Or would it make more of an impact to replace the original hard drive with a solid state drive. I would probably install a 500GB drive, although I don't think I'm having a problem with storage (500GB out of 750GB). Should I do both? Any thoughts?

Place the tiny little screws in a bowl so they don’t roll off your desk and get lost in your carpet. Watch out for static electricity. After you watch the guides, if all this seems too risky or scary for your skills and personality, find a buddy who has done it before — or have your local computer store do it for you.

Get up to 6x the capacity and 106x the speed of the original MacBook Pro factory drive. Includes free DIY installation videos to make upgrading easy. OWC Solid State Drives MacBook Pro. Select your MacBook Pro model Change Mac model. MacBook Pro 13', 15' & 17' 2011. Drive options up to 2.0TB +Up to 2 x Drives Inside! Forums Macs Notebooks MacBook Pro. SSD upgrade questions on late 2011 MBP. Discussion in 'MacBook Pro' started by msdarkroom, Jul 9, 2012. There are many, many solid state drives out on the market and which one to get really depends on a number of factors- Reliability, speed and cost.

Once you’ve swapped the drives, hold Command (⌘) and R down on the keyboard when first restarting your SSD-equipped Mac. This will enable you to use Disk Utility to format the SSD. If your Mac can run macOS High Sierra or later, choose APFS formatting for the SSD; otherwise, choose Mac Extended + Journaled formatting. Then restore directly from your Time Machine backup. The restoring process will take hours, but you’ll come back to a fresh macOS install with everything pretty much as it was left on your old drive.

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I do have a Windows computer but it’s old and slow, even if I got a new Windows laptop that still means two laptops to carry. So if I can get Windows running on the Mac faster than it runs on my old PC it’s a win-win, that was a big reason for this whole upgrade process. I didn’t want the hassle of rebooting into Windows, I want it to run as a Mac app, so that means is out. Was recommended to me but it would not recognise any graphics card and limited the RAM I could allocate. Next I tried and it was better in every way: from the GUI to the speed, the way it puts apps in your dock like Mac icons, the way it mounts your Windows C drive in Finder, the ease of transferring from the old PC this is a great app! I allocated half the RAM (4GB) and half the CPU cores (2) to the Windows drive and VisualStudio on the Mac now runs about four times faster than it runs on my PC!

Also Read: Step 2: Disassemble the Hard Drive: Once your system is properly shut down, you need to remove the back cover of your MacBook Pro by unscrewing the screws. Once the back cover is removed, you may see dust all around internal parts of the machine. It happens because you can’t clean it inside on a regular basis. Start cleaning it gently with a soft brush or by blowing air.

Be informed that it might take longer than usual to boot up for the first time. However, it would be faster from the next time. Once you see the home screen, congratulate yourself for doing it yourself instead of going to the store and buying a new one. Taking everything into account, you can observe that it is too easy to replace the hard disk to an SSD of your MacBook Pro. Doing this would not only save you some good amount but also trains you at DIY. Now that you’ve got the old hard disk with you, you may either place it somewhere or use it as an external hard drive to get extra space.

You can also to an external drive. Cloning is complementary to backup methods like Time Machine, and I encourage you to do so if you have extra portable drives.

I can't stress this enough. You are absolutely right, most of the steps seem to be optional and can be avoided. What I'm showing here is good work ethics, and your job is to skip steps you think are unnecessary. You sound like a person who knows all these tools and how to use them, but for some people this info can be useful. With all due respect, I strongly disagree with your comment about NOT using loctite. In most cases it's not a good idea, but with these unibody macs -- absolutely necessary. I deal with hundreds of these guys due to the nature of my job, and I see these machines with loose/lost screws all the time.

During this time, your MacBook may appear to be a bit sluggish.

We'd love to hear which drive you chose and how your MacBook Pro functioned afterward. Updated: Mar 24, 2018.

