Solid State Upgrade

I am wanting to upgrade my late 2009 MacBook to a solid state drive. I just want to replace the internal hard drive and nothing more. I have been searching for a while but I honestly can't find anything that tells me if I need a converter or hub in order for it to work on my mac. Can I just plug it in and go? Also is there anything I need to do to format the hard drive before use? I don't need to save any data. Any help would be great!

You can use any SATA II - 3.0 Gb/s notebook sized SSD. You will find good ones at OWC, OCZ, and Samsung. Do some Google research on the topic. Lots to be found.
Nothing is required except the ability to disassemble the underside casing and remove the old drive replacing it with the SSD.

Similar Messages

Solid State upgrade: any negative effects

I'm considering replacing my 120GB Solid State hard drive in MacBook Pro with a 500GB SS Drive. Are there any negative effects - for example on battery life, or in terms of overheating?

I've a 512GB Crucial m4 series SSD - and find that 512GB is plenty of room (of course, I do have a 2 TB 'working' external Thunderbolt drive, as well! Can't put everything on the 512GB!).
But I'm sure that one day there will be 1 TB SSDs - when that day comes, I may look at upgrading: if the price is right!
Clinton

Solid State Drive Upgrade Kit v300a with Windows 8.1 on Envy laptop

I am trying to install the Solid State Drive Upgrade Kit V300a in my new HP Envy with Windows 8.1. This upgrade was listed as an option for this model and was bought with the machine.
The doc lists OS supported, but Windows 8 is not in the list. Is Windows 8 supported?
The included disk labled "Arconis" includes ATIHO user guide pdfs and an HP-Drive-Install-Guide-1.15.13-327pm pdf. The install guide mentions using Arconis. The Arconis user guide says to run "setup" to install Acronis but there is no setup file on the disk. I have chosen the setting to display hidden files and there is nothing on the disk but pdfs. The v300a box claims that it includes Acronis Cloning Software.
How do I install this HP upgrade on my new HP laptop?

When requesting assistance, please provide the complete model name and/or product number of the HP computer in question. HP/Compaq makes thousands of models of computers. Without this information it may be difficult or impossible to assist you in resolving your issue.
The above requested information can be found on the bottom of your computer or inside the battery compartment. Please do not include your serial number. Please enter the model/product information into HP's Online Consumer Support page and/or post it here for our review.
YES, Windows 8 and 8.1 should be supported.
Please refer to this "HP SSD Upgrade Kit Installation Guide" for instructions on setting-up the HP SSD Upgrade Kit and cloning your factory installed hard drive. Please read the guide carefully and in its entirety. Next, assembly the SSD drive and the drive enclosure, per the instructions on page 9. Now, carefully follow the cloning instructions from page 9 to page 26.
Per the instructions, the cloning software should be on the included CD/DVD and it may be a bootable disc. However, if you are unable to locate the required software, please see www.HPSupport.pny.com to register your product and download any needed software.
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
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I have a late model mac book air 11 inch can i upgrade to a solid state hard drive

i have a late model mac book air 11 inch can i upgrade to a solid state hard drive

If you're looking to get an SSD with increased capacity, they can be purchased from OWC:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Express
They are very easy to install.
Note that I'm not sure on how this may impact your warranty. Nothing in an Air is considered user upgradable. Therefore there would be no reason for a consumer to open it up. As Apple does not consider the SSD as user replacable, it may cause warranty issues. I have not seen any comments from anyone who has upgraded their SSD and subsequently had to have service.

Can I upgrade to a solid state drive?

I have a 2007 17 inch macbook pro. I want to upgrade the hard drive to a solid state. Is that possible, and if so, how much am I looking at?

If you're looking to get an SSD with increased capacity, they can be purchased from OWC:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Express
They are very easy to install.
Note that I'm not sure on how this may impact your warranty. Nothing in an Air is considered user upgradable. Therefore there would be no reason for a consumer to open it up. As Apple does not consider the SSD as user replacable, it may cause warranty issues. I have not seen any comments from anyone who has upgraded their SSD and subsequently had to have service.

