The title says it all - getting a 2.4Ghz 13" MBP, 4GB Ram (rarely if ever need more), and thinking of a little boost somewhere over the 500GB 5400RPM drive. $300 for a 128GB SSD is pretty high, especially considering I'll probably max that out far too quickly. Is there any bigger bang for the buck performance upgrade over the Momentus XT?
I recently bought the new 13" MBP and have been looking at upgrades. I bought it standard so I could walk out with it that day, but I've been thinking about two main changes: RAM and a SSD hard drive. I'm pretty sure I'll be getting the Intel X25-M 160gb SSD, it looks like the best GB per $ ($424 for 160GB). I know that will show great results. Is a RAM upgrade also necessary for improved speed and performance? If so what is the best RAM to change to? I'm looking at either getting 1 4GB card for a total of 6GB or getting the pair for 8GB. I don't want to drop $300+ if it isn't going to do much for me.
I mostly use the MBP for word processing, internet, email, etc.; but I want a bit snappier and quicker performance than what I'm getting out of stock. It is possible (likely) I will get into music making/mixing on this machine.
Bang for buck wise which has a better speed to price ratio? I'm not talking about benchmarks, I'm talking about noticeable performance. I heard some people say that 5400 drives are so fast nowadays that even 7200 drives can sometimes be slower. Is this true?
Also, if it's a 7200 drive, is it cheaper to BTO straight from Apple the 7200 drive? Rather than buy aftermarket? (bearing in mind that I don't need the space of the two drives, so if I buy aftermarket the old drive will end up being unused )
I'm really liking the thought of having an SSD drive in my new 13" MBP but I don't have a clue as to which one I should choose.
my budget is somewhere in the 250-ish range. so I'm hoping some of you pros can suggest something good in that price range.
I see alot of them are SATA II. can our MBPs use these or do I need to stick with just the regular SATA drives?
have MROOGLED and searched forums but haven't found a quick and dirty answer to this...
What's the best bang-for-buck upgrade of these?
1) Software Raid 0 ?
(Free, but might actually slow some tasks due to adding a workload to the processor?)
2) Add RAM ?
($150 to bump from 3GB DDR3 to 6GB, $300 to bump to 10 GB)
3) Hardware RAID 0 ?
($800 for the apple controller - yikes! )
I read Lloyd Chambers recs for optimizing photoshop, and while very helpful, it seems overkill for a weekend warrior , non professional like me.
Using the base 2009 Mac Pro with standard 3GB of DDR3 primarily for
1) medium photoshopping with file sizes up to 200 - 400 MB
2) importing / smoothing / editing movies in iMovie and possibly FCE from HDV tapes and a Flip
I got two questions.
1) What would you guys say the best bang for your buck FireWire 800 is? I hear a lot of differing opinions on this one, so I'd like a couple suggestions, need over 500GB though. 750GB and up would probably be the best.
2) I've got 2 PATA hard-drives from my old Windows PC that crashed, what would you guys suggest doing about getting the data off of them? Most of the hard drive kits I found are for SATA, and the one I found for PATA was like $50 at Best Buy, I just want to get the data off these hard drives and junk 'em. I don't need bells and whistles and fancy enclosures.
After I got my MBP, I upgraded to the Seagate Momentus XT, and everything was fantastic.I know this may sound crazy, but today I upgraded my RAM to 8GB, and ever since, the XT is SO much louder and I can really feel the vibration. Do you think I may have shifted it while replacing the RAM? Is there something I can do to make it quieter again?
View 1 Replies View RelatedAre there any upgrades that I may do to my MacBook Air 11"???
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Kind of curious how often people upgrade their Macbook pro here. Anyone care to share? (also if its your main machine or not.
I have only had one so far.
To clarify i meant new machine
I have a 2.4GHz MBP, 4GB RAM, 320M, 500GB HDD. This is my main to-go machine, as well as my clamshell with my ACD. I am planning on ordering 2 updates for the machine (Already ordered the first one, actually)
1. 500GB 7200.4 RPM Seagate w/16MB Cache.
2. 8GB OWC RAM upgrade.
