SSD and RAM upgrade for my Mid-2009 MBP - Is it worth it?

Mac
#1

Morning folks,

First time caller, long time listener (inc. back in the MacTalk days…)
I have a refurbished Mid 2009 15" Mac Book Pro 5,3 2.8Ghz and sadly the HDD decided to play silly buggers which left me up shit creek, as my back up strategy was not exactly bullet proof… or indeed up to date (queue the tutting, eye-rolling and finger wagging - all justified - and I hope I have learned an expensive lesson to the tune of ~$500 for data recovery)

ANYWAY…I was hoping to turn this PITA situation around by taking the opportunity to install a larger capacity SSD and max out the RAM. I’m considering the following:

  • Crucial MX300 750GB SATA 2.5" 7mm internal SSD (hopefully with 9.5mm adapter/spacer) @ $299
  • Crucial 8GB (2x4GB kit) PC3-8500 Unbuffered 294-pin SO-DIMM @ $88

All items from ramcity.com.au and eligible for my Mac Book Pro (according to the website)

All up and with postage it’s ~$400

A quick scan of the Apple refurbish store shows a 15" rMBP is anything from $2.6k up to an eye-watering $4.1k if you want all the bells and all the whistles.

SOOOO…My question to you fine people on AppleTalk is this: Will the $400 investment breathe a reasonable bit of new life back into my - lets say mature - MBP and give me a reasonable “bang-for-my-buck”, or am I just throwing good money after bad?

I should probably point out that while it is the only computer in the house, it is not a mission critical daily workhorse. It’s generally used on an irregular basis when serious work needs to be done - video editing etc or long-form writing and the like, or any time you try something on the iPad and it doesn’t work out.

The hope is that I’ll be able to run El Capitan on it, and ultimately Sierra at some point in the future (I do appreciate that some of the newer features will not be supported do to hardware restrictions). How to get the latest OS on a brand new SSD is another question which I may post shortly.

Anyway, I’m just soliciting opinions from those in the know here at AppleTalk before I hand over my hard-earned cash.

Any and all comments would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,

Cypher.

#2

Hi Cypher.

Yo won’t need a spacer for the SSD. The screw mounts line up and it’ll be fine. Did that exact upgrade to a similar machine yesterday.

100% worth doing. It may not officially run Sierra but it’ll still be a very fast and usable machine.

As far as getting the OS goes, easiest way is to walk into an AppleStore once you’ve done the install for a genius bar appointment. They can restore an image onto the machine in about 5 minutes.

John

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#3

100% do it, I did similar with a 2008 macbook, it’s like new again for around $100

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#4

In the future you can always repurpose the SSD in a USB3.1 case for a nice fast external.

#5

Do you have an empty external drive? Put the SSD in it and clone the MBP drive using carbon copy cloner or some such before putting the SSD in the MacBook Pro.

Then it will just boot up nicely.

I have just put an SSD in a TB external drive on my 2011 iMac and using it as the boot drive. It’s like a new computer. Absolutely worth it.

#6

There are a couple of factors here.

CPU Speed:
The C2D is starting to get pretty long in the tooth these days. While it’s pretty capable in general tasks, video encoding is much better with modern CPU’s. How much that matters will depend on what you do.

Storage:
What are your real space requirements?
An optibay adaptor + 1TB 5,400rpm drive + smaller SSD can work out better depending on your requirements (add in an external case for your old optical drive if you need it too).

Battery:
How’s your battery going? Do you need to factor in the cost of a new battery too?

Bottom line, an SSD upgrade and maxing out the RAM will turn your old machine into a total beast! SSD’s are just that awesome. It really is the cheapest way to get more performance.

#7

You can shop around and get slightly better prices.
I accidentally bought a 1TB Sandisk SSD from Amazon.fr a few weeks ago, as I didn’t understand French properly. It cost $245 delivered (I was just trying to add it to my cart to see how much shipping was).

8GB RAM on eBay is $50.

You can shop around and spend about $300.

#8

Many thanks to all who took the time and effort to read and comment. To show you my gratitude here is my favourite emoji for you to enjoy :dancers: I simply do not know why this graphic was ever created, and that makes it all the more ridiculous and fantastic!

Quick shout-out to jaysee for pointing out that Sierra will not be officially supported on my Mac, but a quick search shows that El Capitan should still be ok on the old girl, so that’s what I’ll be aiming for. Also hat tip to him regarding the loading of OS X onto the virgin SSD - looks like a trip to the Apple Store Genius Bar is on the cards for me!

Was also glad to here some positive comments from others who have been down a similar path (jaysee, Snowman, The_Hawk). I’m glad I can breathe a bit more life into it for a modest (in comparison) dollar outlay. I’m quite happy using a computer, but I have zero experience in performing upgrades etc. I did manage to take the duff HDD out for recovery purposes and that went ok, so fingers crossed for the SSD and RAM install.

In response to Leon’s comments, I appreciate that I may be able to save a few $$$ if I shop around, but I like the returns policy at Ram City [90-day], they are Australian owned/operated which I also like to support, they’ve been very responsive to my questions I’ve raised and they also have access to great how-to videos etc, so I’m happy to support them with my patronage.

Well, that’s enough chit-chat, I guess I’d better get ordering!

Thanks again.

Cypher.

#9

For a quick price comparison - I always shop at CentreCom. Not quite as cheap as CPL or MSY, but they are way better to deal with in my experience especially for RMAs etc. I’d check the pricing.

