Apple hard drive upgrade

Demetrius · 12 Sep 2013 at 12:44

I want to upgrade my apple hard drive on my macbook mid 2010 to a solid state drive. It isn’t a macbook pro.

1) Can you please suggest an SSD?

2) Will I be able to reformat the hard drive inside the macbook and use it for my pc? Is this straight forward to do?

Raymond Lin · 12 Sep 2013 at 12:56

Crucial, Samsung Either brand would be good. Get the biggest size that you can afford and be done with it, I think yours is a SATA 2 only machine so no point spending money on a Pro drive. The SATA 2 interface will be your bottleneck.

I have a Crucial M4 512G in mine.

And yes, you can format the old HDD, I put mine in a caddy and use it as a portable drive.

FreeStream · 12 Sep 2013 at 12:58

Any SSD.

Samsung 830, 840, 840 Pro or 840 EVO are all highly rated.

But the biggest you can afford and ignore specs, because you simply will not be able to tell the difference!

Tunney · 12 Sep 2013 at 13:36

I don't know about the MacBook, but it's possible to swap the DVD drive out on the Pro models and have both your original HDD and the SDD in the machine. All you need is a cheap conversion kit off eBay, a torx screwdriver and a little patience.

Demetrius · 12 Sep 2013 at 17:04

Raymond do you have any guidance on how to format the hard drive?

Did you use carbon copy to move the data from one hard drive to the other?

Tunney does this mean that on the pro you forfeit the ability to put in cd's? I guess this is a reliance on online downloading, networking and usb.

Tunney · 12 Sep 2013 at 22:30

Yes, you lose the DVD drive but gain more space.

Raymond Lin · 12 Sep 2013 at 23:00

This was my experience

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18478756&highlight=carbon+username_raymond+lin

Once you cloned the drive and with the SSD inside, boot up and all working, then you can safely use the old HDD as a spare. You can't really go wrong since if it doesn't boot up then you didn't do the cloning properly, so put the old HDD back in and try again.

Demetrius · 14 Sep 2013 at 09:14

Tunney said:
Yes, you lose the DVD drive but gain more space.

Tunney is this because most things can be downloaded software wise and dvd's can be played on another device?

Thanks Raymond. I will check it out.

Tunney · 14 Sep 2013 at 11:55

Yeah. Most of the MacBook range and the new iMacs don't come with a DVD drive. Even boxed Mac software is usually either a USB key or simply a download code these days. The only time I need a DVD drive is when I'm ripping CDs and DVDs. I have a £20 external DVD drive for when the need arises.

Conanius · 14 Sep 2013 at 16:43

I recently fitted a Samsung 840 Evo 256GB drive into my 2011 Mac Mini i7, 16GB RAM, Radeon blah blah

Absolutely lightening fast. Load times don't appear any slower than my 2013 MBA i7 256GB SSD 8GB RAM etc etc machine

Demetrius · 15 Sep 2013 at 15:53

Conanius said:
Absolutely lightening fast. Load times don't appear any slower than my 2013 MBA i7 256GB SSD 8GB RAM etc etc machine

The hard drive can definitely be a huge bottle neck.

Tunney - This macbook isn't a pro so I haven't found anyone upgrading online (only pro's). I am capable of making the upgrades, but my knowledge is low. What could you foresee as being an issue on a macbook compared to a pro on the removal and fitting of an SSD into the optical slot.