I hear both of these are ridiculously easy upgrades to do, and this also allows me to upgrade my PS3 slim's HDD to 500GB!
Do you guys think this is a worthwhile upgrade for someone who writes code in XCode?
Also, does anyone know how to back up my iWeb site so I don't have to remake it when I format?
So I finally made a choice and have decided I'll go ahead and get the 13' MBP to tide me over till I get my iMac and then use it as my portable.
I've been looking into some upgrades I could do though, looking to stay below 200$. I'm fairly sure I could do all of these fairly easily, especially with all the how to guides online, but are there any caveats that perhaps you more seasoned Mac upgradees would know?
[URL]
I'm thinking about putting this HDD from OWC into it in order to upgrade to 7200 rpm and also triple the storage capacity. (For less than Apple's 500gb 5400 rpm HDD) I would keep the other HDD to switch back into the MBP incase I ever need to send it to Apple -- will there be any problems with this configuration?
And then I'll probably upgrade the RAM to 6gb. But there shouldn't be any problems with that, unless having a 2gb and 4gb stick together will create problems.
I may get a very small SSD to boot from somewhere down the line...But I'll probably cross that road whenever I decide to sell this model and buy a new MBP. I don't want to spend too much on an outgoing processor.
I have an 09' MacBook Pro and have upgraded the OS along the way. Now I bought a new computer and want to restore it and give it to the kids. Can I restore it with the factory disc without losing the upgraded OS? I upgraded with a family pack with my brother so I don't have the upgrade disc, he does. Thoughts?
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Upgrade to 8GB [URL]
Upgrade to SSD [URL]
So, I have a 2009 MBP 2.66 Duo Core, 4MB ram, 320GB HDD, GeForce 9600M GT 256. I play mostly WoW, LoL, Civ, some FPS, Diablo 3- now that it's out, and a handful of others... I was planning on upgrading my HDD to 1TB and possibly doing a raid configuration for speed, as well as upgrading to 8MB ram. I realize the graphics card is going to be my biggest downfall- and to my understanding, not upgradable. I guess my question is, Is the memory and HDD upgrades viable even though I probably won't be able to do anything with my graphics?
Info:
Time Capsule, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
does anyone have any experience with this drive?i have the momentus xt which i love . but i just got as a gift , the intel x25-v and i would like to put it on my macbook pro and also throw another hard drive only for storage .is the momentus lp a good hdd ? or what do you guys think is the best ? buying a new hard drive (5400rpm ) or keep the momentus xt (7200rpm) just for storage ?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI had an X25-M in my hands yesterday but RMA'd it to newegg and got the Momentus XT (see my thread). Yes, performance is very good but it only remembers your most used apps. I want consistent speed across the board no matter which app it is. Also, the main reason I am returning is I did not think the vibration was too much until I threw my 5400 Hitachi stock drive back into the machine.It's night and day difference. So I'm going to Optibay+X25-M it. Sucks I have to deal with returns and bite the 15% restocking fee on the Momentus XT (and about $12 for cancelling the order for the optibay alternative+ SATA SuperDrive enclosure) in addition to returning the item, but now I know.
View 7 Replies View RelatedDoes anyone know what the deal is this this drive? Amazon shows "not yet released"; Newegg keeps pushing their ETA date out day by day, and others don't even list it. Newegg has 5 reviews for the drive, though.Has anyone got the inside scoop on when these things will truly become available? I'm trying to hold off bootcamping my new MBP until I can upgrade the HD; the process of cloning a drive with OS X and Win 7 on it looks to be a 2 step process I was hoping to avoid.
View 11 Replies View RelatedForgive me if this is a stupid question. I'm ordering my 13" MBP tonight and ordering the 500gb Momentus XT as well; I've never had a mac before/used bootcamp I was wondering if when you partition the hard drive for whatever other OS you are going to install (7 64b for me) do you also have to partition some of the flash memory or is the flash memory for all partitions?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI want to upgrade my aluminum macbook's 5400 RPM hard drive to a 7200 RPM hard drive.
My question is: Will upgrading the hard drive void the warranty on the new macbook?