No affiliation from me other than a happy customer! :slight_smile:

I always buy the Mac tested Corsair memory - never had an issue with it: http://www.centrecom.com.au/corsair-8gb-2x4gb-mac-memory-1333mhz-cl9-ddr3-so-dimm

I usually buy Samsung SSDs, but the Crucial one you want is also a bit cheaper: http://www.centrecom.com.au/solid-state-drives?specs=379

#10

I feel what you are saying about Ramcity. It is generally where I get all my RAM from and I try to support local as well.

You can also hit up ozbargain.com.au and there are generally heaps of deals on SSDs popping up weekly.

At the moment I have 2 laptops.
2009 13" Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz with 8GB RAM and 240GB SSD (hand me down from wife)
2012 13" i5 2.5GHz with 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD (restored from a machine that was in a bin)

For office work I find no difference in speed between the 2 of them. Where the 2012 shines is encoding to m4v. It destroys the 2009.
I think you should get another 4-5 years out of your machine (if the battery lasts that long) once upgraded.

#11

I have a similar older MBPro, maybe slightly older.
My 2 cents is YES, the Ram and SSD will boost your existing Macs performance around one light year ahead.
However, my older MBPro runs El Cap just fine but cannot run Sierra.
So if you want to keep up with OS changes over time, then that TIME is running out.

According to this overview your Mac probably won’t run Sierra:

Al

#12

Thanks to Leon and Alchroma for the additional input. It’s nice to here that older machines can still be actively used when given a bit of a boost.
Agreed that El Capitan will be the best I can hope for as regards the OS, but since I was previously running Mountain Lion, I think I’ll be pretty happy with that.
As regards the battery life, while it might not be giving me a full days work, I don’t recall having to be particularly precious about it. If and when I get it all back up and running I’ll have to check it out.

Talking of getting it back up and running, exactly how do I get, say my iTunes library or iPhoto library back on the new SSD? Can I just do some sort of library import? (I’ve got all the data, as it was able to be recovered from the duff original HDD) Will it matter that the iPhoto library is from iPhoto '09 ?

Questions…questions…

Thanks,

Cypher

#13

As mentioned above, first put the SSD in an external drive and then clone your MBP drive onto the SSD before installing it. Alternatively just use the built in OSX migration assistant once you have formatted the SSD, then take it out of the external drive and install. Then all your iTunes accounts, libraries, keychain etc should be already mapped onto the new SSD and it will just boot up!

#14

Whilst not directly relevant, I upgraded the HD to a SSD and the graphics card on my 2010 Mac Pro, it was a new machine afterwards! Brilliant performance boost and money well spent.

Only caveat was the OWC SSD died after about 18-months.

#15

Morning folks and thanks for the additional feedback :+1:

Entropy: Thanks for the comments, but the original HDD is toast (in fact I don’t even have it any more) but I do have an 1TB external hard drive with recovered data on it (note that this is NOT a clone or complete copy of the original HDD, it is simply a collection of recovered data files inc. iTunes and iPhoto libraries etc.).

Once the OS X OS is installed on the SSD (hoping a trip to my local Apple Store Genius Bar will be able to assist with this - as per the tip from jaysee) will I be able to simply migrate my iTunes and iPhoto libraries from my external HDD using the Migration Assistant?

Anyone had any experience of this? especially when migrating iPhoto '09 to the latest version of iPhoto (isn’t it just called Photos now? )

Ta,

Cypher

#16

Just a follow-up on the RAM and SSD upgrade.
Finally managed to get a Genius appointment in Perth city (Garden city store seems to be permanently booked out when ever I look?)
It was chock-a-block in the store (week of iPhone 7 release). Having been seated at the bar, I had to wait what seemed like ages (probably 10-15min) without a sole speaking to me. Was just about to make some polite enquiries when up popped a staff member who was willing and able to upload El Capitan straight onto my virgin SSD.
He did ask if I was aware that MacOS Siena was out and would I prefer that but I said I don’t think my hardware could officially support it. A quick requirements check and that bubble was burst. No surprises there.
The OS load didn’t take long at all, and he was also able to give me some guidance on updating my old iPhoto library (option + launch Photos, then point it to your iPhoto library to convert and import it. From memory I think it keeps s copy of the old library in there somewhere too).
As regards iTunes, I just copied out the current (empty library) to the desktop and replaced it with my old iTunes backup. It then converted it on app start up (I think, from memory).
All in all, very happy with both the MacBook Pro upgrade and the service I received from the Genius Bar - apart from the wait, but it was understandable given the new iPhone and Apple Watch release.
Thanks again to all those who responded with advice and/or suggestions.
If anyone else is considering doing the same, my advice is go for it - it’s pretty simple and the performance upgrade is noticiable (no more beach ball or endlessly bouncing apps!)
Cheers,
Cypher

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#17

That the Apple Store would do the OS install is awesome! Did they charge?

#18

Hi cypher I upgraded my 21.5 inch iMac with a 256 GB SSD recently and set it up with 12 GB of RAM sometime ago. I believe the upgrades have given my minimum usage iMac a great new lease of life. I had it done by a local Mac workshop and although they charged plenty it was well worth the expense (given the price of a new machine). Although it remains an old machine it suits my needs…
The only glitch was the noisy fan - which was fixed by installing SSD fan control app from the web at no charge…

#19

Nope, no charge involved and was all done pretty swiftly - plugged in the Ethernet cable and away he went. Probably took about 5mins or so.

Very happy chappy with the experience :blush::+1:

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#20

I recently upgraded my 2010 15" MBP with 8GB RAM and an SSD and it runs like a dream, with Sierra on it.