Does my macbook pro 2011 support SATA 3 ?

Yes, your 2011 model supports SATA III with full 6/GB speed.

I've upgraded both my internal drive and my RAM. I'm using a Crucial m4 513GB SSD and have 16GB of Corsair RAM. The most that has actually ever been in use at any one time, from my glimpse on Activity Monitor is 13GB or so. So, yes, your MBP can address the full 16 GB.

BTW - the Intel 520 480GB at Amazon seems very expensive. Have you looked at the Crucial m4 series? The 512GB is much less expensive than the Intel and works just fine - and fast - in Mac's. Is there a particular reason that you want the Intel 520 series?

Good luck - call back with any questions.

Clinton

From the TRIM Enabler website - "Trim is a command that is executed in the background by the operative system when you delete files, informing the SSD that the blocks are no longer in use and can be deleted. By doing this, the SSD can avoid slowing down future write operations to those blocks."

In my opinion, neither the OWC Extreme nor the Intel 520 series is worth the extra money. While they both post fast read/write speeds, I don't think that the speed bumps would be noticeable to the user and thus not worth the extra cash. You can get the Crucial m2 512GB at Amazon for under $400, while the Intel is close to $800 and the OWC Mercury Extreme is $660. I don't see a $260-400 difference in the drives. And there are a number of use around here that have the Crucial m4 series drives and are quite happy with them.

If you can show me test benchmarks that show that the Intel 520, for instance, would be twice as fast as the Crucial in real-world computing, then I might bite my tongue. But I don't think that you're going to find that's the case. It's not a 12Gb/s drive and your computer doesn't have a 12Gb/s bus. I'm just saying that, were it me, I'd buy a less expensive drive that offers pretty much the same bang for the buck.

Just my 2¢...

Clinton

This is an old thread, but since its coming up high on "2011 Macbook SATA III" searches, I think this would help:

Not all 2011 models support SATAIII, at least not in the optibay. I just had an issue with this, SATA III drive installed in optibay, with weird errors: OSX couldn't mount/format the drive, while Windows could format, but write speed was around 500K/s.

Can I install a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB hard drive in my MacBook pro 13 inch late 2011

Hi,

I am operating a MacBook Pro late 2011 - 13 inch iOS 10.12 and would like to upgrade my internal Hard drive from a 500 GB HDD to a 1 TB SSD.

Details of the Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB SATA3 (6 GB/s) SSD hard drive here :

http://www.laptopdirect.co.za/Samsung-SAMSUNG-MZ-75E1T0BW-p-112718.php

Please note that I'm also upgrading my ram to 2x 4 Go and would like to use my 1 TB internal hard drive to its full potential.

Could you please tell me if this is possible and if not what are my best options.

Thxs for your time,

Talla06

I had the same issue. I was using a second HDD in the DVD drive bay for my lightroom library. Most of the time it was ok, but if I was transferring a large amount of data, the drive would unmount. I think that was a result of it having an opportunity to spool up to a speed higher than the bus could handle. I put the DVD drive back in and threw the HDD in an external case. Not as elegant of a solution, but it's not causing problems any more.