Would Samsung 850 Pro would work in a Macbook Pro Mid 2010??

viersen,

I have a Samsung 840 PRO in my Mid 2010 MacBook Pro, and it works well. If you’d prefer the 850 PRO but have concerns about its functionality in your MacBook Pro, then purchase an 850 PRO from a company which has an acceptable return policy to you in case it doesn’t work well in your MacBook Pro.

Hello Viersen,

Your SATA II interface is the deciding factor. Paying more for a newer SSD will not give you any benefit because you are limited by the SATA II bandwidth. Even though a newer SSD can run at higher speeds, your computer cannot handle those speeds. It is like having 8 lanes of highway traffic merge and reduce to 4 lanes. Even though your car can go 200 miles an hour you are limited by the 8 lanes of traffic on four lanes. So price can be the determining factor in your case.

This article tells a little about the differences in SATA speeds and gives an example of how an SSD is limited by a slower SATA speed than the SSD was designed for.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,- sata-ii-and-sata-iii

Good Luck!

PS. The 840 pro will drop in price once the 850 pro hits the market.

Hello viersen,

I just finished installing a Samsung 850 Pro (512GB) on my mid 2010 MacBook Pro. My MBP has the same specs as yours: Model 6.2 with Intel Core i7 (2.66GHz), 8GB of RAM, and the dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M (512MB RAM). I also bought mine with the then-high-resolution-display of 1680x1050. Anyway, the SSD works great! It was actually quite easy to do the swap. I backed up my Mac on an external drive using Time Machine, I booted up the Mac with the new drive installed (using a boot up flash drive), formatted the new drive, installed Mavericks, and restored all my stuff from the Time Machine backup. The machine is considerably faster. Nevertheless, you are right. The mid 2010 MBP has a SATA II port of 3Gb/s that can only support a bandwidth throughput of up to 300MB/s. That said, instead of getting read/write speeds of up to 500MB/s (which the Samsung 850 Pro supports) you only get the maximum SATA II supports. It seems that my read/write speeds are consistently in the vicinity of 250 to 270MB/s (calculated using free "Blackmagic Disk Speed Test" app from the Mac App Store).

Here are my considerations. With the original drive (HDD 7200rpm) I was getting read/write speeds between 70 to 80MB/s... now I am getting over 3x that! So, even though the SATA II doesn't allow the Mac to use all the speed the SSD provides, you can technically say my Mac is 3x faster! And you can definitely tell it is 3x faster! So, the questions are:

1) Does the 850 Pro work on the mid 2010 MBP despite the limitations of its SATA II port?

Yes. SATA III is backwards compatible to SATA and SATA II. Nevertheless, when the SATA III (6Gb/s) is connected to a SATA II (3Gb/s) port, the drive can only reach up half the sequential read/write speed rates because SATA II only supports half of SATA III bandwidth throughput speeds.

2) Is it worth it to pay (as of today) $50 extra for the 850 Pro instead of saving those $50 and get the 840 Pro?

I think is worth paying the $50 extra and get the newest drive with the newest technology. The 840 Pro has 5 year limited warranty. The 850 Pro has a 10 year limited warranty. And although you probably won't have your mid 2010 MBP for that long, I'd rather have a drive that is rated for a longer life span. Besides, both drives (840 and 850) are SATA III.

I'd say, go for it! Get the Samsung 850 Pro! It works great!

By the way. I just wanted to add. It is important to make sure you enable TRIM support for the new drive when you install it. This will prevent premature failure on the SSD due to rewrites.

Dear Eckergus, did you install the ssd in the optibay or in the Hdd-bay? Did you enable trim? Did you create a fusion drive or did you left separate the two drives ?

kind regards,

barbanera

My MacBook Pro: - (15-inch, Mid 2009) - 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo - 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 - Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB

OS - Yosemite.........

