SSD Upgrade Worth It?

MarkeR · 18 Aug 2019 at 10:29

Bought a 2013 macbook pro for £250 from gumtree yesterday. Mainly to be used to surfing and email while having morning coffe. It still has a 500gig mechanical drive in it, wold it be worthwhile to upgrade to an SSD? Size isnt really important as I wont be storing anything worthwhile!

Cheers

Thekwango · 18 Aug 2019 at 10:34

MarkeR said:
Bought a 2013 macbook pro for £250 from gumtree yesterday. Mainly to be used to surfing and email while having morning coffe. It still has a 500gig mechanical drive in it, wold it be worthwhile to upgrade to an SSD? Size isnt really important as I wont be storing anything worthwhile!

Cheers

The answer to the question is an ssd a worthwhile upgrade is always going to be yes

DoneADougalOnSofa · 18 Aug 2019 at 10:40

As above: Yes. A big fat knobbly Yes.

MarkeR · 18 Aug 2019 at 10:52

Cheers guys.

250 gig drive big enough, or even a 128gig? As I said Firefox is th eonly thing i'm installing on the mac.

Oh, the screen is bloody lovely.

bremen1874 · 18 Aug 2019 at 11:06

How much space are you using on the mechanical drive? Use that for guidance.

Feek · 18 Aug 2019 at 11:08

The answer is obviously "yes". As for size, I have a 250Gb SSD in my MacBook and it's perfectly big enough for me. They're cheap enough, go 250

Deleted member 77746 · 18 Aug 2019 at 11:09

MarkeR said:
Bought a 2013 macbook pro for £250 from gumtree yesterday. Mainly to be used to surfing and email while having morning coffe. It still has a 500gig mechanical drive in it, wold it be worthwhile to upgrade to an SSD? Size isnt really important as I wont be storing anything worthwhile!

Cheers

Absolute bargain! SSDs will always be worth the upgrade.

Conanius · 18 Aug 2019 at 18:24

I just sold a 240 GB SSD for £20 on Facebook locally.

I can't imagine you can improve a machine like that in such a significant way with any other upgrade, regardless of price. No matter how much RAM or whatever CPU you put in, the HDD being replaced will be huge.

Steveocee · 19 Aug 2019 at 15:46

An SSD made a 2009 Mini go from being bin fodder to very usable desktop. Definitely worth the upgrade.

MarkeR · 23 Aug 2019 at 08:31

Replaced the hard drive with a Samsung 850 SSD, boot time went from around 4 mins to 30 secs or so. Huge difference.

Did notice that the battery was slightly bulging, anyone got a recommendation for a new battery out side of Apple?
Thanks

b0rn2sk8 · 24 Aug 2019 at 09:07

iFixit?

PS stop using that battery immediately and don’t leave it in your house.

ScoTTyBEEE · 24 Aug 2019 at 12:26

Conanius said:
I just sold a 240 GB SSD for £20 on Facebook locally.

I can't imagine you can improve a machine like that in such a significant way with any other upgrade, regardless of price. No matter how much RAM or whatever CPU you put in, the HDD being replaced will be huge.

You can buy one brand new for £22-23

silverblack · 24 Aug 2019 at 14:04

MarkeR said:
Replaced the hard drive with a Samsung 850 SSD, boot time went from around 4 mins to 30 secs or so. Huge difference.

Did notice that the battery was slightly bulging, anyone got a recommendation for a new battery out side of Apple?
Thanks

I got mine from Duracell for my Macbook Air worked perfectly still get great battery life after a year or so.

https://www.duracelldirect.co.uk/laptop-notebook/apple-battery-adapter-charger.html

Terminal_Boy · 24 Aug 2019 at 14:12

Going from HDD to SSD is the single largest performance boost you can give an old Mac.

Check to see if the RAM is maxed out as that’s big boost too.

Siver74 · 24 Aug 2019 at 16:09

It's a yes for me too. The speed won't make you look back.

Nevakonaza · 24 Aug 2019 at 16:49

Night and day difference,Nobody should be stuck using a standard mechanical hard drive as a boot disk in 2019/2020,especially considering how cheap you can pick them up now,maybe look on the used market.

MarkeR · 24 Aug 2019 at 19:40

silverblack said:
I got mine from Duracell for my Macbook Air worked perfectly still get great battery life after a year or so.

https://www.duracelldirect.co.uk/laptop-notebook/apple-battery-adapter-charger.html

Got a new battery, maybe its just me bit the Mac does seem a bit nipier now with the new battery in!

All in all, for the price I got it for and the price of a new abttery it still is a bargain!
Just need to used to all the quirks of MAC OS instead of windows.

Cheers guys

FrozenShivers · 29 Aug 2019 at 21:14

I upgraded my 2011 13" MBP with more RAM and an SSD years ago when I bought it, huge difference, and so cheap nowadays that you won't get a better price/performance upgrade with anything else.