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I have an aging 15" MacBook Pro from 2007:

  • Model ID: MacBookPro3,1
  • Model No.: A1226

In an attempt to squeeze a bit more life out of it, I've replaced the battery, upped the RAM, and I'm about to move to an SSD. BUT, I'm a bit stumped by what type of SSD to buy. MacTracker lists the specs for the hard drive as a "1.5 Gbps Serial ATA (SATA)". Interestingly, I've found that SATA2 and SATA3 drives are just as cheap as SATA (if not cheaper sometimes).

Will one of these newer drives work? Will this old MacBook benefit from SATA2 or SATA3? Will it be worse off? Do SATA1, SATA2, and SATA3 all have the same connection type?

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The drive will be bound by the speed of the technology in your computer. 1.5Gbps is fast enough for the cheapest SSDs money can buy, but anything better than that is going to saturate the bandwidth. You'll definitely see a performance improvement over an HDD, even with this limitation, but don't go buying a high-performance SSD.

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  • I see. Thanks. But it will work, right? SATA1 and SATA3 have the same connection type? Also, I listed the drive that I'm looking at in the comment above.
    – Sam
    Jun 17, 2015 at 1:49
  • Yep, you can do it, but even the linked SSD is a few times the performance of the SATA inside your computer. 1.5Gbps translates to about 192MB/s. A drive of half the performance would yield similar results, for less money.
    – William T Froggard
    Jun 17, 2015 at 1:52

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