In our past Solid State Drive Roundup, we found that the performance offered by SSDs is nothing short of phenominal. Apple, a company that prides itself in its focus of customer experience knows this, and as a result offers the availability of SSDs across it's Mac computing product line. However when looking at its MacBook Pro line, the cost of configuring an Apple built-to-order SSD powered notebook is steep. Apple offers 128GB, 256GB and 512GB SSD storage upgrades at the prices of $200, $600 and $1200 respectively (as per the Apple Store in Canada). But the cost of getting an SSD in your MacBook Pro (or any other Mac) doesn't have to be so high. This article is split up into two sections: the first showing you how easy it is to upgrade your hard drive based Mac to an SSD, and the second helping you pick which SSD to buy.

Fortunately, MacBook Pros from 2012 and before are compatible with 2.5-inch SATA drives which most SSD manufacturers provide. Best SSD for MacBook Pro: 5 Great Choices in 2019 For general users who prefer a cheaper yet high-capacity SSD, is my top pick, followed.

It’s chock-full of information about how SSDs work, what technology individual manufacturers employ, and includes not only a ‘buyer’s guide’ but an almost endless thread containing users experiences. Beware, though, as it is primarily geared towards Windows users. Still, that shouldn’t stop you from reading much of the information there.

SATA I has link speeds of 1.5Gb/s and SATA II, 3Gb/s. For SATA 3 purposes, I'll be discussing SATA 3 drives for the optimum performance for your system. There are many, many solid state drives out on the market and which one to get really depends on a number of factors- Reliability, speed and cost. All SSD's have no moving parts, thus consuming less battery life and making them quieter, and in most cases, make them more reliable *cough* OCZ Vertex *cough*. Here is a useful article to read- It covers speeds and cost. For reliability, it's best to read reviews on amazon.

Using ) • The new SSD must first be formatted using Disk Utility (as “ Mac OS Extended Journaled“) • Then subsequently create a fully bootable 1:1 copy of your hard drive to the SSD with. (This process may take several hours). Option 2: OS X reinstall and restore the backup • Before making any modifications create a backup via Time Machine for later restore. Word for mac block quote. • Create a bootable OS X recovery stick () • Now the new SSD have to be installed in the MacBook Pro (introduction see installation) • After the SSD is installed into the MacBook, insert the USB flash drive.

After you watch the guides, if all this seems too risky or scary for your skills and personality, find a buddy who has done it before — or have your local computer store do it for you. Revel in the speed and snappiness of your newly revitalized MacBook or MacBook Pro! Oh, one more thing: If you’ve got 4GB of memory, consider upgrading to 8GB while you’ve got your case open: Here’s. The combination of at least 8GB with an SSD is fantastic and will give you plenty of oomph to get you through another year or two, especially as you upgrade Mac OS X as Apple releases new versions. (If you have to choose one upgrade, though, go with the SSD.) Get the Gear: • SSD —,, or • Enclosure — • Software — •.

OWC’s Aura/Aura Pro series for this particular MacBook Air has had weaker reviews, but a for the same computer can be had for. IFixit’s guides for this and are here. • Fourth-generation MacBook Airs (11-inch and 13-inch, sold starting mid-2012) should go with the models (,, ), which promise 460-570MB/second speeds. iFixit’s guides for this and are here. • Fifth-generation MacBook Airs (11-inch and 13-inch sold starting early 2013) switched to faster PCIe SSDs. Transcend’s soon-to-be-released is compatible with these and current MacBook Air models, promising up to, and 240GB/$230, 480GB/$400, and 960GB/$670 capacities. How easy is installation?

Reading and Writing Speed Every disk drive is rated with a certain set of speed that describes how fast it can read and write files. The range of a good product usually stays between 500MB/s and 550MB/s. The higher these numbers are, the better. Please note that the advertised numbers are not representative of real-world conditions though, in which you'll probably experience speed about two-thirds of those rated. Memory Type - MLC and SLC SSDs have two types of memory: multi-level cell and single-level cell.