05-24-2012, 05:10 PM
Hi gang,
My main day-to-day machine is a 15" Late-2007 (3,1) MacBook Pro. It's a 2.6 GHz C2D, currently has a WD Scorpio Black 750 GB hard drive and 6GB RAM installed.
It seems that SSDs are getting reasonably affordable, and i'm interested in getting some more time out of this machine. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to buy a slower SSD (the internal SATA bus on this machine is 1.5Gb/s) to put in the drive bay, and migrate the WD750 to the optical bay using this SATA->PATA caddy. I almost NEVER use the optical drive on this machine, and in a pinch i could use a cheap USB external.
Here are the questions i'm pondering:
Obviously, i'd be making the SSD the boot drive, and using the WD for storage/etc. However, given that i have a lot of stuff on the WD, i would likely be accessing it relatively frequently. Thanks a bunch, folks. You guys are a fantastic resource.
My main day-to-day machine is a 15" Late-2007 (3,1) MacBook Pro. It's a 2.6 GHz C2D, currently has a WD Scorpio Black 750 GB hard drive and 6GB RAM installed.
It seems that SSDs are getting reasonably affordable, and i'm interested in getting some more time out of this machine. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to buy a slower SSD (the internal SATA bus on this machine is 1.5Gb/s) to put in the drive bay, and migrate the WD750 to the optical bay using this SATA->PATA caddy. I almost NEVER use the optical drive on this machine, and in a pinch i could use a cheap USB external.
Here are the questions i'm pondering:
- Am i going to get a substantial speed bump from adding an SSD to this machine, or does the slower SATA bus kill it?
- If so, what SSD makes the most sense for this? What factors should i be considering/not considering?
- Will moving the WD750 to the PATA bus destroy any speed bump gained by adding the SSD?
- Are there other things i'm overlooking? Better options? (Short of replacement - i don't have that kinda scratch.)
Obviously, i'd be making the SSD the boot drive, and using the WD for storage/etc. However, given that i have a lot of stuff on the WD, i would likely be accessing it relatively frequently. Thanks a bunch, folks. You guys are a fantastic resource.