Hybrid SSD drives for Macbook Pro worth it?

Stu Meech

Stu Meech

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Hello all.

I've got a mid-2010 Macbook with a 2.4ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4gb of RAM and a 1TB 5,400rpm HDD - running 10.7.

In an attempt to keep the life of the laptop going a little longer, I'm looking at doing a mid life upgrade, installing it up to 16gb RAM and a new hard drive.

I'm currently debating whether to get a 1TB Hybrid Seagate HDD - are they worth it for getting a noticeably faster experience or should I got for a SSD?

Once I've got all the bits, I'd be reformatting and going with OS X 10.9 or 10.10 - unless anyone suggests otherwise. I ran 10.6 for years, and I wish I still was as it was so smooth, bug and crash free :-(

Cheers,

Stu
 
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Hybrids give a small bump, SSD makes a huge difference.

For a while been doing dual drive conversions on these, use the old spinning platters for general data, and use a 128GB/256GB SSD for the OS & applications, it means dumping the optical drive, but you can pick up an external Samsung for £20 for the times you need one, but as the SSD prices fall, the cost differences are getting smaller and so more & more are doing the full hog SSD.
 
Jonnybrad2001 said:
For a while been doing dual drive conversions on these.
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Interesting idea, just found some adaptors on Amazon that come with an external housing for the superdrive that becomes redundant so I could work with this...

Do all the apps have to be installed on the boot drive (the SSD in this case)?
 
Been running a 2012 MBP Retina since new with 751Gb SSU flash storage. Works so much quicker than everything else than I have ever used and never been a problem. DVD USB drive for the odd time I need to use the DVD drive, but really sweet, so hope your upgrade goes well.

Yep put all your apps on the SSD.
 
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shreds said:
Been running a 2012 MBP Retina since new with 751Gb SSU flash storage. Works so much quicker than everything else than I have ever used and never been a problem. DVD USB drive for the odd time I need to use the DVD drive, but really sweet, so hope your upgrade goes well.

Yep put all your apps on the SSD.
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Cool, I'll have a look into whether I go for a 128 or 256GB SSD then as the boot partition. Apparently I can move the Home directory to the older HDD though. Perhaps keep my Lightroom stuff on the SSD!
 
I've just replaced the original HDD in my Early 2011 MBP with a 240GB SSD and the difference is night and day. The original drive was starting to report errors and apps were taking an age to open. Following a time machine backup to an external USB drive it took 15 minutes to swap out then about 90 minutes to rebuild from the backup and it's now awesome. Photoshop CS6 opens in about 5 seconds and Lightroom opens in about 8 seconds with a 6000 image catalogue so well worth the upgrade.

I'm still on the original 4Gb ram and considered an upgrade to 8Gb but so far I'm not seeing a major reason why I need to because I'm not running any VMs.
 
I forgot to add, I considered building a hybrid setup with SSD/HDD but I use Dropbox on top of the SSD so don't have a need for increased storage capacity. Apart from that, I'm not sure the twin drive hybrid setup offers much over a single SSD
 
I have that exact drive - but as an external drive...

Its OK, but its not an SSD.

The size was more important to me than the speed - don't waste your time buy a 512mb SSD...
 
Diving Pete said:
I have that exact drive - but as an external drive...

Its OK, but its not an SSD.

The size was more important to me than the speed - don't waste your time buy a 512mb SSD...
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Not store much on that fella :ROFLMAO:
 
Cool well thanks for everyone's input, I'm gonna keep looking into it but I suspect I'll go with something like a 256gb SSD in a caddy, and use my existing 1TB drive to store files/media etc I don't use so often.
 
I should add, that whilst having a reasonable size SSU, I only keep working files on there and never more than a dozen at a time.

For longer term storage I use independent hard drives at 1-4TB. Not worth having SSU backup/storage at the moment, I just use conventional HDDs but it may be that my next one will go that way in the future.

I also don't use cloud storage as I spend a large part of my time where the internet connection is so appalling that a backup would take days. :(
 
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stumeech said:
Cool, I'll have a look into whether I go for a 128 or 256GB SSD then as the boot partition. Apparently I can move the Home directory to the older HDD though. Perhaps keep my Lightroom stuff on the SSD!
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I used to keep my Lightroom catalogue on the SSD, but all the RAWs (and the scratch) on the 1TB, you won't see any performance advantage for keeping those on the SSD.
 
