Macbook Pro with hard drive or flash storage?

Hi Kate,

To be honest I think that upgrading your old MacBook isnt something that I would do unless you absolutely cannot afford to get a new Mac.

Several things to note.....

First off, your MacBook is the last of the Core 2 Duo systems. All computers since them have been either Core i5 or Core i7 Processors which are considerably faster.

Also your SATA controller on your MacBook is only SATA II. When you look at most SSD drives they are SATA III and the speeds that are claimed are when connected to a SATA III controler. When used in your Mac they would run at about half the advertised speeds. So on average most SSD's in your MacBook will run at about 200MB/Sec transfer speed Unless you go with the OWC drive that are optimized for your Mac. Then a 960GB SSD which would give you better speeds, runs about $650. In the current line of MacBook Pros the Flash Storage transfers files at 1.2GB/Sec which is 5 to 6 times the speed.

Also, if you were to get one of the newer Macs with Solid State Storage then you will also be getting a retina display. Only thing I can say about them is once you use one, you would never want to use a non retina display. Especially when doing photography.

Another advantage of the newer Macs are that they have USB 3.0 as well as Thunderbolt. When working with large files the transfer speeds on these will greatly benefit you.

So to get the maximum useage out of your MacBook, it will run you over $850 which is more than 1/3rd the cost of a new 13" retina MacBook Pro with 1TB Flash Storage, and you will have less than half the performance of the newer MacBook Pro as well.

With all of this, if you can afford to get a new MacBook Pro, that is what I would recommend.

Just my 2¢

Are you shopping for a used machine? If not, I don't see anything in Apple's current MacBook Pro lineup that includes a real hard drive. They all have SSD storage. I don't see any option to "upgrade" to a hard drive, either, only a larger SSD.

My personal preference is for a good, fast hard drive. Although it's true an SSD is faster, they're also much more expensive per gigabyte than a traditional hard drive. I recently bought a 1 TB 7200 RPM hard drive for just under $100 (before shipping and tax). In contrast, Apple will charge you $500 to upgrade to a 1 TB SSD in a new machine, and the online store where I bought my hard drive charges more than $600 for an SSD that is almost 1 TB. But, what can you do... it seems that the option to choose is not being offered anymore.

So, that being the case, your choice in a new machine comes down to whether to pay to upgrade your SSD to a larger one, or whether to stick with a smaller SSD and get a cheaper large external hard drive. Compact, portable external hard drives can be had very cheaply, but still, a frequent need for a thing dangling off a port on your sleek laptop isn't very attractive.

For photography, a solution like Melophage's might be the best. Keep your current MacBook Pro but get its RAM and disk configured properly for photography. It is not that old, but 2GB RAM is very minimal for just running OS X, not to mention running a photography app on top of that.

I would recommend keeping your current Mac but adding the maximum amount of RAM for your model and put in a big SSD. According to macsales.com, the RAM could cost $100-200 depending on your model but will be well worth it. Since your 250GB hard drive is full, you could get an SSD double the size of yours for as little as $260 on Amazon or Newegg. Note that the reviews for the linked SSD include some from MacBook users. That would be a total of under $500 for a gigantic increase in performance and drive space for the model you have now. Getting a 1TB SSD (4x the drive space you have now) would only cost another $190 or so on top of that.

Since your current storage is full, you should get the new drive, clone your entire current drive to it, install it, and then run the system upgrade since you'll then have the extra space to do it.

Kate,

If you are going to get a new MacBook Pro, I would recommend getting one with Flash storage vs a Hard Drive. AIso, unless your doing video editing you really dont need the MBP that has dual video cards. The battery life will be longer if you get one with just the Iris Pro card installed.

SunnyKate,

which model MacBook Pro do you currently have, and which version of OS X is installed on it? You might find that maximizing its RAM and installing an internal SSD will speed it up enough to not have to purchase a new MacBook Pro. Its current slowness might also be due in part to the particular combination of third-party software you have installed on it — for example, antivirus software can be the cause of dramatic slowdowns.

SunnyKate,

you should be able to replace the hard disk in your MacBook with one with larger capacity, or with a SSD (which stands for “solid state disk”) if your work is disk-bound. As thomas_r. notes, the price of a 1 TB hard disk is far cheaper than a new MacBook Pro would be; a 1 TB SSD would cost a fair bit more than $100, but would still be a bargain compared to a fully loaded new laptop. Since you have 2 GB of RAM and Mavericks installed, you would definitely improve your MacBook’s performance by upgrading its RAM also; that “RAM starvation” is probably the primary cause of its slowness. If your MacBook is a 2.4 GHz Mid 2010 model, then it can hold up to 16 GB of RAM (two 8 GB modules).

kevin_ wrote:

Hi Kate,

Also your SATA controller on your MacBook is only SATA II. When you look at most SSD drives they are SATA III and the speeds that are claimed are when connected to a SATA III controler. When used in your Mac they would run at about half the advertised speeds.

That is incorrect, although the bus speed of Sata 2 is half that of Sata 3 the drives can not in general reach those speeds.

The Samsung 840 Pro has a maximum rate of 4.1 Gb/s, (520MB/s) a real world speed of 2.5 to 3Gb/s is to be expected. A Sata 2 bus is 3Gb/s so the drive would hardly be affected at all. The performance of an SSD (and I have recently put an 840 into a 2010 Macbook, as well as installing 16GB of Ram in it) makes a considerable improvement in overall performance of the machine.

SunnyKate wrote:

I use and need a LOT of storage space.

However you are, or are about to make the SINGLE most common and WORST mistake everyone makes,

1. thinking their computer is a data storage device. iTS NOT

2. falsely thinking their data is safe either A: on the SSD/ HD or B: on a single external HD.

See here, and dont ever let that occur again to yourself:

Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection

The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be

Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and stored away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.

Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.

Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.

Many hundreds of millions of hours of work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can be avoided by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless thousands of people each year have come to regret.

Countless people think they're safe and doing well having a single external backup of their vital data they worked months, years, and sometimes decades on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Never let yourself be in situation of having a single external copy of your precious data at any time.

SunnyKate,

presuming that that repair shop knows what they’re doing, they’ll be perfectly capable of upgrading your MacBook’s RAM and internal disk, cloning your current disk’s contents to the new disk, and upgrading the new disk to OS X 10.9.3.

there are 2 peaks, as you well know.

same as for human beings.

If they make it for a "while"......its usually ok.

.......and then they all slide downhill.

same as humans. "infant mortality with HD" google it.

SunnyKate wrote:

I use and need a LOT of storage space.

However you are, or are about to make the SINGLE most common and WORST mistake everyone makes,

How do you know that? Needing and using a lot of storage space does not in any way imply that the stored data isn't backed up. It's good to remind people to back up, but not when you present that message in a way that is accusatory and unnecessarily long, and thus is going to annoy the reader and make them stop reading.

SunnyKate wrote:

I lost too many photos and files when I was a PC user to ever be careless about that again.

Thats good, PC or Mac, a hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive. They all fail.

2 is 1, and one is none.

Obviously I wasnt "accusing" you of anything. 😉

I however have seen too many people over many years , lose YEARS worth of work, all for lack of another 2 hard drives at a value of about $120

Even though YOU arent making that error, it still is THE most common mistake folks make. 😊