HuntsMan75

Q: Replace Hard Drive with SSD

System Info: MacBook Pro running OS X 10.9, mid 2009, 13", PN MB991LL/A (2.53 GHz), 8GB RAM

 

I started having some problems with my system, mainly slow downs, especially when using Safari. I got a copy of Scannerz (http://scsc-online.com/Scannerz.html) and it confirmed drive platter damage. I know some of these units are supposed to have cable problems but Scannerz tested that too and found no problems with the cable, so this is a bonafide drive problem (it's 6 years old, you know).

 

I'd like to go ahead and replace it with an SSD and have some questions:

 

  1. Maybe I'm getting models mixed up but I seem to remember something about a drive thermal sensor on Apples not being compatible with generic drives. I know I read that somewhere I just don't remember where?
  2. I assume, if #1 above isn't a problem, that I can basically use any SATA SSD. Now I know I should get the fastest interface possible, but are there any caveats or incompatibilities that some brands of SSDs may present?
  3. What about stuff like trim and wear leveling. WIll this be in a driver for the SSD or does the OS take care of it automatically?
  4. Are there any brands/models to stay away from?
  5. Should I replace the cable too? I've heard they can get bad.

 

Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Apr 4, 2015 12:06 PM

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Q: Replace Hard Drive with SSD

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  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro May 15, 2015 10:07 AM in response to HuntsMan75
    Level 5 (4,883 points)
    May 15, 2015 10:07 AM in response to HuntsMan75

    HuntsMan75 wrote:

     

    ...or stay away from Yosemite, and maybe even future OS X releases.

    Which is what I'm doing now. The issue looking forward is security updates for whatever OS is installed and staying informed about making TRIM work in Yosemite or later in case pre-Yosemite OS versions drop off the back of security support. It also means being conscientious about making full bootable backups. Nothing is ever simple...

  • by dwb,

    dwb dwb May 15, 2015 10:32 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro
    Level 7 (24,435 points)
    Notebooks
    May 15, 2015 10:32 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro

    Check out this recent article from Ars: In the nutshell, TRIM still has its purpose but modern SSDs with over provisioning and aggressive garbage collection make it much less necessary than it was.

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro May 15, 2015 12:47 PM in response to dwb
    Level 5 (4,883 points)
    May 15, 2015 12:47 PM in response to dwb

    dwb wrote:

     

    ...TRIM still has its purpose but modern SSDs with over provisioning and aggressive garbage collection make it much less necessary than it was.

    Well, that's the thing: SSD's have had overprovisioning for years and, indeed, you can increase the manufacturer's overprovisioning simply by leaving some space on the drive free when formatting, since, while we can't use the unformatted space, the SSD's controller can and does. Moreover, as the second caption says, "without TRIM, garbage collection doesn't know about deleted files and continues to move pages containing deleted data along with good pages, increasing write amplification." More write amplification means more wear. So, while aggressive garbage collection can reduce the performance impact, it can't do anything about write amplification without TRIM's help. Your link gives an excellent description of what TRIM does;  this link shows, especially in the graph, how much TRIM contributes to an SSD's performance and the drives in the test are relatively recent.

     

    I suspect the secret is that modern drives are more robust than earlier SSD's and the average user doesn't place enough demands on the drive to make optimum drive operation that important or noticeable. Given that SSD's benefit from TRIM, I guess it's a matter of choice whether to go to the trouble of giving the SSD that benefit.

  • by MrWilliams201,

    MrWilliams201 MrWilliams201 May 16, 2015 1:07 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro
    Level 1 (14 points)
    May 16, 2015 1:07 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro

    If you're familiar with the SAT SMART Driver used to give SAT enabled external drives SMART monitoring capabilities, they have some notes in the README on Yosemite. The link to the SAT driver is:

     

    https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver

     

    From the README for Yosemite:

     

     

    Note for Yosemite (Mac OS X 10.10) users:
    Try first version 0.8. If it works for you, then just use it.
    If not or you want to try newer version or participate on development,
    then you must allow unsigned kernel extensions with command:
      sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"

     

    I noticed that that nvram setting is one of the things in Cindori, so it looks like it's effecting more than just TRIM enabler.

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro May 16, 2015 8:28 AM in response to MrWilliams201
    Level 5 (4,883 points)
    May 16, 2015 8:28 AM in response to MrWilliams201

    Thanks. That's interesting especially because the command that turns off the kext-signing check is offered and easily executed but the warnings given by Cindori about consequences of a PRAM reset or OS update are not, and neither is the series of steps necessary to recover from the subsequent failure to boot.

  • by MrWilliams201,

    MrWilliams201 MrWilliams201 May 16, 2015 12:43 PM in response to FatMac>MacPro
    Level 1 (14 points)
    May 16, 2015 12:43 PM in response to FatMac>MacPro

    I wondered about that myself. If the SAT driver is installed and someone does an update, I don't think it would stop the system from booting, just stop it from getting SMART status on an external drive. The Cindori explanation is much clearer.

