Best COMPATIBLE ssd for NVidia MCP79 chipset?

In case it might help someone, size of the SSD also matters, from my experience.

I have a mid 2009 macbook (6,1 model) with this problematic NVIDIA chipset.

I was able to use a Sandisk Plus 120GB at 3gb speed (SATA2) without any trouble.

A Samsung 250 Gb 850 Evo though is beach balling all the time.

And exactly the same Sandisk, but a 240gb rather than a 120gb model, does not want to be detected at all. In a USB enclosure it is fine, but not in the optical bay.

The 850 Evo in the optical bay is also unstable. (It installed fine but unusable after and is not detected at boot anymore. This was using El CApitan).

But the 120GB Sandisk is fine! Both Sandisks have the latest firmware. So there is something different in the 240gb model.

In summary, 120gb SSD detects fine, anything higher and even booting is a problem (could not even select a startup disk, it just hung).

Basically, you won't really know until you try, it seems, with this NVIDIA chipset!

muse77, yours is an interesting case and the first I've heard about beach balls. All I've read has indicated a stupid, foolish, idiotic slowdown from 3G to a painful 1.5Gb/s. Interestingly, you don't need a mounting bracket for your MBP6,1, which indicates that either the Samsung EVO 240 is bad (possible) or that wicked NVidia controller is more buggy than we thought. Why in THE world Apple chose that silly controller is beyond all my comprehension. In any case, you ought to test that SSD in something else or return it. It could be the SSD.

Apple chose that controller because it worked at the time. Those of us that have connected SSD's to our older macs are mixing new and old technology, sometimes that doesn't work well. My macbook with the Nvidia controller works perfect with a PRE Evo Samsung 840 250gb drive. When I installed it it was the single best computer upgrade I'd ever done, so good it gave me the incentive to open my iMac and install an SSD in it's optical bay. Don't blame Apple, it looks to me from reading this thread, and others, that it's the EVO drives that don't play well with the MCP79 controller which we know doesn't play well with Sandforce drives. Samsung changed "something" when they dropped the 840 line and introduced the EVO, I don't know what it is but their drives worked fine up until then.

It is not the Samsung 850 Evo per se! Like I said, the 240 gb Sandisk Plus is not recognised at all, whereas the Sandisk 120 Plus works fine.

So it is possibly a different controller on both the Samsung 850 and the Sandisk 240, or some other unknown issue.

In system report, under the Nvidia chipset, under the optical bay SATAII port, the system reported:

Unknown

That is very strange to me (this was for the Sandisk plus 240; a PRAM reset did not help either).

I am not disappointed about the EVo 850 too much, as that speed is wasted anyway, but am disappointed I cannot upgrade to higher than 120gb so far on Samsung nor Sandisk.

Anyway, I guess the key learning is to buy a drive you can test and return if needed!

Update: my beach balling was due to a bad Sata connector attached to the drive caddy. (The one that came from the original superdrive). I replaced it with a second hand one from Ebay and now all is well with the Sandisk drives! Have not tried the Samsung evo again but assume that would be ok too.

Another one that doesn't work: The Kingston HyperX Savage 480Gb (SHSS37A/480G) has a Phison S10 quad core controller. It works in a USB enclosure, but when I put it in my late 2009 27" iMac 10.1, I get write speeds of about 220Mb/sec and read speed close to 0 (zero). Booting off it is impossible. I've tried changing the Sata cable (and that procedure is a royal pain in the behind), but no change. Kingston support confirmed that this drive has issues with the Nvidia controller, and offered a return (good and fast service via email - kudos to Kingston for that), but a friend will take it off my hands for what I paid for it.

Crucial claims the MX200 should work in my Mac, so I'll try one of those...

As for finding Sata II drives these days - one of the biggest suppliers in Norway has none in their inventory, so it'll have to be a Sate III drive that works at II speeds. I'll report back on how the Crucial drive worked.

Johan-Kr

Hi johan-kristian, nice to hear that you decided to try out the MX200. Do you have any results as to whether the negotiated speed was consistently at sata 2 speeds? Reading through the 7 pages in this thread, I have learned a bunch about the intricacies of installing an ssd into the imac early 2009 (9,1) with the nvidia MCP79 controller.

In the end, I have concluded that the Crucial M500 will work but still dont know whether the MX200 actually works consistently as advertised by Crucial. In the end, I decided to go with OCW's Mercury Electra 3G SSD. I'll report back once I get that into the machine.

