MacBook Pro SSD upgrade - a little underwhelmed so far...

psybear

psybear

Suspended / Banned
Messages
1,895
Name
Brian
Edit My Images
No
So I finally got around to replacing the 750GB hard drive in my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011) with a 480GB Sandisk SSD.

I used SuperDuper to clone the drive - as per the instructions here.

All pretty straightforward. I was expecting to be 'wowed' by the difference but so far I'm not. Applications do seem to be loading faster, but not that much faster. And I actually think the start-up time is longer than it was....

Maybe a complete wipe, reinstall of OS and then the various programmes and files would be better? Any views?
 
Install this app on your MacBook Pro and report back the speeds with a screenshot.
 
Funny that you start this thread now, SSDs have now come down so much in price the only other two tabs I have open are to choose which one to buy for my MBP.
People are certainly usually passionate about the difference so as per Liam's post I'm interested in the response you get.
 
I fitted a 500 SSD to my MacBookPro and it has just transformed the speed, much, much faster - almost like a new machine

bought mine from crucial - straightforward but just a bit fiddly to fit ....... you only need to buy a "caddy" if you want to keep the CD drive which then works as an external/USB connected drive

(you remove the CD and the SSD fits in its place using the same connectors)
 
Last edited:
I'm by no means an expert in this field, but I put a SSD in my wife's late 2010 macbook pro a couple of years ago and it's a relative bullet. Boots up in a matter of seconds, much quicker than my 2014 i7 imac.
 
Not a mac user but when I put a SSD in my windows machine I was not impresed until I enabled AHCI in the BIOS and made a little tweak to the registry, it made a big improvement, not sure if it is a mac feature but may be worth looking into, hope this helps.
 
psybear said:
So I finally got around to replacing the 750GB hard drive in my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011) with a 480GB Sandisk SSD.

I used SuperDuper to clone the drive - as per the instructions here.

All pretty straightforward. I was expecting to be 'wowed' by the difference but so far I'm not. Applications do seem to be loading faster, but not that much faster. And I actually think the start-up time is longer than it was....

Maybe a complete wipe, reinstall of OS and then the various programmes and files would be better? Any views?
Click to expand...


when I did it CC corner did a great job. Speeded up no end. No need to wipe. I don't no if you replaced an optical drive or not but I was advised to put the SSD in the sane slot as the original mechanical drive and replace the optical drive with the mech drive.If this made a difference haven't a clue...but maybe worth trying
 
BillN_33 said:
I fitted a 500 SSD to my MacBookPro and it has just transformed the speed, much, much faster - almost like a new machine

bought mine from crucial - straightforward but just a bit fiddly to fit ....... you only need to buy a "caddy" if you want to keep the CD drive which then works as an external/USB connected drive

(you remove the CD and the SSD fits in its place using the same connectors)
Click to expand...
Did you put the SSD in the optical drive then Bill?
 
boyfalldown said:
when I did it CC corner did a great job. Speeded up no end. No need to wipe. I don't no if you replaced an optical drive or not but I was advised to put the SSD in the sane slot as the original mechanical drive and replace the optical drive with the mech drive.If this made a difference haven't a clue...but maybe worth trying
Click to expand...

I just switched out the original hard drive and left the optical drive in place. Not that I use it - don't think I've ever used it actually - but I was using well under half of the 750GB capacity I had and even with the 480GB SSD installed I still have 283GB free. My iMac is my main machine.
 
I bought a 750GB SSD new MBP 15" three years ago.

Ok it was preinstalled, so no compatibility issues but the difference on startup was phenomenal and still continues to perform faster than any other computer I use.

I used to mess with a building Windows based machines, it seemed like fun, but it never failed to amaze me how some components screwed things up. Since going over to Mac I have only upgraded memory on iMacs and prefer to use them for their design function rather than being a tinkerer under the bonnet.
 
At the risk of taking my own thread off-topic(!), I bought one of these to clone the hard drive and it did the job just fine. Now I wish I'd bought something like this, which would have served the same purpose but also have turned my now redundant 750GB HD into a nice external drive....

Just a wee tip for those yet to take the leap!
 
Fitted a Crucial SSD to an old MBP late 2007 model. Cloned the old hard drive with disk utility. Replaced the old hard drive and now have a completely revitalised lappy. Did the same to my iMac 2007 (got my local mac guys to fit it £50). Very very happy. Best bang for buck upgrade out there.
Definitely avoided buying a new machine.
 