To try to answer the original post a little, though you've made your mind up by the sound of things, a hybrid drive does give a big performance boost with files that are opened regularly. So OS startup, word, excel, lightroom etc will open as quickly as if you had an SSD in there because they're coming off the flash memory of the hybrid drive. The place where a hybrid won't help is opening the files you don't regularly use, so images on the hard drive will be slow compared to images on an SSD. I use a hybrid drive in our business PC at home, and it's been very effective because small excel and word documents were never a problem, but it would be slow compared to SSD for handling RAW files etc.

The downside for you is that you're using a core 2 duo machine. My Macbook has a 2GHz core 2 duo processor, and putting a 256Gb SSD and taking the memory to 8Gb in there helped it start and open applications more quickly, but any task requiring processing was still just as slow as ever. I would advise not spending more than you need upgrading i.e. 128Gb SSD and 8Gb RAM (unless you KNOW you need more) because the benefits won't match the cost, and you'll still have an inherently slow machine with a greater investment than before.
 
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ancient_mariner said:
To try to answer the original post a little
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you'll still have an inherently slow machine with a greater investment than before.
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These are all good and valid points, I hadn't thought about the processor side of things. I will continue to think on for the next couple of weeks as to what to do - but it'll probably be the 128gb SSD / ram upgrade and perhaps as high as OS X 10.9.

Thanks for your in depth comments.
 
I upgraded my Mid 2009 15" MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with a 512GB SSD and maxed the memory to 8GB, made all the difference. I also removed the optical drive and fitted an HGST 1TB 7200 rpm drive in a carrier for data storage. The performance is quite sufficient for my use. If you use your MacBook Pro professionally, your expectations and requirements might be higher, then look to upgrading to a 15" Retina model.
 
stumeech said:
These are all good and valid points, I hadn't thought about the processor side of things. I will continue to think on for the next couple of weeks as to what to do - but it'll probably be the 128gb SSD / ram upgrade and perhaps as high as OS X 10.9.

Thanks for your in depth comments.
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Again, just IMO but 10.8 was good, 10.9 had a larger memory overhead and seemed significantly slower than 10.8, with lots of beachballing where none had been before even after it spent a couple of days indexing the system (and installed some firmware updates that have made the machine boot much more slowly). 10.10 was a big improvement performance-wise over 10.9, but the icons and screen fonts are a bit crap. *Personally* I'd say that if you need something more recent than 10.8 then go straight for 10.10, because boring icons and odd fonts are less annoying than lousy performance.
 
Prices of the 128GB SSD now are so low its no real difference to just putting a new spinning platters drive in one, so I'd still say put one of those in an older machine but I'd echo the advice about not investing big £ in an older machine. I even stuck a 128GB SSD in my old 2006 MBP just so it was a bit more useable (it's my throw it in the car, leave in hotel rooms and not generally not panic about machine).

Think Apple OS releases have generally been on a miss one for a while, so general recommended upgrade cycles been 10.2/10.4/10.6/10.8 etc, lack of some critical security updates for anything bar 10.10 now mean really should be encouraging upgrading to that.
 
SSD all the way - Ive just put a 1tb sad in my iMac - its like a new machine.
 
SSD will make all the difference, non point in getting a half way solution like a hybrid.

The reality is a few years ago you needed to upgrade every year. For me with my 2012 16Gb i5 256gb SSD retina.. It still flies like the day I got it, the hardware can shift some serious amounts of bits around. An SSD will keep that machine going on another 5 years IMO.
 
jojo90 said:
SSD will make all the difference, non point in getting a half way solution like a hybrid.

The reality is a few years ago you needed to upgrade every year. For me with my 2012 16Gb i5 256gb SSD retina.. It still flies like the day I got it, the hardware can shift some serious amounts of bits around. An SSD will keep that machine going on another 5 years IMO.
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Halfway???

Depends on your needs. If I need lots of space, but I want additional performance, a Hybrid makes sense for performance vs cost reasons.

