Adding SSD to Late-2007 MBP? Advice/experience requested

[rjmacs]

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:

• 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.

[bazookaman]

I don't have a MBP but I do have a regular MB. I think maybe an 06? Anyway, I added a Samsung SSD and it really does make a difference. It boots WAY faster. It wakes up faster. It launches apps faster. The fans come on less. I won't say it speeds thing up while IN those apps. But then it's mainly used for emailing and surfing and the odd Word doc. So all that stuff is just more responsive. All in all I think it was a good upgrade for a laptop that had nowhere to go.

[M A V I C]

1.5 Gb is 192MB/s. Your Scorpio doesn't get close to that. So SATA bus speed isn't a huge issue.

I have a early 2007 MBP and had a SSD in it. Very snappy compared to the stock drive. I downgraded it to a Hitachi 7k500. Small drop in speed, and certainly in boot and app launch times. But other than that...

I don't know what the speed of the MBP's ATA bus is. It's not listed on the Apple site http://support.apple.com/kb/SP13 or everymac.com.

[M A V I C]

bazookaman wrote:
I don't have a MBP but I do have a regular MB. I think maybe an 06? Anyway, I added a Samsung SSD and it really does make a difference. It boots WAY faster. It wakes up faster. It launches apps faster. The fans come on less. I won't say it speeds thing up while IN those apps. But then it's mainly used for emailing and surfing and the odd Word doc. So all that stuff is just more responsive. All in all I think it was a good upgrade for a laptop that had nowhere to go.

And what drive did you have in it? I think a big difference here is the OP already has a very fast HD, not the stock one.

[bazookaman]

M A V I C wrote:
[quote=bazookaman]
I don't have a MBP but I do have a regular MB. I think maybe an 06? Anyway, I added a Samsung SSD and it really does make a difference. It boots WAY faster. It wakes up faster. It launches apps faster. The fans come on less. I won't say it speeds thing up while IN those apps. But then it's mainly used for emailing and surfing and the odd Word doc. So all that stuff is just more responsive. All in all I think it was a good upgrade for a laptop that had nowhere to go.

And what drive did you have in it? I think a big difference here is the OP already has a very fast HD, not the stock one.
It was a WD Black. I'm using it now in an external enclosure. It was only 500gb...not the 750.

[sekker]

Do it. You will be amazed at the speed bump.

I have a slower SR machine from earlier in 2007 and the SSD makes it still quite usable.

[rjmacs]

M A V I C wrote:
I don't know what the speed of the MBP's ATA bus is. It's not listed on the Apple site http://support.apple.com/kb/SP13 or everymac.com.

According to MacTracker: Ultra ATA/100 (running at UATA/66) I'm not sure if it's running at UATA/66 because of the stock drive (MATSHITADVD-R UJ-857E 8x Slot-loading SuperDrive) or because it's throttled at the MoBo.

[thermarest]

Be careful about the choice of caddy. That link doesn't specifically mention what models it fits in. At first glance the photo appears very much like the caddies for the current Unibody machines, and the older MBPs like yours I think are different. Even between the 2010 and 2011 unibodies there was a change that required cutting off a small plastic piece with a knife to use the older caddy.

At any rate, you can get the same product on eBay for around $15.

[rjmacs]

thermarest wrote:
Be careful about the choice of caddy. That link doesn't specifically mention what models it fits in. At first glance the photo appears very much like the caddies for the current Unibody machines, and the older MBPs like yours I think are different. Even between the 2010 and 2011 unibodies there was a change that required cutting off a small plastic piece with a knife to use the older caddy.

At any rate, you can get the same product on eBay for around $15.

Thanks - the link i used was from a forum where someone had used that item to upgrade a MBP3,1 like mine, so i think it's the correct one. Did you mean that the same exact product is available on ebay? I haven't found it there, but perhaps i'm not looking correctly. Any suggestions?

[rjmacs]

Assuming that i DO decide to invest in an SSD, given my setup are there specific brands/models you would recommend? Or ones to avoid? Bazookaman mentioned a Samsung...