SSD Advice in 13" MBP Early 2011

[mac98aop]

Dear all

I've just looked at Crucial and they recommend an upgrade to 128GB SSD. But my MBP came with 320GB? Does Flash storage require a lot less? It doesn't seem anywhere like enough?

Also, I'm willing to potentially update if it's a matter of taking off the back and clicking it in, but reviews suggest there's a need to do Firmware Updates first, then download something called TRIM Enabler (which is?) and then finally to update from Time Machine.

Does it sound more difficult than it is?

I just quite like the idea of an even snappier machine with no moving parts, for only £60inc!

Any advice gratefully received!

[Sam - MacAmbulance]

You won't find an SSD at that size at that price I'm afraid. For a 512GB drive (the only one bigger than your current 320GB) it's around £300. Flash storage is no more space-efficient than normal storage so if you've filled up your 320GB drive you'll need a bigger SSD.

For £60 you could get a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT, which has 500GB of rotational storage, then 8GB of SSD cache, making it quicker to access your most recently used data.

Normally it's just a case of putting the SSD into an external USB enclosure (£5 from ebay) then using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone all the data across. You can enable TRIM afterwards.

Regards

Sam

MacAmbulance

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Sam Mullen
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[Tony Crooks]

I've replaced hard drives with SSD on two MacBooks and it is easy enough.

If you get an USB enclosure you can put the 320GB drive in it and use it as an external drive after cloning the disk to an SSD.

www.dabs.com are selling the 256GB Crucial M4 SSD for £140 this week

Improved startup speed, reduced app loading times and all round snappiness made it a worthwhile investment for me.

Regards,

Tony
Sent from my iPhone

[Chris Webb]

Crucial (www.crucial.com/uk) are selling a Crucial 256gb M4 for £124.00 - just put one in my 15" MBP - WOW! It came with the latest firmware installed so didn't need an upgrade.

Swap the disks and put the old internal in an external box, boot from that disk then do the clone - much more reliable. Probably won't make much difference with a 256gb disk but 1tb disks don't like to be partitioned/formatted/cloned outside them machine then installed, dunno why, they just don't.

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[Sam - MacAmbulance]

I've never had a problem formatting and cloning any drive over 1tb externally. I do all my drive cloning with external eSATA drive docks though not USB, perhaps that's it?

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[Chris Webb]

Last one I did was a Western Digital 1tb Scorpio Blue. Initially I thought it was a faulty drive. I mounted it in a USB 3.0 enclosure to clone which worked fine but when it was mounted inside the laptop, it wasn't recognised. I then tried it in a USB 2.0 to SATA bridge and got the same result. RMA'd it and the same happened with the replacement.

Spoke to WD TS and they suggested mounting, formatting and cloning in the computer. It worked fine. I've yet to find a reason why.

On another, general note, TRIM on non-Apple SSDs isn't supported in 10.6, 10.7 or 10.8 but this little Application enables it: http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322

Chris Webb . Principal

MacService 

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t: 01580 881212

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[mac98aop]

Thanks all... What is TRIM? I've Googled it but you guys are better!

;)

[Chris Webb]

Trim is a command that is executed in the background by the operative system when you delete files, informing the SSD that the blocks are no longer in use and can be deleted. By doing this, the SSD can avoid slowing down future write operations to those blocks.

Chris Webb . Principal

MacService 

Woodside, Brightling Road

Robertsbridge, East Sussex, TN32 5EL 

t: 01580 881212

f: 01580 881313

m: 07770 960632

e: ch...@macservice.co.uk

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facebook: www.facebook.com/macserviceuk

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/smug/-/hnBCSO62idcJ.

[Chris Webb]

Of course, there's always Eddie Murphy's definition of 'TRIM' (24 Hours with Nick Nolte) ;-)

Chris Webb . Principal

MacService 

Woodside, Brightling Road

Robertsbridge, East Sussex, TN32 5EL 

t: 01580 881212

f: 01580 881313

m: 07770 960632

e: ch...@macservice.co.uk

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On 25 Oct 2012, at 12:53, mac98aop <adamp...@gmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/smug/-/hnBCSO62idcJ.

[Jason Davies]

I had something similar with a crucial. It was my start up in a Mac Pro, bought a bigger one, moved older to enclosure - completely unreliable. Reformatted I side the Mac Pro again, works fine...

From my iPhone