# Upgrading to an SSD (MacBook Pro)



## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

Started this because a few of us have been bloating out LeadFarmer's Buying a MacbBook Pro thread 

The skinny for me;
I have a Late 2011 UniBody MacBook Pro with a 750GB hard drive. 
Have bought a 128GB Crucial M4 SSD  and the MCE OptiBay & USB Superdrive enclosure. I ordered the MCE stuff directly from MCE in the USA, it cost US$127.68 (£84.20 at exchange rate 4th August 2012) which included FedEx Priority International (1-3 days delivery) and I fortunately wasn't stung with any customs/import duties when it arrived :thumb:

Here's a couple of handy links & guides which may come in useful;
Format USB Drive - macs.about.com (Remember to format in Mac OS X Extended Journaled and NOT NTFS for this)
How To Create a Bootable Mountain Lion Disk - ARSTechnica.
Lion DiskMaker - Free to Download

Guide: Moving your home folder - If/when you want to move your home folder to the HDD instead of the SSD

This isn't necessarily a "How To" thread from me as this is the first time I've done this swap so will be reading/learning and, hopefully, documenting bits, as I go. So anyone is free to chip in with questions, answers and any better advice than I'm putting up :thumb:


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

Here's a few quick iPhone photo's of my MCE kit that I took delivery of. Upon closer inspection, I'm very impressed with it actually. They've even included 2 (3 technically) screwdrivers for the job so, off the top of my head, I don't think that you really need anything beyond this do to the whole job.









Clockwise from Top Left:
- OptiBay with screwdriver, torx/star piece & a couple of screws & some application CD
- Superdrive enclosure with the USB/Power cable
- Double ended screwdriver

All of the above was included in the MCE kit I ordered.









OptiBay with the SSD installed (Reference only: the HD will be going in this for the installation)
* Note - That screws sticking out of the drive on the right of the photo are only like thatbecause I didn't screw it in fully, just wanted to see what it was like inside.









OptiBay with SSD installed to give you an idea of the fit with a drive in.

I'll try and update this with some better photo's with the HD installed when I'm doing it


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

Fantastic!

I'm doing the same process with my MBP. I have a 2011 2.3Ghz i7 Quad Core/16Gb RAM/750Gb HDD/Hi-Res & Anti-Glare. I upgraded from 8Gb -> 16Gb of RAM on Wednesday.

I'm adding the following:


Intel 240Gb 520 6Gb/s SSD
OWC Data Doubler 
OWC Superdrive Enclosure
I've already created an ML bootable USB-drive, I have full back-ups via Time Machine onto a What's for dinner Thunderbolt My Book RAID drive and I'm now making copies of my home folder etc. onto a LaCie 500Gb Firewire 800 drive ready for getting the whole thing up and running as I intend to format the internal 750Gb HDD to give me a completely clean installation.


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

My progress has stalled at my "making a time machine backup" stage :lol: All of my drives are formatted in NTFS and it turns out that Time Machine will only do Journaled, so having to find, check and format a spare External drive before I can do it. Doh!

On the plus side, after telling it to ignore my only iTunes folder, the esitmated size of a full backup is only 110GB.


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

Lucky you, mine's about 550Gb at present, about half of which are RAW image files, but once I sort things out they'll live on my external Thunderbolt drive so I'm guessing about 250Gb eventually.


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## Buck (Jan 16, 2008)

Guys

This is a great upgrade for any Mac. After doing mine I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner!


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

Any tips please?


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## Johnnyopolis (Oct 25, 2005)

I upgraded mine to a SSD and stuck 8Gb of Ram in at the same time.. OH MY GOSH! It flies now 20 seconds to boot from cold is incredible and my virtual machines boot up and run so quick! Its the best upgrade I did this year!


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## RP84 (Sep 3, 2007)

This is something which i want to do..

Apart from boot up, does it help other things like iphoto.. my iphoto takes forever to manage photos


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

Did mine this morning, took about 45 mins to install. Could probably do it in nearer 30-35 if I wasn't trying to take photo's.

Overall it was dead easy, if you take your time looking at things and are logical about what your remove, it all becomes dead obvious 

Sorry the annotations aren't fantastic, I've just quickly done them in Preview whilst installing some stuff.

HD/SSD Swap:































































For the OptiBay fitting, I followed this guide. ifixit: Optical Drive Replacement 13" Unibody
I've took some photo's but this looks a lot clearer. What I will add from my experience is;

STEP 6: I didn't unplug the camera cable. I was scared of snapping it, so I just lifted the wire out of the route it runs along the Airport adapter and that gave me enough room.