Let us know how MX200 fares in your imac with the dreaded nvidia MCP79! Thanks :-)

EDIT: Many of the current SSD's are listed here and show which controllers are used. I imagine that several of them (esp for the Samsung devices), the controller name is just a front for the much maligned SandForce controller...

Hi. It works!!! I´ve tried it in a Mid 2010 MacBook Pro 7,1 with a Nvidia MCP89 controller and it works at Sata II 3 Gb/s speed. At first I tried a OWC Mercury Extreme Pro with the SandForce controller and it worked at Sata I 1.5 Gb/s speed. In System Report Link Speed 3 Gigabit and Negotiated Link Speed 1.5 Gigabit. After that, I tried he Crucial MX200 and also the Crucial BX100. Sata II 3 Gb/s speed. Both. Link Speed 3 Gigabit and Negotiated Link Speed 3 Gigabit in System Report. I´m running Yosemite 10.10.5.

Thank you very much to all the people in this thread. Absolutely you all helped me. ¡¡¡Muchas gracias!!!

Thanks for the confirmation Johan! I had seen some posts indicating that the MX200 didnt work straight out of the box for the iMac version of the nvidia MCP79 controller which is why I was hesitant to pull the trigger. But thankfully, we know have a confirmation that the drive works. Thanks :-)

In conclusion, we now know that for iMac versions (such as 9,1) with the MCP79 controller, the proven SSDs to run at full SATA2 speeds (3gb/s) are:
1 Crucial --> M500

2 OCW --> Mercury Electra 3G

3 Crucial --> MX200

Hope this helps others that are in a similar position! Cheers to all :-)

Oops - it seems like I forgot to mention a little detail....

The drive I got was a BX200, not an MX200. According to Crucials site, the MX200 should also work. I figured the extra speed wasn't anything that my machine could make use of anyway, so I saved the $25 in extra cost for the MX.

I've also installed three Crucial MX100s for customers of mine. Two ordered the upgrades, and the third one was supposed to go in my machine, but a customer with a failed HDD needed an urgent fix, and that was what I had on hand.

When I got around to order myself a new one, I ran into these controller issues with the Kingston HyperX.

Johan-Kr

Ok, thanks!

EDIT

In conclusion, we now know that for iMac versions (such as 9,1) with the MCP79 controller, the proven SSDs to run at full SATA2 speeds(3gb/s) are:
1 Crucial --> M500

2 OCW --> Mercury Electra 3G

3 Crucial --> BX200

Possible compatibility:

1 Crucial --> MX200 (likely)

2 Crucial --> MX100 (unlikely)

3 Crucial --> BX100 (not recommended)

Hope this helps others that are in a similar position! Cheers to all :-)

I recently installed a crucial MX300 525G ssd (Hdd bay) on my iMac 9,1 20" 2.66Ghz iMac and the negotiated speeds where at SATA I speeds of 161 Mbps. I can't get it to do SATA II speeds. I'm running on the El Capitan 10.11.6

Looks like the new crucials are not automatically going to SATA II.

Same problem here.

Crucial MX300 installed in optical bay on a 10.1 late 2009 Imac with the MCP79 Chipset.

Link Speed: 3 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

I was just comparing the different SSD controllers on this site http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

If one of the earlier posts is correct and the following drives work at full SATA2, it was interesting to note that the

1 Crucial --> M500 uses the Marvell 88SS9187

2 OCW --> Mercury Electra 3G uses the JMicron 562

3 Crucial --> BX200 uses the Silicon Motion SM2256

Even though the root cause of these issues is with the MCP79 chipset, maybe using a drive that has a controller that plays nice with the chipset is the key?

The MX300 I have only achieves SATA1 and it uses the Marvell 88SS1074-BSW2

Might see if I can return the MX and swap to a BX series....

Hi Guys! for those attempting to also answer this question like myself in 2017- I can confirm other users success with Samsung Evo 850. Since swapping drives (was using a Sandisk plus and was only pulling 1.5 Gigabit), my Mini has consistently negotiated 3 Gigabit on AHCI version 1.2. speeds and read and writes are somewhere around 225-260mbps.

Currently running on a Mac Mini 3,1 A1283 early '09.

Have you found any solution for this ?

with iMac9,1 and MCP79 AHCI version 1.20 I have a Toshiba A100 SBFA10.3 and I have the same situation of you :
Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

Average Disk Speed Test with Black magic design

WRITE: 106 MB/s and READ 133.2 MB/s