Anyone used Crucial SSDs? I’m thinking of sticking this one in my 2010 Macbook Pro to give it a new lease of life.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=0FD941BAA5CA7304

From what I’ve read, they’re about as good as it gets. Might be worth doing a bit of Google crunching for the subject, to get some tech forum opinions, but I think they’re the go-to people.

I’ve got one – no problems in six months and its made a massive difference.

Cheers, they seem good value as well, so looks like a winner.

MrFart, how much faster to boot etc?

I’ve got a 128G M4 and a 256GM4.

Both are very fast, boot (windons 7) in around 7 seconds for a cold start inc bios screens.

I went Samsung as that’s what Apple use in the higher end pro’s. I love it. Amazing upgrade and so easy to fit.

Went Samsung too, for the same reason as above, that they are the same as apple uses. Figured I’d have less compatability niggles. Had it about 3 months and it’s been great so far.

I’m using the crucial one and I’m a very heavy user of the Macbook and it’s been brilliant so far. Not a problem.

If you are going to do the data migration then make sure you have the serial numbers for everything as mine lost its office serial number etc as it was moved across volumes.

The M4 aren’t bas SSDs, but are slow compared to some others on the market. I think one of the fastest you can buy at the moment is an OCZ Agility 3, which incidentally my flat-mate has just put one in his 2010 MBP as well without any issues.

With the M4 you need to manually enable TRIM in OS X. Not too sure why, but I’ve written about this issue on my website when I upgraded. The article I wrote details that it was for Lion, but worked fine for me on Mountain Lion as well.

As a note, the article I wrote also talks about how not many SSDs would fit, but that issue is specific to my MacBook, and is not an issue for 2009 models onwards.

MrFart, how much faster to boot etc?

Well, mine boots in under a quarter of the time is took before, but I have quite a lot of backgrounds processes running, so you may or may not see the same effects. As I’d hoped though, with the SSD running, the CPU in the machine is now the bottleneck in performance, so I’m getting everything I can out of it now.

Hope all that helps.

SSDs are ace, been on them for years. Anandtech.com is probably the best site for reviews (and they test them in macs).

Boot time? Who boots a mac regularly?! Just sleep the thing…

FWIW going from a HDD to SSD on one of my systems took my eclipse start time from 68s to 18s. But it’s not the measurable stuff, it’s all the little pauses for IO you notice, they’re just gone.

Boot time? Who boots a mac regularly?! Just sleep the thing…

I just asked as it’s an obvious thing which is the same for all users.

My main use is Parallels, which seems to cripple my MBP esp after the last upgrade to version 7, which seems much more resource hungry – I’ve had to go from 4Gb to 8Gb, just to make it usable when it used to run fine with 4Gb.

Not used an SSD on a Mac but installed the Samsung 830 series(256gb £135 at CCL)drive in my Sony E Series Window 8 laptop and it’s so fast. No point putting it into sleep mode as it boots up in seconds, literally. Opens programs in no time. Only downside is they’re expensive for size and reduced capacity but I never used all of it on a laptop anyway. Never used one before but now I’m totally sold.

MrFart, how much faster to boot etc?

I run windows and it takes about 10 seconds from cold.

The biggest difference is in starting applications – Photoshop CS6 takes around 5 seconds / inDesign around about 20 / Skyrim takes around 2 – 5 seconds for each load screen.

i find this boot time as a measurement of speed a bit odd. i mean how many times do you boot? once a day?
so you save 15-20 seconds a day.
the real productivity savings are in reading/writing to disk and having an SSD as a media or scratch disk for intensive use (in my case using final cut with native not proxy clips and big photoshop files of 2-4gb)
for further speed gains ditch the DVD drive and fit another SSD, the kits are cheap on ebay and it only takes a few minutes to swap out.

How hard is it to swap out the hardrive on a MBP? Do you need the smallest screwdrivers in the world and a steady hand? Interesting that you can swap out the DVD drive for an SSD.

Very simple – need some small philips to get the back off, but once you’re in there it’ easy to pull it all apart.

ifixit, and OWC have online how to videos

It depends what you do with your Macbook and how much RAM it has. Once you start a programme it gets loaded into the RAM and stays there unless the space is needed. As such most of the programmes you use regularly will load instantly anyway.

I actually tried an SSD in my MBP then moved it to my desktop as I never really noticed any benefit that outweighed having to store movies etc to an external HDD.

+1 for Crucial SSDs

I’ve got a 256GB V4 and get ~9 second boots with Windows 8.

You won’t get any huge benefits from swapping out your CD/DVD drive on a macbook for an SSD. The micro-sat ports are too slow to use the SSD to it’s full potential. The only real speed gains you’ll get over a 7200RPM optical drive will be the lack of seek times. You will of course gain the the advantage that two SSDs will use substantially less power than an SSD and an optical drive.

I have done this particular upgrade myself to a 2008 Unibody MacBook (the first unibody one to be made), and wrote about it on my site. http://danielgroves.net/2012/01/going-solid-state/

You won’t get any huge benefits from swapping out your CD/DVD drive on a macbook for an SSD. The micro-sat ports are too slow to use the SSD to it’s full potentia

wrong. full sata III 6gbs connection on my 2011 and 2012 13inMBP’s and even if the link speed is sata II theres still a big gain in write/read speed over a spinning HD and you can fit a cheaper sataII ssd.
if you benefit from a media/scratch disk then it’s a worthwhile upgrade.

Samsung 830