I'df like to fit an SSD - and the 850 pro 512 GB the option I'm considering

Do you think it will be OK in My "Mid 2009" MacBook Pro?

I had a 7200 rpm 350 GB drive, when that failed I got a 1TB 5000 rpm drive and it is VERY cumbersome.

I'd like just to restore a bit of performance

widawake, viersen,

did you get this SSD?

I did (850 EVO 500 GB) recently, and ran into some terrible file-system corruption issues (new discussion/question) over the first 10 days - considering returning it. Not sure yet if the problems are gone (SSD working fine for 2 days now).

Waiting to see if the problems re-surface in another day or so of use, then I'll see whether to get a replacement (of the same type, or alternate manufacturer).

I installed the Samsung 850 Pro in my mid-2010 MacBook Pro (6,2) and it works beautifully. It's a little faster than the Toshiba SSD that came with my MacBook but as stated in this thread it is limited by the system speed. But when I get a new MacBook, I'll get the standard 512GB drive then swap in my 850 Pro. Saving me money and time.

Would Samsung 850 pro ssd drive ,work on macbook pro 17" mid 2010 2.53GHz intel core i5 ? Please help

Hi there

I'm planning to upgrade my macbook pro mid2010 with the 1TB evo 850 and read this discussion but how do you How do you make a boot flash drive?

thks

Regards

Hi Livin,

did you solve the issue terrible file-system corruption with your Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB ?

I'm planning to buy the Samsung 850 PRO EVO 512 to replace the HD of my MacBookPro 3,1 late 2006.

According the specifications of my SATA device ICH8-M AHCI it supports up to 15 GB/s.

The Samsung 850 PRO EVO 512 is SATA 6GB/s (compatible with STA 3GB/s and SATA 1.5 GB/s).

So despite at first it should work I'd appreciate to hear about your success.

Thanks .

I've had the same experience as Livin with my 850 EVO. I managed, once, to work for most of a week after upgrading then lost everything to file system corruption. Multiple attempts to re-install have all failed. I've replaced the internal SATA cable (which is reported to be a common problem on the mid-2010 MBP) with no change in outcome. I have other SSDs around but am not keen on losing their contents while I experiment with them.

It seems, recently, that problems start after powering off the computer. When starting up, the computer immediately has trouble with the drive and eventually powers off after being unable to repair the disk. Removing the SSD and attaching it via USB, even after a complete fail when connected internally, works fine; the drive is able to be checked, mounted, and accessed. Lots of files will have been dumped into lost+found from the failed disk repair at boot time, so I'm back to square one and my original HD. Restarts after the install seem okay, and I'm able to restore from backups and work for a while. When things go wrong, however, they go seriously, irrevocably wrong.

I've been working on this for a couple weeks now and haven't found anything that helps. I'm hoping a fix materializes in a firmware update for the SSD, or possibly from the mold growing in the back of my refrigerator.

Hi Kgirrard,

I experience the same problems as you and Livin: file corruption, kernel panics and eventual SDD failure for my Samsung 850 EVO.

My 15" Macbook Pro is a mid-2009 model (2.53ghz, 4GB RAM & Nvidia Geforce 9400 256MB) and I replaced my HDD with the 850 EVO a few months ago. At first, I simply cloned my existing HDD (running Snow Leopard) into the SDD and it started to give me problems after a couple of days. Lots of "beachballs", kernel panics, lost+found files and then it stopped booting after a week. I've tried clean installing several OSX (Lion and Yosemite) and they both failed after approximately a week or so. There doesn't seem to be any new firmware for the 850 EVO on Samsung's website and I'm completely stumped. So far, I haven't been able to isolate the root of the problem... I wonder if this is caused by an incompatibility between the 850 EVO and the old MBP models.

Two days ago, I gave the 850 EVO another shot and clean installed El Capitan on it. I am running TRIM too and with fingers crossed, hoping that this will finally work. I'll let you guys know this SDD fails again.

Cheers,
Desmond