[Review] Crucial 128GB Solid State Drive MacBook Pro Upgrade

[Anthony Bouchard]

The price of the OWC or the MCE bay is beyond stupid. Save urself 45-70 dollars on the caddy itself: MAC-CADDY 2.5" SATA-to-SATA Hard Drive Bay Caddy for MacBooks Unibody

You are also way better off to replace your primary drive with the SSD, and make the secondary drive something like a 500-1TB drive, and config ur Mac to put the HD to sleep whenever possible. The system will boot up and run far faster, and your battery life will be dramatically improved. I'm running a Crucial 250 primary and a Samsung 1TB in a 3+ yr old Alum Unibody Macbook with 8 GB of RAM and it's stupid fast for VMware Fusion, and has tons of storage. Got a new battery too, and for 500 bux basically have a whole new computer instead of buying a new one at probably 3-4K the way I would want to configure it. If I get another 2 years out of it, will have been totally worth the money. I have beat that thing all over Iraq and Afghanistan for years.

Hey, thank you for that link!

[heavens_blade]

my mid 2009 mbp has a owc 120 gb ssd and the owc data doubler. I've been using it for more than a year and so far no problems. I've also maxed out my ram to 8 gb so my mbp is insanely fast. it puts new mbp's to shame. this is an upgrade worth doing. I just bought an enclosure for my super drive to use it as an external dvd drive.

[Anthony Bouchard]

my mid 2009 mbp has a owc 120 gb ssd and the owc data doubler. I've been using it for more than a year and so far no problems. I've also maxed out my ram to 8 gb so my mbp is insanely fast. it puts new mbp's to shame. this is an upgrade worth doing. I just bought an enclosure for my super drive to use it as an external dvd drive.

You should grab that 16GB RAM upgrade. But if your upgrade puts the newer (my) MacBook Pro to shame, then after I install the upgrade we should drag race ;D

[heavens_blade]

You should grab that 16GB RAM upgrade. But if your upgrade puts the newer (my) MacBook Pro to shame, then after I install the upgrade we should drag race ;D

when I get it then we could definitely drag race bro!

[s0ulp1xel]

Have those for the iPad? LOL

[MSFLFC]

You should grab that 16GB RAM upgrade. But if your upgrade puts the newer (my) MacBook Pro to shame, then after I install the upgrade we should drag race ;D

Anthony / anybody,

I quote you:

With the stock hard disk drive, booting up to Mac OS X Lion took around 40 seconds. After installing the solid state drive, it takes around 6 seconds.

There is no way your MacBook Pro boots in 6 seconds FROM pushing the start button UNTIL you see the desktop (I have the 256GB SSD Crucial M4 in my MB Pro Early 2011 model running Lion and it boots in around 18 seconds (FROM - UNTIL above). I still have 170GB free storage space left.
I have 8GB ram.

I do not believe the 128GB does it any faster.

If yours do it 6 seconds how do you reach that phenomenal speed???? I'd be extremely curious to know!

(PS The Mac comes from a complete shut down state - not sleep / hibernation state).

[Anthony Bouchard]

Anthony / anybody,

I quote you:

With the stock hard disk drive, booting up to Mac OS X Lion took around 40 seconds. After installing the solid state drive, it takes around 6 seconds.

There is no way your MacBook Pro boots in 6 seconds FROM pushing the start button UNTIL you see the desktop (I have the 256GB SSD Crucial M4 in my MB Pro Early 2011 model running Lion and it boots in around 18 seconds (FROM - UNTIL above). I still have 170GB free storage space left.
I have 8GB ram.

I do not believe the 128GB does it any faster.

If yours do it 6 seconds how do you reach that phenomenal speed???? I'd be extremely curious to know!

(PS The Mac comes from a complete shut down state - not sleep / hibernation state).

It just does. I have timed it. Maybe you have more clutter in your operating system that needs to be loaded at boot. I have very minimal installed and it does boot up in 6 seconds.

[MSFLFC]

OK, so you don't have a "magical" solution for me

Even from new with only Lion installed it took about 18 seconds.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else can honestly verify this?
And if anyone has any solution as to how.

Anthony, thanks for replying.

OK, so you don't have a "magical" solution for me

Even from new with only Lion installed it took about 18 seconds.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else can honestly verify this?
And if anyone has any solution as to how.

Anthony, thanks for replying.

[Anthony Bouchard]

OK, so you don't have a "magical" solution for me

Even from new with only Lion installed it took about 18 seconds.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else can honestly verify this?
And if anyone has any solution as to how.

Anthony, thanks for replying.

OK, so you don't have a "magical" solution for me

Even from new with only Lion installed it took about 18 seconds.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else can honestly verify this?
And if anyone has any solution as to how.

Anthony, thanks for replying.

18 seconds to boot up Lion? That's half of the speed of my 5400RPM hard disk drive. Maybe you have a malfunctioning drive.

[MSFLFC]

Yes 18 seconds.

MB Pro is completely shut down - I am timing it from the very moment I push the START button. I stop the timer the moment I see the desktop. 18 seconds on the dot.

Do you time it the same way?

Otherwise we may be comparing oranges to apples.

I might contact Crucial.

[Anthony Bouchard]

Yes 18 seconds.

MB Pro is completely shut down - I am timing it from the very moment I push the START button. I stop the timer the moment I see the desktop. 18 seconds on the dot.

Do you time it the same way?

Otherwise we may be comparing oranges to apples.

I might contact Crucial.

I am uploading a video to YouTube to show you; give me about 5 minutes

EDIT: Here is my latest bootup; around 8-9 total seconds dedicated to bootup.

[MSFLFC]

Great - thanks.

Timing mine from when the start up sounds comes (when your clip starts as well) lets my Mac boot in 13 seconds straight.

This brings my boot time close to yours (8-9 seks vs 13).

I see that I have twice as many programs in my dock than you including MS Office for Mac, iWorks, etc... So the difference might be
those extra programs.

My Mac does however get pretty hot when doing some simple gaming and having web browser open.
So I might contact Crucial to know whether I have a case for the heating up.

It comes and goes, like the fans noise.

Thanks for getting back to me.

[Anthony Bouchard]

Great - thanks.

Timing mine from when the start up sounds comes (when your clip starts as well) lets my Mac boot in 13 seconds straight.

This brings my boot time close to yours (8-9 seks vs 13).

I see that I have twice as many programs in my dock than you including MS Office for Mac, iWorks, etc... So the difference might be
those extra programs.

My Mac does however get pretty hot when doing some simple gaming and having web browser open.
So I might contact Crucial to know whether I have a case for the heating up.

It comes and goes, like the fans noise.

Thanks for getting back to me.

Try using OnyX to empty all of your caches and see if that helps you boot up any faster.

[MSFLFC]

Thanks, will try that. Cheers