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Upgrading a MBP To An SSD...

post #1 of 3
4/26/10 at 7:56am
Thread Starter 
Okay, so I'm about to go buy the new 15" Macbook Pro i5, and I'm wondering if I just got it with the stock mechanical hard drive, could I swap it out with a aftermarket SSD if I chose not to pay Apple's premium to have it as a BTO option?

I guess I'm just wondering if it's a SATA controller change, or just the drive.
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post #2 of 3
4/26/10 at 9:30am
I don't know what you refer to with SATA controller change. There is always the same 3gb/s sata and only the SSD changes.

The one Apple uses is apparently the Toshiba HG2. It does not have a controller that is as fast as Indilinx or the former perfromacne leader Intel nor the currently fastest Sandforce and Micron. It is still not terribly slow like the old jmicron controller drives.
Power draw is very good and TRIM works also good which is till now useless on OSX.

If you get it only for silence and battery life reasons you can take the Apple SSD. If you get it for max performance and want 256 get the crucial c300. In the 100GB area with max performance there is Sandforce or Crucial in the top top speed area and Intel not far behind which is longer on the market and there is less risk of loosing data because of some firmware, controller bugs in the really new Micron(Curcial C300) or Sandforce controllers.

If your primary reason not to take apple is money. You can take the Kingston SSDNow V+ SSDs. They give good value at a low price but have the same controller as Apples drives with a different firmware.



PS: Sandforce and Micron are very new and backups in the first year should really be regular because a firmware bug might still be in there. Micron's new controller rocks though, it is the fastest along with sandforce and it is cheap per GB.
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post #3 of 3
4/26/10 at 10:50am
Thread Starter 
Thanks, but I've done my homework on the drives. All I was asking was can I just buy a MBP with a standard drive, and swap it out with an SSD without any other changes to the hardware. But it looks like the answer is yes, I can. So thanks.
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