Picking the Correct MBP HD Upgrade

Question

Picking the Correct MBP HD Upgrade

Hello,

I have a Mac Book Pro 15 inch early 2011 model.

My setup is:

2Ghz Intel Core i7

8GB 1333 Mhz DDR3

AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256MB

500.11 GB Hitachi HTS725050A9A362

I need more hard drive capacity! I do a lot of teaching. I have a separate VM for each subject that I teach. Traditionally I've carried all of my VM's on the hard drive. I want to implement an SSD. I'm thinking of getting an SSD drive and only housing the OS and a couple of Office apps on it. I will keep all of my VM's on an external storage device. I normally teach 2 different subjects during a semester. Depending on what I'm teaching for the current semester, I will move those VM's to the SSD. This will prevent having all of the VM's on the hard drive at all times. Which is my current practice.

My questions are as follows:

Will a Sata III SSD work in this laptop? If so, which models work best with this Apple hardware?

If I go with a non-SSD solution, any recommendations on which 1TB drive to use?

TIA,

Roger

Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jun 1, 2012 7:15 AM

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Answer 1

OGELTHORPE

Level 9

57,305 points

Jun 1, 2012 10:30 AM in response to rogerfrombowlinggreen

"Will a Sata III SSD work in this laptop? If so, which models work best with this Apple hardware?"

Yes. I don't know.

"If I go with a non-SSD solution, any recommendations on which 1TB drive to use?"

I personally would opt for the Samsung or HGST.

Look at the following page from the OWC website. Any of the SATA HDDs and SSDs will work with you MBP. I would call the OWC technical staff and get their thoughts on the SSDs. (SSDs currently are too expensive for my needs) I recommend them as a place to purchase mac compatible equipment. They may not have the rock bottom prices but they stand behind their wares and are most helpful when it counts.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/

Ciao.

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Answer 2

Jun 1, 2012 10:39 AM in response to rogerfrombowlinggreen

SSD Will work great with you MB and you'll notice some speed if you're planning on making it your main drive.

Although I am partial to OCZ, some models have issues with MB's. I had problems with the OCZ Vertex and OCZ blames my MB and not their drive. Installed another brand and it works great.

Sandisk, Crucial, Corsair and Kingston are some SSD's that works great with MB.

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