Holy smokes! What a difference!

I seemed to be waiting a lot for my mid-2012 MacBook Pro to do much of anything. A few quick reads, and it seemed an SSD swap was the thing to do. For $90 in drive (Samsung 860-series 500MB SSD) $6 in miniature tools, and 20 minutes of my time, this has made a YUGE difference in speed. I'm impressed.

Carbon Copy Cloner took just over an hour to clone the original drive to the new SSD, and it took me about 10 minutes to do the remove-and-replace. I think this task has been well worth the effort.

Plus, I learned a new term in the process: Beachballing. Evidently, it's what you're doing while waiting for the "colored swirly" to go away while the machine is being slow about things.

I did the same thing with my 2015 iMac.
Thing was slow as hell.
Tossed an SSD in there... holy shit what a difference!

I'm spoiled by my 2015 MBP which I bought with a 500GB SSD.

I just received a new company iMac with a 1TB non-SSD drive and that thing is slow as fuck, even though it's brand new!

I hate it! SSD RULE!

When my nearly 10 year old workplace Dell XFR started getting wonky, a 500gb SSD was dropped into it. We maxed out the RAM at the same time and it’s like a brand new machine.

It won’t be long before prices really start to come down on SSD’s; I remember when flash drives were around a dollar a gb. Now you can find 256gb drives for around $30. That’s as much storage as many base model lap tops. Soon HD’s with moving parts will be only found in inexpensive external drives.

I'm close to performing this upgrade to both my MacBook Pro's. I'm undecided about my late 2012 Mac Mini. Not certain it's worth the time, effort and expense to upgrade.

I did the same thing to my mid-2012 last year. I don’t keep much on it so a 250GB did the trick.

Made a decent difference on my 2010 Sony laptop. Made massive improvements on my desktops however.

It is definitely worth the minimal effort to max out the RAM and replace the HD with an SSD. My 2011 Macbook Pro 15" still runs all my apps smoothly - including VMWare Fusion for the one Windows-based app I still use (Visio).

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
Holy smokes! What a difference!

I seemed to be waiting a lot for my mid-2012 MacBook Pro to do much of anything. A few quick reads, and it seemed an SSD swap was the thing to do. For $90 in drive (Samsung 860-series 500MB SSD) $6 in miniature tools, and 20 minutes of my time, this has made a YUGE difference in speed. I'm impressed.

Carbon Copy Cloner took just over an hour to clone the original drive to the new SSD, and it took me about 10 minutes to do the remove-and-replace. I think this task has been well worth the effort.

.

My wife has that same year MacBook, we back up ours to an Apple Time Machine. If we install an SSD, we would be able to reinstall her data from the backup from the Time machine, correct?

quote:

Originally posted by wingfoot:
My wife has that same year MacBook, we back up ours to an Apple Time Machine. If we install an SSD, we would be able to reinstall her data from the backup from the Time machine, correct?

You should clone your original drive first, rather than going the Time Machine route (I think).
THIS ARTICLE led me through the process, easy-breezy.

I did the same thing to my 2011 MacBook Pro. I also bumped the RAM from 4GB to 8GB. It's like I got a whole new computer. This thing is now 7 years old, and is still about as fast as anything I could buy today. Definitely worth it.

 
I did the Samsung SSD swap on a late 2006 17" MacBook Pro, and a 2011 Mac Mini. The MBP had only a SATA 1 interface, but it was still a 50% increase in HDD transfer speeds over the original platter drive, and overall responsiveness was markedly improved. The Mac Mini had SATA 3, and the SSD swap was an amazing improvement. Both of my newer Macs have the PCIe SSDs. An SSD swap vs a platter drive is the single best improvement performance you can get on computer, better even than more memory.

Me too!
I put a 1Tb in my 2011 15" MacBook Pro. It had a 5200 rpm 750Gb.

I used the OWC kit that provides the tools and carrier for the SSD and an external drive case to put the old drive in, so I can use it for storage or backup or whatever.

Did you max the ram as well?
I had previously, to 16Gb.

I have SSDs in my 2012 quad-core Mac mini, 2012 MacBook Pro and my husband’s 2011 Mac mini.

The difference is night and day in all three. I had upgraded the RAM in all three to 16 gb first, but the SSDs made all the difference.

Installing one into a mini isn’t awful. Just follow along on ifixit.com; they have all the tools and pictures you need.

Maxed the RAM and installed a 750Gb SSD in my mid 2012 MBP. Runs like a scalded dog.

quote:

Originally posted by k5blazer:
Maxed the RAM

What is the max RAM on that machine?

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Edit: Found it. 16GB.

Well, HERE'S a booger: Evidently cloning the original drive doesn't keep/transfer the license info for my copy of Microsoft Office. I've opened up an Excel sheet and made some changes, and can't save it now thanks to the message that says, "Activate Office to Create and Edit. Buy Office or sign in to activate Office if you've already bought it."

I know darn good and well I've bought it! I stinking had to create yet another online account once I installed it the first time.

So I go sign in on my Microsoft account, and I get a message telling me that there are no licenses associated with my account.

GRRRR!!

Typing this on a 2012 MacBook Air that was dying a slow death until I installed a SSD a few years ago. It is as good as any other PC I use now, and I'm able to use it frequently.

Vthoky, I had the same problem as you with office but managed to get in touch with them and worked it out so I could transfer the license to the new HD. What's happening is it thinks it's install on an additional computer and doesn't like that. I forget what i had to verify for them to get the key to work again but get in touch with them by phone or email, and you can get it straightened out.

quote:

Originally posted by LBAR15:
What's happening is it thinks it's install on an additional computer and doesn't like that. I forget what i had to verify for them to get the key to work again but get in touch with them by phone or email, and you can get it straightened out.

I guess the install is somehow tied to the serial number of the original HDD? Makes sense, I suppose.

Naturally, the Activate dialog box that comes up offers no phone/email contact information.
Gotta get a shovel and start digging...

- - - - -

Edit: Found my original purchase email; it's sorted now. (Whew!)

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
What is the max RAM on that machine?

Complete hardware specs for Apple devices, including vintage devices (such as PowerPC Macs).
 
EveryMac.