Going medieval on MacBook Pro

[SnikPlosskin]

In my quest to pinch every penny possible, I'm upgrading my 2009 MacBook Pro to 8 gigs of ram and a SSD drive.

I dig the machine. It's the last model to have the "unibody" construction. It's milled out of a single billet of aluminum. Damn thing is bullet proof.

It runs pretty well but lately it's been very slow - lots of beachballs. Having gone through it (reset SMC, PRAM, disc permissions, verify, repair, etc. I'm thinking the hard drive is going down (they tend to go slowly).

The SSD will perk it right up. I read it will boot in like 5 seconds. 8 Gigs of Ram is the max it will take.

I wish I knew my Explorer was going to crap out before I ordered the parts for the laptop. Oh well.

Plenty of projects for me.

[SnikPlosskin]

Wow. Done.

That was damn easy. First I cloned the old drive to the new one. Then, popped off the back, (one screw wouldn't come out but I just lifted the back and squeezed in) - replaced the RAM in about a minute.

New drive went right in - 3 minutes.

Buttoned it back up. Restart.

Posting from it now. WAAAAAAAAY faster.

I even took the old drive and put it in a housing so I have a 250 Gig external drive....

Macintosh. It's what's for dinner!

[G8rDMD]

I've got a 2009 13" MBP. I've upgraded to 8 gigs of ram and two internal drives--one a 256 gig SSD as the boot drive and program drive, the other is a 1 tb HD for files, music, photos, videos. This thing runs as well today as when I bought it, better even since I've upgraded it.

[SnikPlosskin]

Originally Posted by G8rDMD

I've got a 2009 13" MBP. I've upgraded to 8 gigs of ram and two internal drives--one a 256 gig SSD as the boot drive and program drive, the other is a 1 tb HD for files, music, photos, videos. This thing runs as well today as when I bought it, better even since I've upgraded it.

Yep. Same machine version 5,1 late 2009. I think it runs better than when new. I'm going to sell the old RAM (6 gigs).

This is part PC fanboys don't get. We are going on 4 years and still running strong. I predict I'll use this machine for another 3 years at least.

Hell, I have a Mac from 1997. Still runs fine.

[Frizzle]

I love my macbook pro... I've had it for 4 years now and no issues.

Normally I was re-formatting my PCs ever year or so once it hit 3 years old.

[CubSmurf]

Love Macs! Pete, you're the man!

[snide]

I may need to upgrade my MacBook Pro. Currently has 4gb of RAM, but only supports 6. I replaced the 200gb hard drive with a 512 gb unit a couple of years ago. Still does everything I need, so there's no real reason to replace it. Besides, Apple stopped making the 17" model. :-(

[MEANZ06]

[Jeff '79]

Originally Posted by MEANZ06

Posting from my MacBookPro

My PC is frozen, but that is

[DukeAllen]

Originally Posted by SnakePlissken

Yep. Same machine version 5,1 late 2009. I think it runs better than when new. I'm going to sell the old RAM (6 gigs).

This is part PC fanboys don't get. We are going on 4 years and still running strong. I predict I'll use this machine for another 3 years at least.

Hell, I have a Mac from 1997. Still runs fine.

I have a PC laptop I bought in 2002. It's as fast as this cheap POS I'm on right now. I'm only not using it because I physically wore out the keyboard, and it's overheating a little. I can fix it but I'm too lazy to open it up. I also have desktop PCs pushing 20 that work fine...not to mention a Vic-20 that works well except it would be a bitch to get online.

I also never met a Mac that wasn't slower than my PCs

[snide]

Originally Posted by SnakePlissken

Yep. Same machine version 5,1 late 2009.

Mine is MacBookPro3,1

I bought it early '08.

[Mike Mercury]

about a year or two ago, there was a shortage of hard drives... and at work they started using SSD drives (until the shortage went away).

It was amazing how much faster things were with the SSD.

I decided to do this on my home desktop; have the SSD as my bootup drive, then move the existing hard drive as a secondary (data) drive. Then I found out there was something "special" about doing this on a system running Win XP (somehting about sector sizes)... so I gave up on the idea.

[Cybercowboy]

My current Win7 desktop has an SSD boot drive (320 GB) and is blazing fast.

[Thunder22]

Originally Posted by SnakePlissken

Yep. Same machine version 5,1 late 2009. I think it runs better than when new. I'm going to sell the old RAM (6 gigs).

This is part PC fanboys don't get. We are going on 4 years and still running strong. I predict I'll use this machine for another 3 years at least.

Hell, I have a Mac from 1997. Still runs fine.

I"m posting this from a Thinkpad T41. You can do the math on how old it is (released in 2003) and it doesn't need an SSD or 8GB's of RAm to "run like new" lol.

[Thunder22]

And btw- Mac "guts" have been intel based since 2005.

[snide]

Originally Posted by Whiskey

And btw- Mac "guts" have been intel based since 2005.

NFW!

[SnikPlosskin]

Originally Posted by Whiskey

I"m posting this from a Thinkpad T41. You can do the math on how old it is (released in 2003) and it doesn't need an SSD or 8GB's of RAm to "run like new" lol.

I suppose it depends on what you use the machine for. Posting on the Internet isnt that taxing.

We use the MacBook Pro to edit HD video.

The real issue was the original Toshiba drive was going bad. Nothing to do with platform.

The fact is, Macs outlast PCs in terms of useful life by a long shot.

Feel free to engage in a pointless debate about which platform is better.

[Shrike6]

I would like to replace my hard drive with an SSD. My MacBook Pro only supports 2gb, which is what I have now. How do you clone the old drive to an SSD before you install it?

[SnikPlosskin]

Originally Posted by Shrike6

I would like to replace my hard drive with an SSD. My MacBook Pro only supports 2gb, which is what I have now. How do you clone the old drive to an SSD before you install it?

I used a docking station that I already had. Basically hooked it up via FireWire. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact bootable copy.

You can get a cable that goes from USB to Sata and do the copy that way.