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro May 16, 2015 1:12 PM in response to MrWilliams201
    Level 5 (4,883 points)
    May 16, 2015 1:12 PM in response to MrWilliams201

    I suspect the issue applies to both TRIM and SMART kexts, except, perhaps, for the 0.8 SMART version mentioned first. With Yosemite, the kext-signing security check is normally on. If v0.8 is outside that process altogether, then it wouldn't be checked at all. Or, if it's signed, it'd still pass. It's implied that the newer versions would be tested and fail the test so the security check would have to be turned off, as it is with TRIM Enabler. Turning the test back on, as it would be with an OS update or PRAM reset, would mean the test would run on boot, discover an unsigned kext, and stop booting, since an unsigned or hacked (thus breaking the signing) kext would imply a malware attack. If that's so, then the Kasbert SMART driver poses the same risk as TRIM Enabler, but without the same warning.

     

    The Cindori recovery process involves either turning the kext-signing security check off again or returning to a pre-TRIM activation state and that involves restoring the unhacked kext and the signing test and what looks like blessing all the restorations. Not something you'd want to do on a regular basis.

  • by MrWilliams201,

    MrWilliams201 MrWilliams201 May 17, 2015 11:00 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro
    Level 1 (14 points)
    May 17, 2015 11:00 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro

    Your answers have been nothing short of stellar! Thanks.

     

    Unfortunately, I think what this means for me is to stay on Mavericks or Mountain Lion. I have two systems with one on Mavericks and the other on Mountain Lion. I haven't upgraded to Yosemite yet but I'm seriously questioning that move altogether now. I really just don't like the idea that I can install something on my system and have it suddenly become unusable. There's got to be a better way to do that.

  • by ThomasB2010,

    ThomasB2010 ThomasB2010 May 18, 2015 10:57 AM in response to MrWilliams201
    Level 1 (13 points)
    May 18, 2015 10:57 AM in response to MrWilliams201

    Unfortunately in a sense what it means is either don't use Yosemite or if you do you might want to consider an HD instead of an SSD.

  • by R.K.Orion,

    R.K.Orion R.K.Orion May 19, 2015 9:36 AM in response to ThomasB2010
    Level 1 (14 points)
    May 19, 2015 9:36 AM in response to ThomasB2010

    SSDs are over rated. They cost a fortune, they seem to have weird problems, and now there are beginning to be compatibility issues with them like TRIM enabler. To read some of the stuff about SSDs after they came out you would think an old style HDD exploded blowing your system to smithereens every 5 minutes. The critique of HDDs is absurd and I don't know why it even exists. They've been around forever, they last for years without problems for most people, and they hold TONS of data at pennies on the dollar. Obviously these are just my opinions.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 May 29, 2015 6:19 PM in response to R.K.Orion
    Level 1 (54 points)
    May 29, 2015 6:19 PM in response to R.K.Orion

    "Weird Problems" are declining. It's still a fairly new technology. A regular hard drive will never equal the speed of an SSD regardless of what they do to them. I know some of the newer drives are fast, but even the fastest are still slow compared to SSDs. SSDs are not going to get worse with time, they'll get better. I suppose HDDs will too. The place for the HDD will be in mass, as in big storage, and backups.

     

    If you had a clone of an SSD on one of the new Hitachi drives and you were using a high speed interface, I bet you could clone the entire contents back from the Hitachi to the SSD in a manner of minutes. I would guess 5 or 10. That used to take hours.

  • by R.K.Orion,

    R.K.Orion R.K.Orion May 30, 2015 12:37 PM in response to ZV137
    Level 1 (14 points)
    May 30, 2015 12:37 PM in response to ZV137

    I'm not saying the HDD is going to supersede the SSD, I just see problems being reported and some people seem to act is if they're totally trouble free. Losing all your data in an instant because of a power outage isn't something to brag about IMHO, even if it can be backed up and restored in a shorter period of time.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Jun 1, 2015 11:54 AM in response to R.K.Orion
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Jun 1, 2015 11:54 AM in response to R.K.Orion

    Back up the SSD with an HDD. With external HDDs being as cheap as they are it's almost completely inexcusable to not have a backup.

     

    The only time I'd be concerned about SSD wipeout or whatever they're calling it is if it wiped out the SSD making it unusable or it happened frequently.

  • by MrWilliams201,

    MrWilliams201 MrWilliams201 Jun 2, 2015 11:41 AM in response to R.K.Orion
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Jun 2, 2015 11:41 AM in response to R.K.Orion

    I put both an SSD and an HDD in my system. I needed a Snow Leopard partition. SSDs were too much money for the storage I needed. I put Snow Leopard on a partition on the HDD, the core OS (Mavericks now) on the SSD, then created a shared data partition with mostly my stuff on it on the HDD.

     

    WORKS GREAT!!! You need to know how to do symbolic links and properly move files with resource forks when needed, but  I generally get SSD speeds all the time. You would never even know the HDD was in there even though it's storing what used to be may home folder and some Xcode versions.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Jun 8, 2015 6:03 PM in response to MrWilliams201
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Jun 8, 2015 6:03 PM in response to MrWilliams201

    If you use Time Machine with that setup I assume you back each up drive separately, right? I don't think T.M. will follow symbolic links.

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