SSD Noob looking to upgrade MBP mid 2009.

Just got a mint condition 13inch mid 2009 MBP. It had 4gb upgrade from previous owner and I just upgraded to 8gb. Currently it has a 160gb at 5400rpm HD and now I want to upgrade that. I'm looking for at least a 200gb SSD. Now I have very little knowledge about SSDs. Basically want to know what the most reliable SSD is, and best prices. Reliability over price, but not trying to pay an outrageous price. And I don't care about the best performance SSDs, as long as it out performs 7200rpm drives, that good enough for me. Also, I'm running Lion & Win7 on it.

Oh yea, Are Hybrid Drives worth it. Do they R/W much quicker than 7200rpm drives by a huge margin or just a little?

Any help with this would be appreciated.

 

Get the Intel 510. It's the only SSD for which I've never heard of any issues. It does come at a much higher price than the competition, but I'm not sure what your definition of "outrageous" is

As for hybrid drives, there is no advantage to writes as the cache is read-only. As for reads, it depends on what you do. If your needs are basic (e.g. web surfing and iTunes) then it's great. If you frequently use many large programs or data sets, then it's ineffective.

 

LIVEFRMNYC,

Peon's suggestion is right on. However, while not owning a MBP, unfortunately, I cannot speak from experience, but in addition to the Intel 510, I have seen plenty of people posting about placing a Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 in the machine w/ success. Take a look around at those vendor related support forums for your research. That may hint if there are any addt'l problems you may encounter.

BTW, if you do go w/ an SSD (which will be non-Apple), make sure you download / install Trim Enabler for OS X 10.7 to enable TRIM for the drive.

In regards to the Momentus XT, while having the older generation of this drive, it works great for all kinds of files and libraries (again as Peon stated). However, check out the Seagate forums, there were some minor complaints about a high pitch whine and some additional "beach balls" (wait cursor, if you will), but I think that all died down with the last Firmware update (SD28). I would guess the same would be true regarding the newer 750GB Momentus XT as well.

HTH

 

Thanks, will look into the Intel 510. The price is not outrageous at all. I see it going for a little over $300. I seen some the go for $750 and up, mostly the 500gb and up drives.

I was also looking at the Crucial M4. With TRIM Enabler, does that apply to Windows 7 too?

 

OS X disables TRIM when it detects a third-party SSD, so that's why TRIM Enabler is needed.

On the other hand, Windows 7 automatically enables TRIM no matter what SSD you have, so there's no need to do anything special.

 

No. As Peon said, Trim Enabler is an OS X tool and controls how OS X treats files as they're deleted. In regards to Win 7, TRIM may or may not be enabled and it depends on when Win 7 was installed. If you setup Boot Camp w/ Win 7 while the SSD is installed, the install should turn it on. If however, you are somehow restoring an image where the Win 7 install was originally made with a platter based HDD, then it may not be enabled, and you may have other changes to make - disable defrag on the SSD, etc. There is an SSD tweak thread that discusses some of these other items.

Getting back to Win 7 TRIM, a quick way to check... if you run:

from an administrative command prompt within Win 7, if the return value is 0, then TRIM is enabled.

HTH

 

Cool thanks for that.