Update OS to High Sierra before or after SSD Upgrade?

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Update OS to High Sierra before or after SSD Upgrade?

I have a mid-2012 13-inch non-Retina MBP running OS 10.12.6. Today a 500GB SSD arrives to replace the factory 500 GB rotational drive. The plan is to put the SSD in an enclosure and make a bootable clone the entire rotational drive to it, then install the SSD in the computer. I will be installing a new drive cable at the same time.

With High Sierra's change to APFS formatting and it working on SSDs and not rotational drives, my thought is wait until the SSD is installed and known to be functioning properly under OS 10.12 before moving to High Sierra.

Does that sounds reasonable? If not, suggestions?

TIA,

Allan

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), macOS Sierra (10.12.6), 2.5Ghz i5 non-Retina; 8GB RAM

Posted on Oct 31, 2017 9:06 AM

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Answer 1

leroydouglas

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Nov 1, 2017 12:14 PM in response to Allan Jones

Sound and reasonable Allan Jones. Aren't you in for a treat !

I would recommend not to manually enable TRIM at this time on the SSD. There is an associated delay in the boot sequences related to having TRIM enabled on third party SSD in macOS 10.13.x—10.13.1.

This was not an issue on macOS 10.12

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), macOS (10.13.1), i7 OWC 480GB SSD 16GB RAM iPhoneSE iOS11.1, Parallels13.0.1, HP OfficeJet Pro 8620

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Answer 2

Oct 31, 2017 7:32 PM in response to Allan Jones

I concur with your thoughts, do the SSD upgrade first to ensure a smooth APFS transition.

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Answer 3

leroydouglas

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200,664 points

Nov 1, 2017 3:44 PM in response to Allan Jones

Good question, I never tried to keep track of all the numerous complaints associated with brands—my instinct says all third party.

I can say on my OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD, the delay was there—it only effects the boot up time, not performance.

Like you I only reboot when necessary, but it was a curiosity. I have seen various problem areas as well, but mine always stalled at—

AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::checksumStatus - received Status Packet. Payload 2: device was reinitialized

pci pause: SDXC

Yes you will have to do your own research on TRIM and come to your own conclusions. I have enabled TRIM since the initial install a couple years ago, with no I'll effects.

OWC in particular says you don't need it. I would like to see updated info here: http://blog.macsales.com/31602-owc-ssds-built-to-perform-with-or-without-trimfor ce-command

http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/garbage-collection-and-trim-i n-ssds-explained-an-ssd-primer/

Ask Ars: “My SSD does garbage collection, so I don’t need TRIM… right?” | Ars Technica

The only downside to your SSD, is the fact you will kick yourself for not doing it sooner 😉

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Answer 4

Allan Jones Author

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Oct 31, 2017 7:31 PM in response to stevejobsfan0123

Thanks, sjf,

The drive arrived about noontime and I just finished cloning the rotational drive to it. Seems to have gone fine--it shows as bootable in Startup Manager and CCC prompts you to create the recovery partition as well. Probably will have to wait until Thursday to do the actual change-out.

Allan

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Answer 5

Allan Jones Author

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79,460 points

Nov 1, 2017 12:00 PM in response to leroydouglas

There is an associated delay in the boot sequences related to having TRIM enabled on third party SSD in macOS 10.13.x—10.13.1.

Many thanks Leroy, good info. A couple of follow-ups:

1) all third-party drives or some? I'm trying the OWC 6G version after my son (a highly-paid computer engineer) had major issues with support for the Samsung he bought.

2) Does the TRIM issue affect app launch times or just booting? I'm not too worried about boot time because I only restart the MBP about once a week. What finally drove the decision was discovering that the factory 5400-rpm drive is a SATA-3 attached to an SATA-6 interface and app launch times have always been slowish. I wasn't aware of the interface issue until some quasi-recent change in System Information added link speed:

I verified this when I searched the tech specs of the HD by model number; those showed it an SATA-3 model--bummer.

I need to study up on TRIM, obviously. 😕

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Answer 6

Allan Jones Author

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79,460 points

Nov 2, 2017 12:46 PM in response to leroydouglas

Leroy wrote:

The only downside to your SSD, is the fact you will kick yourself for not doing it sooner

Self-kicking in progress now! New screenshot:

I've drunk the KoolAid and am now a true believer. Finished the install about two hrs ago and the old MBP sizzles! The app that took longest to launch from the old roto-drive was Photoshop Elements, about 20-25 seconds. Now it's up and runing in less than five.

Boot time is spectacular. Etrecheck runs had been climbing up around the 3.5 to 4 minute mark. Immediately after startup with the SSD it did 1:40 while still running some background startup tasks.

Longest chore was changing out the drive cable. Not hard, just lots of fiddly bits to remove and attach. I took my time--I enjoy getting inside a computer.

While inside I cleaned out some dust bunnies. This MBP has seen 4.5 years of steady use and I've never had the fan out. Now I'm glad I removed it. Look what I found piled against some form of heatsink abutting the fan outlet:

A closer view:

After applying a non-static brush, a Black Stick, and a carefully considered application of canned air, now it looks like:

That sort of hairball could eventually overheat the computer. This is exactly why I like a computer that lets me open the hood (or bonnet, your call).

Thanks to SJF and Leroy for the excellent advice and hand-holding.

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