STEP 8: I didn't unplug the antennae connector. Same reason as above.

STEP 10: Despite not unplugging the two mentioned, I was still able to move the Airport/Bluetooth/Speaker enough to remove and reinsert the Superdrive/OptiBay


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

Thanks - I'm particularly interested in your comments about the two cables as I had thought of trying to do the same. Had a preliminary recce the other day when I upgraded the RAM so already have an idea of the layout.

My OWC Data Doubler looks pretty much the same as your MCE Optibay, the only difference being mine's blue powder-coated aluminium. I'll take some pix as I do mine.


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

I'd still recommend being a bit gentle and taking a moment doing it, but you can definitely move them enough without disconnecting. 

Almost forgot, I'm not totally happy with the quality of the superdrive enclosure. I didn't spot it when I was unpacking it the other day but it was glaringly obvious when I was closing it up with the superdrive in...










The bezel is a separate part to the top and bottom of the enclosure so I may email and see if they can send me a new piece.


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

Oops - that is a tad wonky. Mine from OWC is two horizontally separated pieces which slide together.


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## rizo (Jul 14, 2012)

i upgraded my mbp to a 120gb SSD only use it for web browsing as i have my i7 imac for anything that needs some beef. made browsing much faster.


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## Laurie.J.M (Jun 23, 2011)

I've looked at doing an SSD upgrade along with more RAM on my Macbook but my dad said that SSD drives are fragile and don't last (please tell me he's wrong ). 

He works for IBM and they trialled SSD drives in some of there computers including my dad's work laptop. his already very powerful computer became lightning fast when it came to booting up and other more demanding tasks but the drive failed within a year as did most of the others that had been put into laptops. Considering how much it would have cost if he'd had to pay for the drive that's not good.


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

He's wrong - how many are in Apple MacBook Airs for example, every MBA since 2008 has one.


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

Apparently some of the early adopters had reliability issues and they've not been around long enough to give a true reflection of their long term stability. But OS's have been updated/developed to but less strain on them, TRIM for example, so whilst it's still in it's infancy it's being refined all the time.

It doesn't matter what you plump for, either has a chance of failing so I picked my path and here we go  As long as I keeps backups there shouldn't be much to fear from it.


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## Laurie.J.M (Jun 23, 2011)

Good to know my dad's wrong, being that he's a software developer for the last 30 years he can do just about anything with the computer but he's not so hot on the actual internals.

I think IBM trialled the drives when they were still fairly new technology which could well be why so many failed. I have asked again and he said some of the servers still have them and that new computers in the facility have a small SSD fitted for the operating system and then and HDD for everything else.


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

Laurie.J.M said:


> new computers in the facility have a small SSD fitted for the operating system and then and HDD for everything else.


that's what I, and the majority I think, am doing.

SSD - OS/Apps (one of the reasons for me only going for a 128GB)
HD - Music, videos, photos, documents, etc.. (750GB worth of space on my internal drive)

Also have a 1TB external drive which i can use for backups.


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

m1pui said:


> that's what I, and the majority I think, am doing.
> 
> SSD - OS/Apps (one of the reasons for me only going for a 128GB)
> HD - Music, videos, photos, documents, etc.. (750GB worth of space on my internal drive)
> ...


:thumb:


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

Well I'm all up and running :thumb: only thing I don't have installed is MS Office as injured to dig out my cd.

Took the opportunity to upgrade to 16GB of ram too 

Didn't bother updating to Elements 10, as per my other thread, decided to stick with 9 and get Lightroom instead 

Been organising all of my photo's this afternoon and have to give a shout out :lol: to the following apps that made my life easier

- A Better Finder Rename - been using it for a few years now. Great batch file renamer. For any files, not just photos.

- A Better Finder Attributes - only just discovered this. Batch edit created/modified/exif data. ie. dates that have been lost in file moves or even change times when you've forgotten to change the the time on your camera on holiday, etc.

- Air Display - use your iPad as a second display to your monitor. Absolutely brilliant for multitasking in several apps on a small screen laptop :thumb:


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## Grizzle (Jul 12, 2006)

Been running a SSD for near two years and 4gb of ram in my 13inch macbook literally second to boot from cold, and i cant put my password in quick enough from sleep lmao.

highly reccomend it.


