In a quest to make our MacBook last out up until next years rumoured major redesign (carbon fibre anyone?) we chose to do the stylish thing as well as set up an SSD.
However we’ve always been utilized to having a huge difficult drive so the 128GB SSD we selected wasn’t going to enable us to hold our entire LightRoom library as well as video data on the laptop like we’re utilized to. The solution? eliminating our un-used optical drive as well as replacing it with one of the just recently introduced 1TB 2.5″ 9.5mm difficult drives. SSD speed plus a capacious spindle to store all our stuff on, does it get much much better than this? It’s an simple job that anybody can follow. Here’s exactly how we did it…
Buy purchase – depending upon your type of MacBook (ours is designated as a ‘late 2008 – 5,1’ model), the technique will be somewhat different, however many of what we did right here is appropriate to all MacBooks as well as MacBook Pros. After great deals of reading these are the elements we purchased for the project…
SSD – essential M4 128GB SSD (CT128M4SSD2)
Hard Dive – Samsung Spinpoint M8 1TB (HN-M101MBB)
Caddy – OpitBay
The OptiBay adapter came without instructions, bar a bit diagram on the side that shows you exactly how to insert the drive. fortunately the Interweb sorted us out as well as the complying with video provides a great summary of the job.
There were a couple of bit differences in our device though as well as we discovered this iFixit file extremely useful too. We suggest you view the video as well as look with the iFixit doc as well before setting out. Whilst there’s nothing challenging in the task there are some fiddly bits as well as it’s useful to have the appropriate tools including a plastic spudger.
Gotchas – when the optical drive was eliminated we discovered the OptiBay was as well huge to in shape in the area left as well as after a bit of head scratching we discovered a strip of plastic down one side of the system that seemed to be a bit of an after thought. Taking it apart the strip down the edge was eliminated with a couple of screws. This left the system a ideal fit. We can only surmise this plate that makes it larger is implied for one more revision of the hardware, or one more laptop completely. You likewise requirement to eliminate the bit bracket shown on the best side of the picture below from the Apple DVD drive as well as connect it to the plastic frame of the OptiBay.
The Plastic Bar (left) had to be eliminate to make the OptiBay fit
There are pre-drilled holes in the side of the caddy however you requirement rather a firm push to get the screws to begin to self-tap. This bracket then becomes the single screw holding the OptiBay in (where there were 3 holding in the DVD drive), although this doesn’t truly seem to be an problem as area is so tight anyway. You can purchase an enclosure to in shape your SuperDrive into to produce an outside DVD writer as well if you requirement it.
Space Ship – We did a clean set up of OSX 10.7 Lion from a USB thumb drive which we produced complying with the outstanding ScreenCastsOnline.com tutorial, (you’ll requirement a 8GB USB). just boot from the USB, run Disk utility as well as partition your SSD, then set up Lion. All up as well as running in around 25 minutes. Beautiful.
Obviously you’ll want your OS as well as apps to online on the very quick SSD as well as your data (music, photos, films etc) on the spindle. A bit terminal jiggery-pokery will produce ‘symbolic links’ that point the appropriate folders on your SSD to your HD. This is a system broad service that implies iTunes for example will immediately discover music on the data difficult Drive, iMovie will see the video data on the difficult Drive etc without having to make modifications in each private app. We complied with this guide to configuration the SymLinks.
Part of the new OSX Lion ‘About This Mac’ screen showing the SSD as well as HD
The OS only took up around 14GB. With many of our apps re-installed as well as a 15GB Windows online device data living on the SSD too, we’ve still got over 70GB free. So while it may be a bit tight for future additions, it would certainly be possible to utilize the smaller 60GB SSD if you are adding a huge difficult drive.
…Off a Shovel – certainly this job won’t magically turn your Core 2 Duo into a screaming i7 however it is a truly considerable as well as helpful upgrade. We’ll leave all those fantastic hardware evaluation sites to do the quite benchmark graphs, however in our un-scientific Automated house Labs test the SSD showed big enhancements in speed. For example chilly boot time went from 1 minute 4 seconds to just 24 seconds. introducing PhotoShop went from around 13 seconds to just 4. There likewise appears to be bit or no distinguishable impact on battery life with the two drive configuration (SSDs need less powerthan typical spinning drives so the extra tons is minimal).
So with a few new elements you can bring new life into your MacBook, or any type of other laptop / notebook / or desktop for that matter. As upgrades go, it’s extremely recommended.
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Last update on 2021-10-04 / affiliate links / pictures from Amazon product marketing API