I've been pouring over the various threads on this forum and around the internet and I thought that I would share what I feel is the most useful info out there regarding the 5400 vs 7200, size, heat and noise issues.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI just ordered a third new internal hard drive for my 17" Unibody MBP. The first 500gb drive I tried, Seagate Momentus 7200.4, died after just over one month of service so I replaced it with the slower Hitachi version and it started sounding like an old coffee grinder after less than two months. I don't recall hard drives having this many problems in the past and it is frustrating to say the least.The folks at Newegg do not support the products they sell after 30-days so I am going to have to duke it out with the manufacturers of both drives. Meanwhile, I am curious what kinds of luck other people are having with hard drive upgrades in their MBP's.
View 9 Replies View RelatedIf I upgraded my HD to A 320GB SSD And my ram to 8GB of DDR3 how that would affect my unibody mac's performance!
View 10 Replies View Relatedcurrently i try to move all my files from old hitachi 250gb to new momentus via time machine , yet it fail after 6 percent. so i decide to do a fresh install of mac Os 10.6 but then it no responding at 27 minutes remaining . i try to use both DVD and external Hdd to install but still the same result . i tried to update the momentus Firmware via [URL] yet still same result?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have two 500GB Momentus XT drives in my i7 MBP. each filled to 60-80% capacity. But when I'm doing anything from typing to playing back HD video in FCP, it lags and stutters, then catch up to itself. I did the firmware upgrades to the hard drives, and I have 6GB of RAM. What on EARTH would be causing this? It's driving me crazy! I ordered a Hitachi standard 7200RPM drive to swap into this to see if it's a hard drive issue or a RAM issues, but I'm guessing it's the Momentus.
View 17 Replies View RelatedI've got a limited budget - say $200 tops and want to eke out some performance gains from my late 08 MBP 2.53ghz 4GB ram. I'm by no means a power user but am guilty of running too much stuff (read - too lazy to close *****). I typically will have the following open
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have had a seagate hybrid for a semester of school. I recently open disk utility to realize there's a big chunk of the hard drive allocated as "free space." I never partitioned the drive yet in utility it show's the drive as 2 partitions. Is this normal?
View 2 Replies View RelatedBeen on these forums browsing around snooping info for a while now. I'm in the market for a 2010 MBP and i am really looking into the SSD's. The downside is there price and the relative small storage space.But now i read some post on a tech website about the seagate momentus XTWhich is a 500Gb HDD @ 7200 RPM with a 4GB flash memory. Now i'm intrested to see what you guys think of this concept would it be a good deal to get this into a MBP or just stick with the 500Gb apple HDD till the price on SSD's drop.
View 23 Replies View RelatedThe new hybrid went on sale today, I ordered a 500GB. Figured I would let you guys know how it works out.Here's some numbers with my traditional Seagate 500GB 5400RPM in my 13" Macbook ProLaunch Photoshop CS4 (following reboot): 18 Seconds Transfering a 1.4GB file from a Sandisk Cruzer (Flash Drive): 58 Seconds* I will update as soon as the XT arrives. The reviews make it seem like a great alternative to an SSD.
View 24 Replies View RelatedI ordered one of these early last week from Tiger Direct, and since the whole world has ordered one as well, it's severely back ordered.But I have been getting concerned with all these reviews I am seeing, that it vibrates enough to be a sex toy. the 13" MBP apparently is nuts.. but maybe that was just his drive? I used a friends 13" Sony Vaio last night, and it felt like a jack hammer, and i was like "Please please please don't be like this"my MBP is 15" (see sig), the momentus is juts 7200 RPM right? not any more than another drive? what are your guys experience with 7200 RPM in MBP's (make sure you state your size)
View 15 Replies View RelatedAs above i need to know if this hard drive the seagate momentus xt 750 gb will work with my macbook pro the mac is a 2010 model 2.66 i7,8gb ram,500 gb 7200 drive someone told me that it wont as my mac is sata 2 and the momentus drive is sata 3 just need to find out before i go a buy one of these drives.
View 3 Replies View Related