Will extra RAM make my old 2011 MacBook Pro faster?

[mikeymikec]

Aren't there issues with installing non-Apple approved SSDs in Macs and TRIM support?

 

[Eug]

Aren't there issues with installing non-Apple approved SSDs in Macs and TRIM support?

Apple caved a little while back. Now not a problem.

 

[nerp]

Aren't there issues with installing non-Apple approved SSDs in Macs and TRIM support?

No. You might have to be sure TRIM is turned on in the OS but that's simple to do. The only real quirk with putting an SSD in a MacBook is having a decent screwdriver so you don't strip the bottom screws.

 

[dawks]

About to do the same upgrade on my mid 2010 macbook pro. It's going from 4 to 8GB and I'm putting in an SSD to replace the painfully slow 5400 rpm drive.

One added bonus to putting an SSD in is that it uses less power, too, so you might see a subtle improvement in battery life.

Let us know what drive you choose and how it goes.. maybe a benchmark screenshot like logicalxm provided.

I have the same 2010 15" Macbook Pro, and I'm thinking of upgrading my drive as well. Im just curious to see how limiting the SATA2 (3Gb/s) bus will be.

 

[rugby]

Let us know what drive you choose and how it goes.. maybe a benchmark screenshot like logicalxm provided.

I have the same 2010 15" Macbook Pro, and I'm thinking of upgrading my drive as well. Im just curious to see how limiting the SATA2 (3Gb/s) bus will be.

On day to day regular operations it will be a ton faster. It's the quick file access that will make a huge difference, the overall throughput only really comes into play if you're doing some rendering or something else that is really taxing the I/O of the drive.

 

[nerp]

Let us know what drive you choose and how it goes.. maybe a benchmark screenshot like logicalxm provided.

I have the same 2010 15" Macbook Pro, and I'm thinking of upgrading my drive as well. Im just curious to see how limiting the SATA2 (3Gb/s) bus will be.

I shall.

I suspect that the speed increase will be remarkable. Though it's only SATA2, it will still be so much faster for basic i/o operations than with the 5400rpm spinner. I'm also doubling its memory when I crack it open (the SSD has not arrived yet) so I have a feeling the overall increase will be substantial.

 

[nerp]

OK so the SSD is in the memory is in, OSX is freshly installed on the new drive and I'm off and running.

Holy moly, it is a totally different machine now. The install took forever for some reason but now that I'm in, the machine is so much more drastically responsive. Amazing improvement.

I failed to do a speed test before I pulled the old drive. I suppose I can install that utility and run it and share it once I've done that. I'm in the midst of installing apps and downloading crap from the cloud and my 50,000-message inbox into outlook so I can't get a true result until later once this machine has had time to settle.

Interesting note, TRIM seems not wanting to enable no matter what I do. The built-in command takes, it reboots as expected but trim support still says no under system information no matter what I do. SanDisk states that it doesn't matter, that the controller on the SSD will automatically handle garbage collection and deal with blocks when the drive is not in use. It apparently should be enough to address the issue on a drive for my usage pattern, which is fairly light with a lot of idle time. In a heavily-abused machine dealing with lots and lots of writes and deletes, it might be an issue. Whatever. Aside from the apps and OS, I'm never going to fill up this drive and if I do notice any degradation, I'll just attach the old external HD, clone OSX to it, nuke the SSD, format it, and copy the clone back. I can handle doing that once a year.

In the meantime, the performance increase so far is awesome and I highly recommend anyone willing to crack open an older macbook consider it. I see no reason to push to replacing this machine anytime soon, now.

Now that I've got more memory and the SSD in here, the only thing I can foresee becoming a problem is the battery. I'm at half the number of cycles before it is technically considered exhausted, though the system reports it as healthy. The good news is that genuine Apple battery replacements are easy to come by at about $100 and I have all the tools already.

Note: be sure to have the right screwdrivers for the SSD swap. Those torx screws to hold the drive into the caddy will be a nightmare if you don't have the right piece. Bite the bullet and order it.

 

[nerp]

Update: after doing more reading, there is a lot of consensus out there that TRIM isn't such a big deal if you are using a SSD with BGC - background garbage collection. In general, unless you're using the thing in a datacenter or something, it generally will handle things itself through the drive controller and you don't really have to fret about TRIM if the OS doesn't support it.

 

[nerp]

Ok, another update. I checked this morning and now it say "Yes" next to TRIM support. I guess there was just some time between me triggering trimforce in terminal and the field being updated or whatever. Works for me!