Upgrade my Macbook Pro 17" with solid state drive and RAM?

My MBP is a 17" mid-2009, 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Memory 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512 MB.
I am an architecture student. I use 3D modeling programs like SketchUp, Revit, AutoCad, etc. According to these software websites, my MBP is sufficient. However, when I'm running these programs, I get the apple "beach ball" a LOT, along with a lot of lagging even when I'm working on simple models. After doing some research, it appears that upgrading my RAM to 8GB (my model's max capability) and buying a solid state drive would help my MBP run much faster and much cooler.
My questions:
1. What brand and exact product #/link to this (if possible) of RAM (2 x 4GB sticks) and SSD should I purchase?
2. Which SSD GB option should I purchase? I chatted with OWC online and was given this variety of SSDs.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/SSD/Mercury_Electra_3G_Solid_Sta te
3. I was also given this product bundle recommendation. It's cheaper than buying everything individually, but I'm not sure if I need the tools and I don't understand the purpose/advantage of having the "OWC Express Silver Enclosure".
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/YSSDMP240/
I just want my MBP to run as fast as possible while running my modeling software w/o spending an arm and a leg if possible. But I don't know if it's worth the trouble and expense to upgrade my current MBP, which I love, or just getting a new MBP or Mac desktop. And if I should just get another Mac, I don't know which one I should get.
Another thing I have seen is the Mac Mini. Is it possible to plug this or any other external device to my MBP in order to accomplish my performance goals without having to modify my MBP or buy another Mac?
This is the first time I've posted any help questions to the Apple Support Community. I really appreciate any advise you Mac experts can give me. I called one of the Apple Stores, but I was definitely not satisfied with the inexperienced rep's answers.
Thanks!

1. OWC or Crucial are recommended sources for memory. You can usually find a 5% off and free shipping code for Crucial on retailmenot.com. On crucial just key in your system information in their memory selector.
2. Your system likely supports SATA II speeds, so the SSD OWC pointed to would work. I installed one in our 2010 mac mini and it's working well. I originally installed their 6G drive however it ran at SATA I speeds. Turns out the 3G which is specd for SATA II is what was needed and works fine.
3. The OWC package they recommended includes a case to put your existing hard drive in. That helps to be able to transfer your data back to the SSD then you can use it as a backup drive or as an external storage device.

I have an internal 256 Solid State Drive on my MacBook Pro. Can I upgrade it to a larger solid state drive? If so, how?

I am trying to free up space on my solid state drive on my MacBook Pro, but am not having much luck. I have come to the point where I am asking myself, "is it possible to upgrade to a larger internal drive?" Please help. I appreciate the feedback.

Yes you can upgrade it. Unless your MBP is one of the new Retina display models. Is it one of the new models with the Retina display?
If not it is the same as changing a regular hard drive. you buy a new bigger SSD. Take the bottom off, aboput 8 screws. Take the part that holds the SSD drive inplace. Remove the cable connector. Remove the 4 mounting screws on the side of the original SSD and istall them on the new SSD Re-Connect the cable. Slide the drive into the drive area. Replace the hold down part. Then put the bottom back on.
Then connect the original SSD to the compuiter with a SATA to USB adapter. Boot the system and hold down the Option key. At the screen that come up select the USB attached SSD and boot the system from it. Open Disk utility and Partition the new drive as 1 partition, format it Mac Extended (Journaled) giving the partition the name of Macintosh HD (or any name you like). Once that is done exit out of disk utility and get a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper then install that. Run it and clone from the USB attached SSD to the SSD you just installed inside your system. Once that is done shut the system down, disconnect the USB attached SSD and then power on the system. It should now boot to the internal SSD you install. To nbe on the safe side go into System Preferences, Startup Disk and make sure the internal SSD is selected. You are done.

Can I upgrade the solid-state drive in a MacBook Pro with retina display after purchase?