Your write speeds seem to be the bottleneck. The write speeds are below the 460 MB/s mentioned on the spec sheet. I had a similar issue on my 09 MacBook Pro have low write speeds but that was down to the Serial ATA connection only handling (3 Gb/s) and not Serial ATA (6 Gb/s) as your machine is capable of doing.
 
redlion said:
Your write speeds seem to be the bottleneck. The write speeds are below the 460 MB/s mentioned on the spec sheet. I had a similar issue on my 09 MacBook Pro have low write speeds but that was down to the Serial ATA connection only handling (3 Gb/s) and not Serial ATA (6 Gb/s) as your machine is capable of doing.
Click to expand...

Any suggestions redlion?

Edit: I see someone fixed their low write speeds with a complete wipe.
 
Last edited:
I was going to suggest a clean wipe and install. Grab this to make a boot disk for Yosemite on a USB stick and do clean install.
 
jakeblu said:
Did you put the SSD in the optical drive then Bill?
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what I did - kept the old HD, so now have both

cloned the existing HD onto the new SSD

machine of course then boots from SSD and you have all your stuff on both - gradually deleted stuff of HD and also only kept stuff on SSD that I really use .. if you see what I mean .... so now use original HD for "storage" plus non essentials and other kept on SSD what I really use
 
Last edited:
I always advocate a clean install, 200 is still a decent write speed. The read is pretty good also.

you should notice a difference even at that.
 
BillN_33 said:
Yes, that's what I did - kept the old HD, so now have both

cloned the existing HD onto the new SSD

machine of course then boots from SSD and you have all your stuff on both - gradually deleted stuff of HD and also only kept stuff on SSD that I really use .. if you see what I mean .... so now use original HD for "storage" plus non essentials and other kept on SSD what I really use
Click to expand...
I was thinking of doing my partners Macbook Pro 2010, but was going to replace the existing HD with an SSD and then put the HD in the optical bay drive, but now I think why bother. Just put the SSD in the optical bay drive :)

Are there any disadvantages to doing it that way do you know?
 
Sorry - Completely new to all this. You can replace the HDD with a SSD then replace the optical drive with the HDD, having more space then right?
If I did this upgrade I'd probably just replace the HDD with a SSD. After reading a few threads/internet snippets is it literally a case of back up old HDD clone it to the new SSD and switch-a-roo. Then boot up the MBP?
 
Ashburner said:
Sorry - Completely new to all this. You can replace the HDD with a SSD then replace the optical drive with the HDD, having more space then right?
If I did this upgrade I'd probably just replace the HDD with a SSD. After reading a few threads/internet snippets is it literally a case of back up old HDD clone it to the new SSD and switch-a-roo. Then boot up the MBP?
Click to expand...

I just feel the easiest way is to replace the optical drive with the new SSD, (in the MBP, the SSD fits exactly in the space vacated by the optical drive) - 10 min job and then, (clone), set up the SSD as you main, start up drive ...... you then still have you existing HD as "usable space" - no brainer to me
 
I would also recommend a fresh install - it's nowhere near as painful as on certain other operating systems I could mention - make sure you have a backup (or the original drive), you do have a backup right? Then erase/install - lots of instructions are available for creating a USB installer. Alternatively, if you have an Apple Store close by, they will do an erase/install at the Genius Bar free of charge.

Now for a warning - OS X does not enable TRIM for third party SSD by default. TRIM can important because it helps even out the wear and tear on the drive. For a while, you had to fiddle around with various settings and tools to enable TRIM, but luckily Apple have decided to make this easier for us with a utility called trimforce which is in OS X 10.10.4 and above.
 
Andy Taylor said:
I would also recommend a fresh install - it's nowhere near as painful as on certain other operating systems I could mention - make sure you have a backup (or the original drive), you do have a backup right? Then erase/install - lots of instructions are available for creating a USB installer. Alternatively, if you have an Apple Store close by, they will do an erase/install at the Genius Bar free of charge.

Now for a warning - OS X does not enable TRIM for third party SSD by default. TRIM can important because it helps even out the wear and tear on the drive. For a while, you had to fiddle around with various settings and tools to enable TRIM, but luckily Apple have decided to make this easier for us with a utility called trimforce which is in OS X 10.10.4 and above.
Click to expand...

How does one use "trimforce" Andy - presumably I just need to "google" it ..... anything to watch out for?
 
Update.

Clean install of Yosemite. Boot time has gone from 47 seconds to 11 seconds. Wow.....

Thanks for the advice folks - particularly redlion. :-)
 
glad you have sorted it out, maybe a gremlin that was carried over
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top