Has anyone installed Crucial M500 960GB SSD in a 2011 MBP?

Hello all.

So, my system is.....

Late 2011 MacBook Pro

OS X 10.8.4

16GB Ram

2.4GHz i7

I installed my new Crucial 960GB SSD in to the opti-bay with a OWC Data Doubler.

created a partitiion in disk utility then used Carbon Copy Clone to clone my original boot spinner.

I then changed my boot drive to be the ssd.

so...boot drive is ssd in the optibay!

now the problem is that it boots off the ssd slow

i have not yet done any of the optimizing steps, as i want to resolve this before i make the ssd my pernament boot drive.

so...called crucial tech, they said i should definatly move the ssd into where the hd is (swap them around so the hd is in the optibay, ssd in the normal drive position)

the reason i did not do this is that an apple specialist said not to....moving the hd out of that slot would disable the sensors that safely lift the needle if the hd /laptop gets knocked!

also....crucial tech said i DID NOT need trim enabled on the m500 series, aslong as 'once a month i boot holding the option key, and leave in this screen for a couple of hours. this allows system garbage collection on the ssd to be done'

so,

can ayone help here as to the best practce....what is/has worked for them....etc

in the short term i will swap the hd and ssd positions to test boot speed etc.

but any futher tweaks would be greatly appreciated

thanks in advance

Lawr

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UPDATE

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so, ran black magic speed test and get the expected 400mb/s read writes etc

forgot to mention that as well as slow to boot, the system 'hangs' and the old pinewheel makes an appearence!

also....both my slots say they are 6GB, BUT currently my hd (in its original position) has a Negitiated Link Speed of 3gb/s

where as the ssd is 6gb/s

and also.....so, swapped the drives internally,

boot time greatly increased......system not hanging......will let it go for now. but keep my old drive as my backup just in case!!!!!

anything else i should do peeps......?

That's because your orignal drive is probably only capable of SATA II / 3GBs. The SSD since it's SATA III / 6 GBs should be in the first slot where your HD was. Slower hard drive in the optical slot which was likely SATA II. Check your Mac's specs to be sure but most people in that range have a SATA III in one slot and SATA II in the other.

Thanks for the info...I'm ordering my Crucial M500 960GB SSD from TigerDirect today for my late 2011 17" Macbook Pro.

Here are a few questions:

• What are you doing for backup? (TimeMachine, etc.) I just purchased a 2TB external drive that I plan to for backups with TM
• What are your thoughts / impressions now that you've got a few weeks or so under your belt with this SSD?
• Any new issues with Crucial M500 960GB SSD that you've run into?

FYI - in my final analysis, this is the best option in my opinion for a MacBook Pro HD upgrade...after looking at cost for a hybrid drive that would spin at 7200RPMs..it was not that big of a jump to consider the Crucial M500 960GB SSD. Also, I was very frustrated with Frys, BestBuy, and TigerDirect - Seems anything for power computing must be ordered as they never have what I need at the store.

UPDATE: I ended up purchasing my M500 960GB SSD for my late 2011 Macbook Pro from http://provantage.com - they had the best price and no sales tax for purchases from Texas. Got it this morning and used Carbon Copy Cloner to format / partition drive and create the recovery partition as well. (plenty of articles out there covering that)

Interesting note...when i started Time Machine last week to back up my HD it took nearly 13-14 hours looks like I'll be done transferring data to SSD in about 9 hours over a USB 2 connection.

Also, when I first connected SSD to my MacBook Pro, it was not recognized when I used my SATA / IDE to USB 2 adapter, but when I put the SSD in an enclosure / USB 2 connected with no issues and I was able to partition the drive. Hoping to be done with this upgrade by 9-10PM this evenging.

I'm hoping that Crucial will start posting some performance tweaks / notes on their site as it would be nice to see them weigh in on best practices for Macbook Pro installation.

hello.

hope the new drive is working out for you.

My story so far.......

....had the drive in for almost two months now.....fairly painless install......i have my original 5400rpm 750GB HD in my opti-bay now and set it up as a time machine backup.

so far i have been happy.....its faster!...so does basically what i'd expected it to do!

ive found the fans to come on less now....when playback of HD on the old setup they would come on all the time...now there quieter.

There's been a bunch of posts about tweaking the system by doing commands in terminal!

i have held back from the overly complicated ones....all i have done is stopped the drive from sleeping.

Trim is apparently not needed to be enebled! (from the mouth of th Crucial Tech desk)

hope this helps?

I am SO CONFUSED NOW!!!

I'm almost to the point where my pennies have rebuilt enough so that I'll be able to purchase a larger capacity SSD... but now that the 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD has come out, I'm trying to decide between teh Samsung or the Crucial M500 960GB SSD. The Samsung tests very well on Windows machines but not so well on Macs. Looking at user reviews on the M500 it seems to be pleasantly fast but not just as fast as the Samsung.