There used to be an option to upgrade the solid-state drive when configuring a MacBook Pro on the Apple Store online, but it is now gone. This makes me wonder if Apple's SSDs are built into the computer like the RAM is. So, is it possible to upgrade the SSD later? I don't want to pay so much more to upgrade everything else, so I'd love it if it's possible to just upgrade the SSD later. Thanks!

You will void the warranty. Here are the available post purchase upgrades. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Air-Retina/Apple-MacBook-Pro-Retina-2012- Drive-Internal-Flash
You should order it with as much storage as you can afford rather than doing a post purchase upgrade because of the warranty being voided.
Message was edited by: BobTheFisherman Sorry. I just noticed I posted the link to a 2012 retina flash upgrade.
Here you go http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/SSDAP12R480/
Read the specs carefully to ensure this will work for the model Macbook Pro you are getting.

I have a MacBook Pro, 15-inch, Mid 2009. I would love to upgrade to a Solid State Drive. What is the best possible upgrade I can buy. I need the specs and even brand name. Thank you to anyone who can help.

I have a MacBook Pro, 15-inch, Mid 2009. I would love to upgrade to a Solid State Drive. What is the best possible upgrade I can buy. I need the specs and even brand name. Thank you to anyone who can help.

A 15" mid-2009 MBP RAM specifications are: 204-pin PC3-8500 (1066 MHz) DDR3 SO-DIMM.
As has been pointed out, OWC is an excellent source for Mac compatible RAM. Crucial is another first rate source for Mac RAM. RAM from either vendor will work just as well as any purchased from Apple with the bonus of being less expensive and having a lifetime guarantee.
Ciao.

Can I upgrade my solid state hard drive on an air?

I have a 128 Gig Air. Can I swap out the solid state drive and increase storage to 256 Gigs?

When you are interested in actually doing it, you can buy from OWC, Here.
They also have videos that guide the installation of such.
Understand that it is an unanswered question as to whether the upgrade might violate Apple's warranty policies on your machine.

Recounting My Successful Experience Upgrading My Solid State Hard Drive

I just successfully upgraded my solid state hard drive from
60 gigabytes to 256 ; the machine is a Lenovo T400s - while the upgrade is
still fairly fresh, I thought I’d share my experience – maybe someone else will
benefit – most of what I’m about to relay was provided by Zoltanthegypsy and
GMAC-R60 – I thank them again for their advice - but I will try to add some
additional thoughts based on my experience – for the most part I was able to
use the tools provided by Lenovo – my original hard drive had 3 partitions, S
(system), C ( windows + my programs & data), & Q ( Lenovo stuff like
backup and restore, the factory copy, etc.) :
Create a “factory state” copy of the machine to
DVD or CD soon after purchase – I say soon after purchase because it appears that
a minimum amount of hard disk space is required – my 60 gig was almost full and
I got a message that there wasn’t enough space – I can still make the copy but
I’ll have to move some things off temporarily – this step isn’t really related
to the upgrade but it is a good idea – Start/Lenovo ThinkVantage Tools and you’ll see
the option – and as Zoltanthegypsy has pointed out you will most likely not be
able to do this from the new hard drive after the restore operation covered
below – I haven’t proven this out but I do know that my Q space on the new
drive is smaller than before – something was lost and it’s most likely the
factory state – and so keep the old hard drive long enough to make that factory
state copy to DVD or CD.
The next step was a full backup to a Lenovo
external hard drive – it came with one partition - the external that I got from
Lenovo has a small keypad and is password enabled – this fact will come into
play further on – as GMAC-R60 noted a pop-up will appear giving the option to
create rescue media – you want to select this option so that the external will be
bootable.
When the backup is complete you want to swap hard
drives making sure to first unplug & remove the battery .
There may be other ways to do this next step but
here’s what I did – I powered on the machine and let it go through what
appeared to be a BIOS routine – note that my external was attached to the
laptop but it wasn’t activated by keying in the password – after the BIOS
routine was finished I activated the external by typing in the password and then
did a Control/Alt/Delete – the machine restarted and booted from the external –
with hindsight I probably could have connected & activated the external
before powering on but the instructions that came with the external suggested
something different which didn’t work for me .
I was now able to go into rescue and recovery
and do a complete restore to the new drive – but to my surprise the extra space
that I bought with the new drive ended up all in the Q partition – and Windows
Disk Management didn’t enable me to reallocate the space to C.
And so I purchased Disk Director 11 Home by
Acronis – a $50.00 investment in a tool that I’ll probably never use again but
I’m now able to use an $800 solid state drive rather than trying to recoup some
money via Ebay -– within minutes I was able to reclaim the space and I now have
enough C space to last the lifetime of the laptop – especially since all
pictures go on a stick & my demographic isn’t into video games .
One useful piece of information that I got from
a user on the Acronis forum was that all of the Lenovo tools like rescue and
recovery, etc. are available for download from the Lenovo website – and so if worse
came to worse I could have deleted that Q partition, stretched C using Windows
Disk Management , and then downloaded the Lenovo tools into C.
One thing I’d like to learn to do would be to
perform all the steps outlined above but without using the Lenovo tools – using
Windows 7 tools instead but not having a Windows CD , i.e. how do you boot

