These days more and more people are switching to using SSD or Solid State Drives in their laptops and you might be thinking about joining them and following the trend. SSD drives have a number advantages over conventional spinning hard drives, the main being their input/output speed. They also don't contain any moving parts and hence are less prone to failures due to vibration. Some people will also convince you that they are more stable, fail less and consume less power, but all those statements are yet to be verified and supported by some actual data.
You can use this same instructable to replace your hard drive with another hard drive, on the outside they are completely identical.
And by the way, I did this at TechShop (www.techshop.ws) as they have a whole bunch of really convenient large tables in the common area with some great lighting and you'll always find some available.
You can use this same instructable to replace your hard drive with another hard drive, on the outside they are completely identical.
And by the way, I did this at TechShop (www.techshop.ws) as they have a whole bunch of really convenient large tables in the common area with some great lighting and you'll always find some available.
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Signing UpStep 1: Acquire SSD (or conventional HD) for replacement.
Though still expensive, SSDs became much more affordable lately, so you may consider buying one to speed up your computer's I/O operations dramatically. I have installed a few high speed SSD from macsales.com so far and I'm very happy with them, but if you prefer any other brand, go for it, this instructable is going to be the same for all.
For this procedure all you need in terms of parts is the replacement SSD only. I will talk about tools in the following slides.
For this procedure all you need in terms of parts is the replacement SSD only. I will talk about tools in the following slides.
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Boost your SSD to motherboard speed by 20 to 25% by shielding the thing cable from the SSD with a antistatic bag. .. I used one from a old HHD- purchase, cut it up to fit and placed it between the SSD and the cable.. all the way to the motherboard.
Boosted my login-time from 21 to 16 seconds.
The guy who gave me the advice had tested it with some technical stuff and rambled about magnetism and data-corruption.. I can just say it works :-)
Your suggestion to "migrate data from your old Hard Drive" sort of suggests (to me at least) that the old drive has to now be put in an external dock. I'm not sure how a Mac handles that but I expect you'd need to install all the OS/applications first.
Surely cloning would be easier?
Looking forward to your next Instructable.
Fill it up from number 1 and then when reassembling you work backwards to 1.
Don't take this the wrong way, but you went through A LOT of steps for something minor.
1. You don't need anti-static wrist band or mats, unless you have a penchant for touching bare circuit boards. Just make sure you're not dragging your feet on the carpet, and you're probably fine. I generally work on a hard floor surface (kitchen is usually perfect for this) and I don't move around a lot. You can ground yourself by touching a screw on a light socket.
2. There is absolutely no need for any loctite. I see you have good tools, but for anyone that has substandard screwdrivers (ie the wrong size), putting loctite on small screws like this (red or blue) will likely just cause them to strip the screws. I can't stress this enough.
With all due respect, I strongly disagree with your comment about NOT using loctite. In most cases it's not a good idea, but with these unibody macs -- absolutely necessary. I deal with hundreds of these guys due to the nature of my job, and I see these machines with loose/lost screws all the time. I'm not sure what's wrong with them in the first place, but after some time of normal use these screws start to loosen up. I even developed a habit of checking the tightness of these screws every time I get one of these in my hands, and you'll be surprised.
Another argument in support of loctite use is that they actually use it when assembling these computers. That little blue spot on the side of the threads you see every time you take a screw out of MacBook pro -- that's the originally applied loctite. Though I'm not trying to convince anyone, just sharing my experience. Good luck and thanks for the comment!
Our local nut and screw wholesaler recommends superglue, but theirs is 12x the cost.
Thank you very glad!
Thanks for pointing that out!
SSD's are the best when it comes to daily use.
Fast boot, fast access to apps, silent computer, the only drawback being the space offered, which varies depending on your budget !
I did use a 60 Gigs SSD, which cost me 60 Euros, for all the "not-so-often" data, they are on a NAS :)
Good Instructable, very nice and clean :)
Doesn't flash memory (eventually) fail after a number of read/writes?
And by the way, the question that you raised is also true for spinning hard drives. They also fail, and there are also algorithms/code in the hardware that takes care of marking bad blocks and moving them somewhere else.
So you may be using your hard drive or SSD and on the surface there would be no indication of any lost cells, but in reality they die (like our brain cells) continuously, until that deterioration reaches some sort of breaking point. That was the long winded version of the answer, sorry about that.
Short answer is this: modern, good quality SSDs are not less reliable than conventional hard drives, which is especially true for laptops.