My pennies won't hit the magic mark until November... so I've a few months to decide. I'm hoping that someone that has tried both the Crucial and the Samsung will pitch in here with some real world data to share!

Clinton

I am in the same boat as you. I have the Early 2011 17" MacBook Pro 8,3 modle and I am looking to add two SSDs using a data doubler. I have been torn between SSDs from OWC, Samsung and Crucial and while initially I heard great things about the Samsung 840 EVO, I have heard many bad things about how they interact with a lot of MacBook Pros. To me it is not worth my money to purchase the Samsung especially when I have read so many negatives on it. To me it seems as if the OWC are the most reliable however the 960gb is sitting at just under $1,000 now which is a lot especially when you see the M500 from Crucial sitting around $570. As of now I am leaning towards putting in two Crucial M500s 960gb in!

Semper_Fi_Mike,

A couple of things...

I wouldn't purchase the 960GB OWC drive for many reasons - the price, the fact that it's only rated for SATA II speeds, etc. Even if you do purchase two M500 960GB drives, one for your HD Bay, one for your optibay, you should be able to get 6Gbps speeds in the optibay and, even if you don't, SATA III drives are backward compatible with SATA II drives.

So in your case, I think that it's a no-brainer to go with the Crucial M500 series... that's what I'm getting.

Clinton

See thats where I'm getting confused because I understand that the 6Gbps M500 is backwards compatable with SATA II optibay but I have been reading in many forums that eventhough that is the case, the 6Gbps drives have been working more slowly in the optibay drives than the 3Gbps drives in the optibay because of some unknown mac issue which is making the 6Gbps drives revert to 1.5Gbps speeds yet the 3Gbps drives are working at full 3Gbps because they are optimized that way. Only saw this posted in one or two forums and when I spoke to a rep from OWC they confirmed this as well. Something to do with the specific modle year of macbook pro I have (early 2011 17" 8,3 modle).

Semper_Fi_Mike,

I've read before of folks being warned by OWC not to place a SATA III drive in the optibay on certain models... but I've not read of anyone actually having a problem with it. So, as far as I'm concerned, it's just hearsay only coming from OWC. Doesn't mean it's not true - OWC are very well known for actually testing products - only that I've never read here or on other boards that it's an actual problem.

That said, I would never install a SATA II drive in the HD bay... it just defeats the purpose of the SATA III connection there.

If I were you, I would order two SATA III drives - if the optibay drive doesn't give you a negotiated speed of 6.0Gbps then you can always return it (provided that you purchase it from a dealer that allows returns within a given period of time). You'll know very shortly after installing the drive is your negotiated speed is 6.0, 3.0 or 1.5 Gbps.

Just my 2¢...

Clinton

Hey I appreciate and your advice on this. I have had geat experiences with OWC in the past and know they do test their products but I do agree that I do not have enough "real user experience" that says it won't work. I think I will be going with the pair of Crucial M500 960s then!

One other question, just in case this does not work and I need to get the 3g for the optical bay... I am planning on setting up the two SSDs as RAID 0, to make one big drive near 2TB drive. Can I mix a 3g and a 6g drive in that config? I am assuming not...

I tried my crucial m500 on the optibay initially and booted from it. Really slow, I mean unusably slow. BUT who's not to say that the configuration you plan wouldn't yield better results. I think my problem just stems from havin the boot drive in the optibay. My oem hdd is a sata3 and ran at 6g when in its original position. Now it runs at 3G in the optibay. It's my time machine (as I mentioned before) I did not set up a raid situation and not sure if you can mix speeds. My (uninformed) guess would be it wouldn't work! I think some of the newer mbp had upgraded the optibay speed so they were both 6g. But good luck and post your findings here. Would be interesting to hear your outcomes.

Jeikeco I appreciate the input and I am glad to hear a first hand account of your experience with the M500 in the optibay. Just to update the forum here, I just got off the phone with technical support from both OWC and Crucial and they are in agreance that it is not a good idea to put a 6g SSD in the optibay for certain modles of macbook pros. Again mine is a 17" MacBook Pro, Early 2011 8,3 version. In this version the main HD has a SATA III connection while the optibay has SATA II. While the 6g drives say they are compatable with 3g SATA II connectors they both agreed that the drives can be finikey and revert to 1.5g speeds or lower. They also confirmed that if you are setting up two SSDs in a RAID 0 stripped config that both drives must be the same speed. It is because of this that I will be purchasing two of the OWC 3g drives, one in HD bay one in optibay and combining them with RAID 0 which should give me approximately 570MB/s. I wish I had one of the MacBook Pros that could take two 6g drives so I could get that theoretical 1000 MB/s through RAID 0 but that will have to wait!