Which SSD for Mid-2010 MBP?

Piplodocus · Post by **Piplodocus** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 9:58 am

I asked this on the Macrumors forum but thought I'd ask here too for a more music production environment answer (some general users care about speed from a "total time" rather than "continuous smooth throughput" perspective)...

Thinking of getting an SSD to replace one of my 500GB HDDs in my 17" mid-2010 MBP (I have an optibay). I'd change the drive that has OS, apps, and my music projects and samples for better performance (leaving the photos/mp3s/movies/everything else on the 2nd HDD).

Currently from my research I'm mostly thinking of a OCZ vertex 2 E (£260), or an OCZ Agility 3 (£315). The vertex 3 is just too much money.

The mid-2010 MBP is 3GB/s SATA, so I wouldn't be able to take full advantage of the Agility 3 and it's 6GB/s SATA, but it should still be faster than the Vertex 2, until it hits the SATA bus limit.

So, would I really notice, and is it worth the extra money for the performance of the A3, or should I save my pennies and get the V2?

Someone suggested the Crucial M4 (£289 on offer from dabs), or Samsung 470 (£344) instead, and I've heard these may be more stable/reliable, but they cost more. Obviously it's not just speed I need it's lack of freezing for odd seconds here and there. I had enough trouble with earlier versions of the Seagate Momentus XT firmware (even though it now seems fixed) so I'm wary of drive firmware and short freezes. I am mostly interested to hear from owners of the 15" or 17" mid-2010 MBP from a chipset/SATA compatibility perspective. The crucial good a good review from Anandtech (and low maximum, rather than average latency), but there was some mention about needing OSX to use TRIM else its performace might diminish.

Thoughts, advice?

ambientidm · Post by **ambientidm** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 11:30 am

go to crucials site and download their system profiler and it will recommend a drive for your mac
lion should have trim support

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:14 pm

I am thinking about going the optibay route - how do you like it? Is it easy enough to set up?

Piplodocus · Post by **Piplodocus** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:53 pm

pulsoc wrote:I am thinking about going the optibay route - how do you like it? Is it easy enough to set up?

Yeah, couldn't live without it. Got all my stuff (apart from all movies which are on a 500GB external drive) on it. Wherever I am I have ALL my stuff, all my samples, all my music projects, mp3s etc. Also if my main drive fails (like it did last monday) I can just boot off the other which also has Live on so I could do a gig still if I collect all and save my projects to that too. I got a Freecom external firewire DVD drive for the pretty infrequent times I need it.

The only thing I've noticed is I can't install windows 7 onto my bootcamp partition from an external DVD (although I can OSX!). Just means if you want bootcamp you have to stick the old DVD drive back in and put your bootcamp drive in the main drive slot; a PITA if you want Win7 on the drive that's gonna be in the caddy, but not something you need to do often.

The install's not really rocket science. Bit fiddly getting the screws in and out, don't overtighten them either, or let them be loose and fall out and short your logic board! Due to the problems I had with earlier firmware on my Momentus XT I've had all the drives in and out a good few times, so now it's second nature to me!

But it's just:
Screw the new HDD into the caddy with 2 screws. Shutdown the MBP, remove the bottom lid, pop the SATA connector off the mobo. Pull the wifi(?) lead off the mobo and unscrew the antenna thing. Unscrew and take the DVD drive out. Put the bracket and cable off the DVD drive on the caddy. Screw the caddy in, and connect the SATA cable. Screw the antenna thing back on and reconnect its cable. Put the lid on. Turn on. Use your new drive!

There's cheaper options than the MCE optibay. MCE do give you a bit of software to enable an external DVD to work with the Apple DVD player S/W though (else you can't watch DVDs from an external drive).

socialjusticeman · Post by **socialjusticeman** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:58 pm

I'm thinking of the ssd in optibay thing too... Let me know how you go.

socialjusticeman · Post by **socialjusticeman** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 4:02 pm

okey doke, thanks, Piplodocus.

I was going to do a bit of a "down and dirty" version... just some gaff and some soldering. My warranty may suffer, though.

Piplodocus · Post by **Piplodocus** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:20 pm

socialjusticeman wrote:okey doke, thanks, Piplodocus.

I was going to do a bit of a "down and dirty" version... just some gaff and some soldering. My warranty may suffer, though.

Not sure there's much point the price you can get some of the DVD/HDD caddies for!

£8 with free postage too expensive? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-SATA-2nd- ... 4693wt_922

ekwipt · Post by **ekwipt** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 5:42 am

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/ ... Legacy_Pro

Piplodocus · Post by **Piplodocus** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 4:07 pm

ekwipt wrote:http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/ ... Legacy_Pro

That link is to an IDE one, not SATA, so no good, and more expensive than the ones I was looking at.

I've ordered a 256GB Crucial M4, which I should get the end of this week. Wa-hey!

My current plan is to use it for OS, apps and Ableton stuff. Leaving the standard big drive for MP3s, photos, and other non-music related junk. I assume this to be the best idea since the SSD will be more than twice the speed of the HDD, so don't see the point of separate samples/audio on one drive, os/apps on the other. I figured I'd get a slower OS/app launch, or slower samples if I split them across drives (my Mp3/photo access speed doesn't matter to me too much).

Or am I missing something, and I should go for OS/apps/junk on the big slow drive, and samples/music projects on the SSD, and suffer no net gain in general computing performance when I'm not doing music?

Piplodocus · Post by **Piplodocus** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 4:23 pm

ambientidm wrote:go to crucials site and download their system profiler and it will recommend a drive for your mac
lion should have trim support

My research seems to point to a number of people with 2011 MBPs with the 6GB/s SATA who crucial's website suggested an M4 for, have had great problems with stalling and beachballs (like a lot of other SSDs). Haven't heard of recent problems for any 2010 MBP owners though (3GB/s SATA) so bit the bullet!

Lion apparently only enables TRIM for Apple branded SSDs. Apparently you can edit a file/mod a kext that makes it TRIM all SSDs though.

Electronic music seems to mean I spend more time on computer hardware forums than making any tunes. I may yet trade this all in for a Ukelele and harmonica!

pulse · Post by **pulse** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 3:23 pm

sorry to bother you but I was to the point to upgrade my 5400 HD with a momentus XT ... and I just read you suffer a lot with this?

My macbook pro is a early 2008 with Leopard and I dont want to go SSD (cause I want to stay with Leopard because of my soundcard running good with it) and because I red lot of things about SSD being difficult with macs (trim and things like that).

So I was thinking the momentus could be a great work-around???

Sometimes I have beachballs during live gigs and am always afraid of a crash ...

If you could tell us a bit more about the momentus XT it would be great!!!

Thanks

Which SSD for Mid-2010 MBP?

Which SSD for Mid-2010 MBP?

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