Brand Spankin' New 15" Macbook Pro W/SSD

ears wrote in post #12105999
I just got a new 15" 2.2 i7 Macbook Pro and before I even turned the thing on I replaced the spinning hard drive with a 240GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD 2.5" Solid State Drive along with 8 gigs of ram. I new it would be faster but holy crap, this thing is stupid fast. That SSD makes a huge difference. Now all I need an external hard drive that can take advantage of Thunderbolt and i will be styling! My family wasn't understanding my enthusiasm so I figured I would express it here. Thanks for listening now off to take some giant raw shots and put this power to good use.

sorry to restart an older thread, but was searching and what you did is almost exactly what I was thinking of.

Did you get the SSD direct from Apple? I have spec out a 13 inch just like yours and was wondering if it would be cheaper to get the regular HD it comes with to save the upgrade money and then buy the SSD elsewhere or even wait a bit till prices come down.
The thing I"m not sure about is can you do all of this after you alread have it. Or does it need to be done when bought. I"ve used iMacs for years and this is my first ever laptop. So for some reason I'm getting nervous that it's somehow different or that I'll make some compatiblity mistake in the beginning that I won't be able to fix later

thanks
G

Gaarryy wrote in post #12214096
sorry to restart an older thread, but was searching and what you did is almost exactly what I was thinking of.

Did you get the SSD direct from Apple? I have spec out a 13 inch just like yours and was wondering if it would be cheaper to get the regular HD it comes with to save the upgrade money and then buy the SSD elsewhere or even wait a bit till prices come down.
The thing I"m not sure about is can you do all of this after you alread have it. Or does it need to be done when bought. I"ve used iMacs for years and this is my first ever laptop. So for some reason I'm getting nervous that it's somehow different or that I'll make some compatiblity mistake in the beginning that I won't be able to fix later

thanks
G

I did everything after I purchased my Macbook Pro. I bought the SSD from OWC.

http://eshop.macsales.​com …Sandforce/Solid​_State_Pro

The data doubler was also purchased from OWC.

http://eshop.macsales.​com …ld%20Computing/​DDAMBS0GB/

Just follow the videos that they have on there site and you wont have any problems. It is a piece of cake. I went with the stock 5400rpm 750gb hard drive instead of the faster 500gb hard drive when I got my Macbook Pro because I knew that I would be using it as a second storage drive so speed wasn't an issue. The only thing that you are not going to have is an optical drive. I had a portable external Dell drive that I use for my cd/dvd duties.

I just thought of one more thing. I would suggest that you install the SSD drive in place of your current hard drive first. Then button it back up so that you can use the built in optical drive to put the operating system on to your new SSD drive. That way you wont have any issues trying to reload OSX from an external optical drive. After that is complete, go ahead and remove the internal optical drive and install your second hard drive with the Data Doubler. That's just my opinion. Others might tell you otherwise but I would rather take the more cautious route.

I'm planning on doing this setup on my MacBook; does this mean that the internal super drive goes to waste? Or is there a housing that's available to convert it to portable?

There are USB2 slim-line optical enclosures with internal SATA interfaces; however, they are for tray-loading drives, not slot-loading drives. Not pretty, but they work. And they are bus-powered for most computers made in the last couple of years.

Ok guys I am on the verge of getting a 13" Macbook Pro and this thread is not helping me walk away from the possible purchase I have always been a pc user and want to get a mac as well so that I don't have to worry that much about malware and trojans.
I just have one question, if I did swap out the HD for an SSD, won't that void the warranty?

Only if you break something during the swap.

Snow001 wrote in post #12260329
Ok guys I am on the verge of getting a 13" Macbook Pro and this thread is not helping me walk away from the possible purchase I have always been a pc user and want to get a mac as well so that I don't have to worry that much about malware and trojans.
I just have one question, if I did swap out the HD for an SSD, won't that void the warranty?

Honestly on the new macbook pros this kind of swap out is really easy once you have the back panel off it's all right there not like the old ibooks that took 30+ screws to get to the HD. If you are really uncomfortable doing it yourself I am sure you could find a 3rd party apple repair center that would do it for you for a price. I get stuck doing the upgrades and drive swaps for my friends being I'm an Apple certified tech.