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

I used to knock mine one and go and grab a drink and it would be just ready for work when I came back to it. Now it's booted up almost before I've left the room :lol:

Installing Photoshop and Lightroom, which extract to 4gb & 1gb on installation, (from downloaded executables onto HD rather than DVD in relatively slow USB drive) is really quick too.


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## Trist (Jun 23, 2006)

This sounds cool!!

So can I just buy a 128GB Crucial M4 SSD for example and use this to replace the HDD in my MacBook Pro and keep my optical drive?


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

Yes but it means that you'll "only" have 128GB (or whatever size SSD you buy) of internal storage so anything above that will require you to carry around and plug in an external hard drive


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## Trist (Jun 23, 2006)

Thats fine. I only have apps on the main drive. Photos, music etc are on a external WD drive


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

Well, I finally bit the bullet and did my SSD upgrade this afternoon - went like a dream and runs so quickly. I had previously upgraded the RAM from 8Gb -> 16Gb last week.


Removed Superdrive.
Installed Superdrive into external USB enclosure
Removed 750Gb HDD
Put HDD into OWC Data Doubler Enclosure
Installed Data Doubler/HDD into Superdrive Bay.
Installed Intel 520 240Gb SSD into HDD bay
Formatted SSD
Installed OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion onto SSD (clean install from bootable USB-drive
Runs great - much easier to do than I'd expected. Power on to working desktop - 18 seconds.


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

Whilst my upgrade and OS X 10.8 installation went without a hitch, I have had a couple of problems installing software/apps to my SSD.

Herewith a couple of tips I learned from my own difficulties:

*Adobe software**:*

I had LightRoom 4, PhotoShop Elements 10 and Premier Elements 10 on my hard drive. I plan on having my Software/Apps on the SSD and using the HDD purely for storeage. LightRoom loaded without a hitch, but PhotoShop ad Premier refused to load bringing up a series of error coads. I did a bit of digging and came up with this.

So ... ... ... follow the instructions and remove Adobe applications from the HDD before adding to your SSD, you shouldn't experience any further problems - I didn't.

*Apps from the App store:*

When trying to load Apps from the App store to my SSD I found the App Store already showed them all as "Installed" and thus I was unable to download them. The solution is quite simple - Eject the HDD first and then the App store will allow you to download the Apps to the SSD.

Have fun! :newbie:


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

I never had any issues with the Adobe stuff, but I did come across the App Store problem and totally forgot to post about it.

I saw that ejecting it would work, but I "got around it" by taking it as the opportunity to sort out then copying my personal files to my external drive* and then just formatting my HDD before I put my now organised Home folder back on it.

* This was just me sorting what would be my USER/HOME folder out and dragging and dropping them to the external. This was done AS WELL as the Time Machine backup I did at the start of all this as a safety net.


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

I've still got work to do on my HDD yes, but solving the Adobe problem has taken me a fair bit of hair pulling and gnashing of teeth this weekend.

How did you set-up your "Home" folder in the end, got that to do yet, got everything backed up twice, ready to format the HDD tomorrow.


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## m1pui (Jul 24, 2009)

DW58 said:


> How did you set-up your "Home" folder in the end, got that to do yet, got everything backed up twice, ready to format the HDD tomorrow.


In what sense?

There's a second step which I can't recall off the top of my head, but once you format the HDD, drag the home folder from the SSD onto the HDD and then (once you do step 2) you can just treat it as you would've done before.

I just sorted it out how I wanted them to be the correct folders (Photos, Music, Documents, etc) and then just moved them into their respective folders in the Home folder.

It sounds very vague what I've wrote, but essentially it was as simple as that

Edit:
This was the guide I used
http://macs.about.com/od/diyguidesprojects/qt/Move-Your-Home-Folder-To-A-New-Location.htm


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

Thanks - I'm off to work on it once I've got enough coffee down my neck.

[edit]



m1pui said:


> This was the guide I used
> http://macs.about.com/od/diyguidesprojects/qt/Move-Your-Home-Folder-To-A-New-Location.htm


I followed the above guide, worked perfectly, thanks.


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## DesertDog (May 15, 2011)

I've just upgraded my mid 2009 13" 2.53GHz MBP with the Crucial 8Mb memory upgrade and a 512Gb SSD.

I'd recommend Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the original drive contents, the copy of SuperDuper which comes with the SSD just wouldn't work for me.


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## DW58 (Nov 27, 2010)

I'd be more inclined to use a clean install of OS X 10._x_ rather than cloning, it's safer and that way you don't perpetuate any problems lurking on your HDD.


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