You lot often talk about swapping the SSD ?
What is it,what does it do, how much does it cost to swap it?
I’m getting the spinning wheel an awful lot now and its pissing me off.
A computer bod had a look at our MacBook and he supposedly cleared it out but it didn’t make any difference.

Solid State Drive. So a replacement hard drive with no moving parts, approx 10 times faster than what you have right now.

What is your machine spec / age ? (About this Mac)

A decent sized ssd (500gb) will be aboit £125 pkus a few other bits to help £20 ish (external caddy to reuse your current drive and to make setup easier, torx screw driver / key set)

Easy to do physically but does require some IT skills to reinstall OS and copy your data

Download BlackMagicSpeedTest and tell us how fast your old disk is 35 is my guess, ssd will be 250 to 500

Depends how brave you are. I replaced mine myself, but did so accepting the risk that if I borked it then I would be looking at a) loss of data, b) permanently damaged macbook. As cost of replacing macbook is circa 2K I took a deep breath, calmed down, read a few how to guides online, and cracked on with it.

I maximised the amount of RAM at the same time. 7 Year Old macbook is now faster than I ever remember it (thanks to SSD) and definitely more stable than of late (I can now run a couple of virtual machines without hassle) thanks to the increased RAM.

If you want the peace of mind of having a professional do it, then you pay what they charge. Ring round and see who you like dealing with would be my advice.

That disk thing is taking a long time.
Most of the readings are 67mbs.

Crucial are good – download their little app which scans your computer and tells you which RAM/SSD will suit/fit. They’ll also sell you all the bits and pieces to be able to replace it yourself….. lots of good how-to guides on their too – they make it very simple.

link

What is slowing down your ‘pooter?
No point in getting more power when you’re already spinning your wheels.
I’ve got a HDD in my cheapo laptop but am generally only slowed down by my internet connection.
Due to my use, a SSD would make naff all difference.

All the other devices work fine so it’s not the internet.
It takes an age to wake up and if you to look at your photos you’d better go and put the kettle on.

Big fan of SSDs. I’ve even put one in my ancient XP machine that runs my CNC router. Vast improvement all round.

Zk; go to the wee Mac symbol (extreme top left), ‘About this Mac’, ‘Overview’, ‘System Report’, and cut and paste the first section, ‘Hardware Overview’.

Here’s mine:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro9,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 2.5 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Boot ROM Version: MBP91.00D3.B0E
SMC Version (system): 2.2f41
Serial Number (system): C1MKGNCGDTY3
Hardware UUID: C4701CCB-E843-58FC-97CE-609747BE000D
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

cody’s made the right call there. fitting an ssd is a piece of piss on the older macs, newer ones are sufficiently involved that you need quite a lot of ability to do it.

as an aside, its far more likely to be a software issue; fire up disk utility…get it to check health, then rebuild disk permissions. Thats a good start, beyond that you get into the realms of rebuilding the finder index and checking plists etc.

activity monitor can also useful for diagnosis, so you can see if its a process eating up capacity etc, or if you’re just hitting the limits of your available ram.

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro9,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 2.5 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Boot ROM Version: MBP91.00D3.B15
SMC Version (system): 2.2f44
Serial Number (system): DX1LR02CDTY3
Hardware UUID: DF6CD5B3-C69F-564C-B6B1-C59BEB1D105B
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

That age is ideal for an SSD upgrade (2012). It makes a huge difference, like someone else already mentioned the crucial site will give you kits with all the bits you need.

BUT, first I’d do some diagnosis to see why its running slow (that age is also prone to flaws in the SATA cable, which can make everything go slow). Have you seen any nasties like kernel panics?

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-unibody-faq/macbook-pro-13-15-17-mid-2009-how-to-upgrade-hard-drive-ssd.html

I’d start with MOAR RAM – looking at those stats…..

SSD and 8GB RAM is ideal imo, if you only do one do the SSD

The Black Magic Speed Test runs continuously 😉 You only need one reading ! 67 isn’t bad, SSD will give 500 on that Mac Model. Startup from “cold” will drop from 3 mins to 30 seconds (approx), programmes etc will run much faster

Note on RAM on my wife’s 2012 MBP I found one 8gb chip was gaster than 2×4 so she now has 2+8 = 10 plus the 500gb SSD.

Zippy I am very happy to help you with the upgrade either via emails / calls inc video calls. If you are around Hampshire way I’ll do it for you.

I like Samsung Evo SSD’s

Let me get you some prices and a shopping list

Cheers that would be good.