I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro (MBP) that had a 500 GB 7200 RPM drive installed. I've really wanted an SSD, but the price has been too steep. The other day, the SanDisk 480 GB drive was on sale for $379, and my daughters gave me a $100 Amazon gift certificate for my birthday, so I decided to go for it. I am VERY glad I did.
The boot-up time, once the Apple and gear show up, is a matter of seconds. Once I enter my username and password, the screen springs into action. This drive really screams with a 6GBs transfer rate. It's too early to tell if it will increase battery life, but I suspect it will since it draws less power. I'll report back in several weeks and let everyone know what I find. From what I read, there are faster SSD drives out there, but honestly, the performance on my MBP is so improved that I'm not sure I'd notice the difference unless I saw them back to back. Folks, Photoshop 5 boots in under 4 seconds. I normally run my Mac with about 18 open applications, and the boot time has gone from minutes down to 45 seconds.
For those Mac users that are setting the drive up from scratch, just physically install it and install your OS. To clone your existing drive, which is what I did, here's how I was able to transfer the original drive contents and install TRIM, which is not natively supported by Apple for any SSDs that are not Apple branded.
You'll need a USB SATA drive enclosure for 2.5" drives, which I already owned. I installed the SSD in the enclosure (1 minute) and then plugged the enclosure into my Mac. You should check macsales dot com for inexpensive ones.
Once you plug the drive enclosure into your Mac, you'll need to format it with Disk Utility, which is in Applications/Utilities. The good news is that a dialog box should come up and offer to do it for you as soon as the drive is recognized.
I then ran Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC), a free piece of software from Bombich, that cloned my original hard drive to my new SSD. I have a lot of material, so it took about 7.5 hours, but in the end everything showed up perfectly! Be sure and boot from the cloned drive to assure yourself that it will boot and that all of your data was cloned. You do this by restarting and holding the OPTION key down and you'll be presented with the available drives to boot from. Choose your new SSD. Another advantage of CCC is that it can create the hidden partition that Lion uses for emergencies.
Physically swapping a drive out of a MBP is dead simple, but requires a small Phillips screwdriver for the screws on the back cover and drive holder, and a Torx 6 to remove the spacers off the original drive. Both of these tools are available for $1 at Sears or Walmart. For a video on how to do this, go to macsales dot com, click on Tech Support, then Videos, and choose the Mac you'll be upgrading. I admit that this isn't my first time swapping out drives, but honestly, this is a 15-20 process, and is really just a matter or removing some screws, pulling the connector off one drive and putting it on another, then reattaching the screws.
Last, you'll need to enable TRIM, which allows the drive to clean up deleted files. TRIM is only supported by Apple on their own SSDs, so you'll need to run a patch to fix it. You can find all the info you need at Lifehacker. Amazon doesn't let me insert links in reviews, so you'll need to Google How To Enable Trim to find the patch. It's free, and it's brain-dead simple to do. Reboot and you're all done!!
I love this new drive. I feel like I have a new machine that is faster than even the new Macs that were just announced at WWDC!! This drive is great. I'll report back over time to let you know how it holds up in daily use.
August 15, 2012 update: the drive continues to perform to my expectations. Every other computer I work on now seems slow compared to my MBP! As for battery life, I really don't notice a difference. I haven't conducted any tests that would yield empirical evidence about this, but I still get only 3-4 hours max out of my laptop, about the same I did with the OEM drive. Nonetheless, I am delighted with this device. It really is like having a new computer! Once again, I would caution that on a Mac, if you're upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion, or upgrading to the latest version of Lion, be careful that you re-enable TRIM support. I'm currently using TRIM Enabler to patch the OS, and while it will survive a reboot or restart just fine, it does not stay in place when you initiate a system update. Be sure to run the software to re-enable the patch, then restart your computer. (The restart will be lightening fast with your new drive, not like the PITA it was in the past!) Then run TRIM Enabler (or System Information) to confirm that TRIM is in place. I see this as a small price to pay for the dazzling performance I now get from my new hard drive!
| RAM | 480 GB |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 480 GB Solid State Drive |
