SSD for Macbook Pro - opinions?

[hoogie]

Hey,

After looking into it for some time I think I am going to go ahead with a 256GB SSD upgrade for my 2012 13" Macbook Pro.

I was hoping for some advice before I go ahead with the order, feedback appreciated.

1) Is the Samsung 830 SSD still the best drive to go for or should I consider the 840 drive or even Corsair alternatives?

2) Are SSD drives likely to be affected by January sales so should I wait until then?

3) If I want to do a clean install of OSX to the SSD how would I do this? And can I then transfer data from a time machine backup?

4) A curve ball question, but how much do Macbook Pros go for second hand? Is it worth considering selling the Macbook and upgrading to a 13" Retina display model?...

Cheers

 

[kefan77]

1, no, 840 Evo is the best bet
2, what sales?
4, check Sold listings on Bay to give you an idea

no idea on 3, as don't use Macs

 

[Oh Ed not again.]

1) The EVO seems to get consistently good feedback, I'm using an 840 Basic in my Mac Mini and that zips along nicely.

2) Unlikely, SSDs seem to have found a price groove and are staying there. You might save £10-20 here and there when OcUK or elsewhere do a weekend deal or something, depends on how soon you need it I guess.

3) Download your free Mavericks update, pull the Install ESD.dmg out of the App folder and write it to a USB drive. One USB installer, then restore from TM.

4) Anything between £600-900 depending on spec on the Bay, losing 10% for fees. Unless you desperately want retina, I'd just get the SSD. Your current MBP will last you for many years to come I'd say.

 

[Caged]

I'm running a 2009 MBP with a 240GB SSD and 8GB RAM (and a new battery) and it does everything I could ask of it. The SSD was the best upgrade and it was like a new machine after that, and it will still outperform a new laptop with a spinning disk on a lot of general tasks.

I got a Corsair Force 3 SSD since it's got a Sandforce controller and doesn't need the OS to be TRIM-aware. Mac OS won't enable TRIM unless it detects an Apple-installed SSD in the machine, so performance will degrade over time unless you remember to patch it after every OS update. I couldn't be bothered with that so just used an SSD that didn't require it.

The method for making bootable media has changed with Mavericks, instructions are here:

https://gist.github.com/cobyism/6839439

 

[hoogie]

Thanks for the responses. Few questions based on them:

1) I hadn´t heard of the 840 Evo drives before, are they different to the standard 840 drives?

2) Looking online I saw some EVO Basic drives, are these the same or do they have worse performance?

3) I have no idea what TRIM is, can anyone give more details? I was under the impression the Samsung drives just worked, is this not the case? And if not is it enough of an issue to not do the SSD upgrade?

Thanks

 

[kefan77]

1, Evo is newer and improved
2, Basic means it's just the drive, no 3.5" adapter or notebook trasfer kit with all the cables and stuff. the product you're looking for is Samsung 840 Evo.
3, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing)

 

[hoogie]

2, Basic means it's just the drive, no 3.5" adapter or notebook trasfer kit with all the cables and stuff. the product you're looking for is Samsung 840 Evo.

Right, I am online now and about to place the order.

To confirm, will the Basic package work fine for what I need?

I am looking to replace the standard Mac HDD with the SSD, so do I even need a new cable or 3.5" adapter or will the drive just go straight in and replace the old HDD?

Thanks

 

[andrewohare]

I put an 840 EVO in my mac and it was super quick, bog standard drive in Mac late 2011 were 5400 drives

 

[Rossmac]

I have a Late 2008 Unibody MacBook 13.3". Core 2 Duo at 2.4GHz and the best thing I ever did was stick an OCZ Vertex 2E in there! It's 5 years and 3 months old and it still beats newer laptops!

SSDs are the way to go. Period.

 

[cypto]

It would be worth checking out the data doubler. Running it on my macbook currently and the extra space is just perfect. It also adds extra value to the original macbook pro's since the newer ones don't support it.

Basically it is a bracket the replaces your optical disk drive and adds a second hard drive. So I placed a 120gb SSD into the main bay for the OS and moved the 750gb mechanical drive into the data doubler bracket.

Can't say I've really missed not having a disk drive, haven't used one in just over a year now and the 2nd hard drive makes more sense.