IIRC there were issues getting the SSD to be recognised by the SATA cable where the original drive was, but that might have just been me.

kiwisoma

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#963817 9-Jan-2014 12:05

Thanks any recommendations of which brand of SSD?

Paid up member of the cult of "Mac", iMac, MBP(R), iPhone(s), AirPlay, Air Port Time capsule, iPad and iPad mini........

Tinshed

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#963819 9-Jan-2014 12:06

Strangely I have just done this on a MacBook (aluminum, late 2008) model. Was very straightforward to be honest. I did use the instructions on the Apple web-site as I am not very familiar with Macs. Incidentally I also upgraded the RAM and battery and I am impressed that a nearly six-year old laptop runs smoothly and quickly.

Tinshed
Wellington, New Zealand

Tinshed

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#963820 9-Jan-2014 12:09

kiwisoma: Thanks any recommendations of which brand of SSD?

Mine was a Crucial M500 240GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) from PB Tech at about $212. No problems so far as you would expect.

Tinshed
Wellington, New Zealand

lxsw20

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#963846 9-Jan-2014 13:17

I've got an Intel 330 120GB in my 2010 MBP, works really well for a 3 year old machine.

gehenna

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#963849 9-Jan-2014 13:23

Mine was an OCZ Vertex 3. It was great. I think the issue I had with the SATA port was that only the Optical drive bay port was SATA 3 compatible whereas the HDD port was SATA 2, and back then there were performance issues with running SATA 3 SSD's on SATA 2 ports....from memory.

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stevenz

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#977839 31-Jan-2014 09:39

I manaed to install one into a Mac Mini. Wasn't a fun job.

Installing one into a MacBook shouldn't take any more than 5 minutes, then use carbon copy cloner or similar to mirror the old drive to the new one.

Most of the major brand SSD's are ok these days, Intel, Samsung, OCZ, Crucial, probably even Kingston...

@KnightNZ