[SOLVED] Macbook Pro + SSD

[dudalemon]

Hi everyone.

I have two questions for SSD in macbook pro.

1. Do we have to buy the SSD that apple "recommends" which are overpriced or will other SSD's work like the one i have in my PC (SATA)

2. Macbook Pro is popular because you can close the lid and it goes sleep and when you open it back up it literally only takes 1-2 seconds to start back up. I am wanting to switch the 6 year old 250GB HDD to an SSD but i am concerned about this low powered state thing that SSD's are not meant to do. Will this quickly damage the SSD or is there some sort of safety thing Apple has for SSDs? (maybe that is why they recommend their own overpriced SSDs?)

Macbook Pro Mid 2010, 13"

 

[Kenneth Barker]

1. any SSD should do. You will need to Format the drive to the proper format. Disk Util should take care of that for you if its a second drive.

2. MacBooks are now on M.2 drives if I am not mistaken. These run off of PCIe lanes, and are crazy fast and pull their power directly from the MB and tend to respond a bit faster to requests. Take a look to see if your MBP will allow you to increase the size of, or add, an M.2 drive instead.

 

[dudalemon]

2. MacBooks are now on M.2 drives if I am not mistaken. These run off of PCIe lanes, and are crazy fast and pull their power directly from the MB and tend to respond a bit faster to requests. Take a look to see if your MBP will allow you to increase the size of, or add, an M.2 drive instead.

Ill have to take a look and see if it is M.2 capable since it's 2010. But even if it was. where we live M.2 SSDs are still quite high in price. Can you set them to lowstate mode? At the end of the day this is for my parents, not so much for myself so a cheaper SSD will do the job since they just do general computer stuff. I was just concerned about the low power state

 

[Kenneth Barker]

2. MacBooks are now on M.2 drives if I am not mistaken. These run off of PCIe lanes, and are crazy fast and pull their power directly from the MB and tend to respond a bit faster to requests. Take a look to see if your MBP will allow you to increase the size of, or add, an M.2 drive instead.

Ill have to take a look and see if it is M.2 capable since it's 2010. But even if it was. where we live M.2 SSDs are still quite high in price. Can you set them to lowstate mode? At the end of the day this is for my parents, not so much for myself so a cheaper SSD will do the job since they just do general computer stuff. I was just concerned about the low power state

In all reality,

You will be fine with a basic SSD for response and performance. Just make sure to get your backups before swaping the drives. Time Machine does work well. You will see a big performance jump from a 2.5HDD to a SSD

 

[JWoody]

Apples are just PCs with "Special" EUFI, "reccomended" Parts from any OEM, especial the Apple-cult products only result in redicuoulsy inflated parts prices, any RAM, HDD, SSD should work provided they have the right specifications, with the acceptions of graphics cards that have an apple compatible but BIOS but were talking about a SSD/HDD here.

 

[Kenneth Barker]

What JWoody is partially true. Externals are notorious with having problems formatting between NAT and FAT. Many externals have their own propriety control drivers that don't place nice one way of another.

The Apple Approved hardware is simply hardware that Apple has spent time confirming has no issues or conflicts with their hardware, and will even support under apple care or any other support situation. Which for many is an absolute must (Fit in any professional)

 

[Solandri]

1. any SSD should do. You will need to Format the drive to the proper format. Disk Util should take care of that for you if its a second drive.

2. MacBooks are now on M.2 drives if I am not mistaken. These run off of PCIe lanes, and are crazy fast and pull their power directly from the MB and tend to respond a bit faster to requests. Take a look to see if your MBP will allow you to increase the size of, or add, an M.2 drive instead.

The Macbook PCIe SSDs use proprietary connectors. It looks like M.2 but the pins are slightly different. The short tab on one end is slightly wider.

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/7085/PEXSSD.jpg
http://edge.alluremedia.com.au/m/g/2015/09/SSD_950_Pro_3.jpg

I'm pretty sure their latest version is M.2 with the pins rearranged - Samsung makes them for Apple based on their M.2 SSDs.. If you could make an adapter which just remapped the pins, it would probably work. But Apple threw another monkey wrench into the works to force you to buy from them. Their SSDs use AHCI, instead of NVMe. That delayed OWC's introduction of MBP-compatible SSDs for over a year, as they sought out parts and suppliers who would actually make that odd combination in small volumes.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10128/owc-introduces-ssd-upgrade-for-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air-pcie-ssds

If you have a MBP or MBA with one of these proprietary SSDs, your only source for a non-Apple replacement SSD is OWC. They're still expensive, just not as expensive as Apple.

However, OP has a mid-2010 13" MBP. It uses a 2.5" HDD on a SATA 2 interface. So any 2.5" SSD will work. The only gotcha is that on some of their older MBPs, Apple used a proprietary temperature sensor instead of the temperature value transmitted by the drive over SATA. If the replacement drive doesn't have this sensor, its temp reading defaults to MAX, and so the laptop's fan runs at max speed because it thinks the drive is overheating. I don't recall which models are affected, so you will have to research that yourself. I hear it can be "fixed" by just transferring the thermostat over from the original drive to the new one (it is glued to the outside of the drive).

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-2-duo-2.66-aluminum-13-mid-2010-unibody-specs.html