It went something like this:
(On the stock drive)
Plugged in a blank USB HDD, and a blank USB flash drive.
- HDD formatted in NTFS, flash drive in FAT16.
Ran the recovery media creator.
- Created bootable media on flash drive, and put the recovery image on the HDD.
Once done, shutdown, removed the battery, swapped the drive for a 500GB Scorpio Black (freshly NTFS quick-formatted). USB HDD and flash drive were still attached.
Booted, and used F12 to select the flash drive for booting.
It booted into the Windows Recovery Environment and I chose the Lenovo restore factory image option at the bottom of the list.
From there on out, I just clicked through the wizard, and it restored.
Upon finishing, I unplugged all of the external media, and had it restart. It then booted into OOBE as expected.
W520: i7-2720QM, Q2000M at 1080/688/1376, 21GB RAM, 500GB + 750GB HDD, FHD screen
X61T: L7500, 3GB RAM, 500GB HDD, XGA screen, Ultrabase
Y3P: 5Y70, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, QHD+ screen

Solid State Hard Drive Upgrade - Anyone?

Has anyone upgraded their original MacBook Pro to a Solid State Hard Drive? If so, how time consuming was it and what equipment did you use?
Thanks!

Hi Robert
I was able to find the Video for you please find the link given below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4n78ipOeLs
Let us know how it goes!
"I work for HP."
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****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
Regards
Manjunath

Solid State Drive Upgrade Questions

Hello!!
I'm looking at removing the optical drive (recently deceased) from my MacBook Pro as I rarely use it and can use my friend's external one for the rare occasions I'd need it, and replacing it with a second hard drive. I've heard that this port can't reliably handle 6Gbps speeds so I'm going to put my 1TB mechanical drive in place of the optical drive and put a 64GB solid state in as the "main" drive.
My intention is as you might expect, to use the SSD for OS X and applications.
My first question, is what folders do I need to copy onto that SSD? I'll be using Carbon Copy Cloner to do this task. Do I have to select every folder on the source drive and just unticking any media and data that I'm going to keep on the mechanical 1TB?
When I have the two drives installed, where will my 1TB data appear? Will it still show up in Finder as it does with a single drive, or will appear as another storage device as if it were external? If it's as another device, can I make OS X make it look like everything is on the same drive?
I don't know a huge amount about this stuff, I know enough to do the copying and changing of hardware but not that much about working with OS X in Terminal or anything like that so please be patient if I ask lots of "How to" questions If there are online guides already answering my questions it'd be great to have some links, I've had a hard time finding them!
Thanks