I have a 1tb hybrid drive in my laptop and love it. 10 seconds to get tonthe logon screen. Yes other bits aren't as fast, but I have the space I need for all my files.
 
Which is why I suggested the 512Gb SSD - It has now got to the point of best bang for buck - in terms of usefullness...

Yes the 128Gb is cheaper - but they are useless ! - It will be changed in 2 years... More money / hassle...

Yes the 256Gb is good value - but when you are going to the point of reinstalling all your stuff onto the PC I'd only want to be doing this once...

If you get a 512Gb SSD drive, when your laptop eventually dies you can just remove the drive & place into an external caddy - & it STILL be useful...

I wouldn't get a 1Tb SSD drive yet - they are still far too expensive on a £ / GB scale...
 
SSD all the way. Make sure you back up, as data recovery is much harder on a failed SSD. The upside is that they're much more reliable that spinning disks.
 
Cheers again for the further comments.

I picked up a Sandisk 128gb SSD for £39 today so I am going to install that as my main OS drive next week and then use my existing 1TB for backup / media storage etc. I then have an external time machine drive too.

Still debating on RAM (£40-50 for 8gb) and OS but I can spend a few days doing that before I rebuild next week.
 
Andy Taylor said:
SSD all the way. Make sure you back up, as data recovery is much harder on a failed SSD. The upside is that they're much more reliable that spinning disks.
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Just make sure you backup regardless of hard drive type. Head diving into the platters (not uncommon on the old spinning platter 2.5" drives) just renders them junk and completely unrecoverable.

Next step is to ensure your backups off site too, as fire renders them all junk too…
 
I would add the ram as well just to close up the deal.
 
I think your version only accepts 8GB so double check with crucial memory checker.

Also why not take out the Superdrive and replace it with the 1TB? You can pick up a cheap caddy for under a tenner.

If you want to run 10.10 and use your own SSD which you are doing you need http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.com/ to enable TRIM support.
 
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redlion said:
I think your version only accepts 8GB so double check with crucial memory checker.

Also why not take out the Superdrive and replace it with the 1TB? You can pick up a cheap caddy for under a tenner.

If you want to run 10.10 and use your own SSD which you are doing you need http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.com/ to enable TRIM support.
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Mine supports 16gb from 10.7.5 onwards but the practicality is 8gb is £40-50 and 16gb is $175 on import!

I've ordered the caddy for the superdrive so I can put the 1tb in there and use the SSD as the primary drive.

Cheers for that link, very helpful.
 
FWIW my experience was absolutely no detectable difference in performance when moving from 4 to 8Gb when running 10.8 for all photo editing tasks.
 
ancient_mariner said:
FWIW my experience was absolutely no detectable difference in performance when moving from 4 to 8Gb when running 10.8 for all photo editing tasks.
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Good to know.

I think the price difference between the 8 and 16 is what puts me off, especially as one US company sells it. My 13 Macbook Pro is the only one in the release cycle it comes from that supports 16 and thus it's really hard to find 8gb modules for it!
 
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I've installed all the bits this morning, and it is like a completely new machine! So much faster, boots up in about 8-10 seconds and all around is fast and responsive.

In case anyone else comes to this thread, I did the following:

128gb Sandisk SSD Drive - £38
8gb Crucial RAM upgrade - £49
Caddy for Optical Drive & external case for DVD drive - £20
Mac OS X Yosemite - £free

So for ~£110 I have given the machine a new lease of life which will hopefully keep it going for a good couple of years yet.

Thanks everyone for their help!
 
@stumeech I did the same towards the end of 2013 and my MBP is still running solid. I wouldn't mind a new machine but it keeps on delivering. Video renders do take a while but I leave it overnight for that sort of stuff.

That reminds me I should jump to 10.9 > Yosemite over the bank holiday weekend. I didn't do it straight away as heard reports it slowed older machines down.
 
redlion said:
That reminds me I should jump to 10.9 > Yosemite over the bank holiday weekend. I didn't do it straight away as heard reports it slowed older machines down.
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Obviously I am only just starting to use it on this machine, but Yosemite seems great despite this being a mid-2010 laptop.
 
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