Late 2008 Unibody Macbook--SSD?

The fiance has an oldish Late 2008 Unibody Macbook (before they rebadged them into Pros...) that I'm looking to breath some life into. It's a real dog and I was thinking I might put a 120GB SSD into it. She's already upgraded to Lion so that should help, but...

I keep finding SSDs are notoriously finicky in Macbooks. I have found many people complaining the most popular models (Crucial M4, OCZ Vertex) will not work in a Macbook of this vintage.

Are there any drives that are known to work well with this machine? If it had an SSD she could probably get 3 or more years out of it, but it's a total dog with the old hard drive.

Thanks for any help.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Late 2008

Posted on Mar 21, 2012 7:32 PM

48 replies

RaKh241

Level 1

0 points

Nov 16, 2015 4:51 AM in response to scouzer

Hey guys, i would be really glad if someone could help me. My english is not the best but i think u understand what my problem is.

So i wanted to upgrade my macbook late 2008 with an SSD. I already got 4 gb of ram in it. I bought the PATRIOT Blast with 240 gb which should work with macbooks. Because the macbook is that old i wanted to set it up new. I made a bootable usb stick which all worked well. I put the ssd in an USB case and connected it to the macbook. Then i installed os x from the usb stick to the ssd (all by usb).

Everything worked fine but only if the ssd is connected by usb!!! By usb the macbook boots very fast and easy but when i connect the ssd with the sata cable, it starts but nothing happens, only the apple logo and a full loading bar...

When i press "alt" after starting tone, i can boot via ssd and the recovery partition... So everything looks good but why isn't it working? 😟

I also resetted pram or how it is called: pressing option + cmd + p + r.

Any ideas what could cause the problem? Is the sata cable not working with the newest ssd's? But it should be downgradable and i mean, the macbook is recognizing the ssd but only boots when it's connected via usb.

wk1603

Level 1

8 points

Mar 12, 2016 5:46 AM in response to RaKh241

Hi everybody,

can someone tell me whether this drive Samsung MZ-75E250B/EU EVO 850 interne SSD 250GB

will work in an MB unibody late 2008 and whether it would fall back to SATA II or I ?

Many thanks,

May 10, 2016 8:09 PM in response to SeaPapp

Hey Mike,

I'm considering purchasing the OWC Mercury 3G. I have a late 2008 macbook. I am also running Yosemite and reading your threads made me worried about the installation process. I'm not techie AT ALL and I'm wondering if I should change OS systems before I install the SSD. I also spoke with OWC and they said running on Yosemite is not a problem... and I haven't seen any other threads about the issue with Yosemite. What's your take? I know this thread is a bit old, but hopefully you'll read this. : )

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Late 2008 Unibody Macbook--SSD?