Solid state drives have yet to become a worthwhile venture as their use in high end computing has not yet been proven. One of the biggest problems with SSD's is the fact that they cannot come to par with traditional drives in terms of random write speeds. Most people take a performance hit with these types of drives except for the exception of one company, which has gotten speeds up to traditional drive speeds.
However, sequential read and write speeds are marginally faster than traditional drives, which gives u a boost on boot, which is noticably faster. For most business users, the upgrade to an SSD will not yield any tangible results except when transferring bulk files back and forth, at which point one would notice a significant performance hit. Regarding battery life, the first time I used a SSD, it didn't help with battery life at all that was noticable. However, it was well worth the upgrade as it made the laptop literally silent and cool. It's surprising how much sound hard drives make these days ....
My two cents is that the SSD is really an expensive looks-only aesthetic mod but in terms of CG heavy users - not worth it yet unless you can run it in RAID 0 or 5 with 4+ drives, bringing performance quite up to par. At that point, a desktop machine running RAM drives from Gigabyte might even be better....
Message Edited by singularity2006 on 02-19-2008 03:48 PM
T61_Wide | Model No. 7662 - CTO
Core 2 Duo T7250 | 2GB OCZ DDR2-800
82566MM Gigabit | 4965AGN Centrino Pro

T61 and Solid State Drive Upgrade -- Questions

Solid State Drive prices are going southwards, and I am tempted to explore the possibility of upgrading the existing internal hard drive with a solid sate one (as and when 128 GB SSD become available) in my T61.
My questions are:
1. Is it possible to upgrade to these devices?
2. Would there be any gain in battery life? How much is it likely?
3. Would there be any performance gain?
4. What are the pitfalls?
Sushil
Sushil
ThinkPad T61, (7658CTO), T7500, Integrated Graphics, 320 GB HDD, 3 GB RAM, 1 GB Intel Turbo Memory, Vista (32 bit) Business

Solid state drives have yet to become a worthwhile venture as their use in high end computing has not yet been proven. One of the biggest problems with SSD's is the fact that they cannot come to par with traditional drives in terms of random write speeds. Most people take a performance hit with these types of drives except for the exception of one company, which has gotten speeds up to traditional drive speeds.
However, sequential read and write speeds are marginally faster than traditional drives, which gives u a boost on boot, which is noticably faster. For most business users, the upgrade to an SSD will not yield any tangible results except when transferring bulk files back and forth, at which point one would notice a significant performance hit. Regarding battery life, the first time I used a SSD, it didn't help with battery life at all that was noticable. However, it was well worth the upgrade as it made the laptop literally silent and cool. It's surprising how much sound hard drives make these days ....
My two cents is that the SSD is really an expensive looks-only aesthetic mod but in terms of CG heavy users - not worth it yet unless you can run it in RAID 0 or 5 with 4+ drives, bringing performance quite up to par. At that point, a desktop machine running RAM drives from Gigabyte might even be better....
Message Edited by singularity2006 on 02-19-2008 03:48 PM
T61_Wide | Model No. 7662 - CTO
Core 2 Duo T7250 | 2GB OCZ DDR2-800
82566MM Gigabit | 4965AGN Centrino Pro

Upgrading laptop hard drive to solid state drive. (i am a noob)

So my laptop (HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook PC) was running slowly for around 6 months, i had enough so i went to the store and upgraded my ram from 4 gb to 8 gb thinking this would fix the problem but the guy told me that my hard drive was slow because it is dting, we talked about what i can do to fix the problem and he said that i should get a new hard drive, he told me that i should get a solid state drive as it fails dramatically less than a regular hard drive and is much faster. I just wanted to know what kind of hard drive i should get, as i dont want to buy an incompatible hard drive. Also if anyone could reference me to some good online stores that would be awesome, thanks for your time.

Yes the 500 will work fine. Just go to the second link in my post above, for the 250gig Samsung 840 Evo, and over to the right are links to get the 500 gig version and even the 750 and 1 TB. See the little gray boxes? The 500 gig is about $315.
Hard drive replacement instructions start on Page 54 of this Manual:
Manual
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Solid State Upgrade

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