Can my macbook pro mid 2007 3.1 AA896ll/a handle a SSD and how do I make the switch. Can I do a clean install of Snow Leopard from an original cd

Question

Here is my problem, I want to upgrade my macbook pro mid 2007 3.1 AA896ll/a to an Solid State Drive, a Crucial m4 256 gb, I want to know if the macbook will be able to handle it and how do I do the switch. also once I install the drive will I be able to boot from my Snow Leoard original cd and do a clean install. Thank you

Answer 1

Coming from a 5,400 RPM drive that's nearly filled up, fragmented and deoptimized to a fresh install of OS X on a SSD will of course be a improvement.
However fresh installing OS X on a new 5,400 RPM will also see a improvement, boot up in 30 seconds.
A fresh install of OS X on a new 7,200 RPM drive will also see a improvement, boot up in 25 seconds.
A fresh install of OS X on a new SSD will see the best improvement, boot up in 20 seconds on fast SATA connections.
OS X still requires time to setup and that takes about 20 seconds despite how fast your boot drive is, that's why sleep was created.
Things to consider: The higher cost of a SSD, the limiting capacity (hard drives hold way more up), the SATA I speed limitations (slows up on large file transfers), the difficulty to scrub the SSD of unwanted data (like you can a hard drive), and it's limited write capability. Also the smaller SSD's are faster than the larger ones.
SSD's are shock proof, which is their slight advantage over hard drives.
I see a 120GB SSD in a SATA I machine as being a waste, it's too small of a storage space (500GB+ is ideal), the SATA I connection is slow and other factors that make a 7,200 RPM drive a better option in that machine.
One can get a 750 GB 7,200 RPM hard drive for about the same price and still maximize their boot time in the process, also being able to scrub their drive of unwanted data easily.
SSD's can't be scrubbed, one has to fill 50% of the remaining space with many, very small files to overwrite the free space, then do another 50% again to defeat the Trim/wear leveling as SSD's write to less used location each time. If one fills a OS X boot drive up completely, it won't function or won't boot up.
If you do this fill routine regularly with software, then you prematurely wear out the SSD as it has limited writes. Why Disk Utility doesn't offer zero or 7x erase for SSD's.
If your in the 10% of Internet traffic that's going to adult sites, then the ability to scrub the caches and storage drive of embarrassing unwanted data is a necessity. Especially in the light of software and hardware that can read the SSD of deleted data.
Trick links and redirects on poisoned sites can firebomb your Mac with some pretty bad pictures and your hidden caches as well, especially if you don't like to pay.
IT personal have at their disposal free open source forensic software that basically aggregates all the past behavior done on the machine into a nice, easy to view format with times, dates and when and where content was downloaded from.
Since one has to give up their password for repair folks to recover data and fix the machine...
I think a SSD is less of a benefit over a 7,200 hard drive for that particular model of Mac for a mere few seconds faster boot time.