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I would like to replace my MacBook pro hard disk with an SSD, without reinstalling everything. I am looking for your experience on

  • good SSD drive models that have good performance at a fair price
  • the relocation strategy so that I get my old system migrated with no trouble or pain from the old hard drive to the new one (including additional hardware needed, I guess a usb-sata connector)
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Allow me to recommend you the OWC ones. You have an “extreme RE” (which I believe you won’t need) and the Pro, which is arguably one of the fastest and most secure drives so far.

I’m sure you can google for comparisons with other drives but I’ve installed a various numbers of SSDs (albeit not only in Macbooks) and the OWC ones are what I’ve chosen for me.

Jeff Atwood himself made a comparison (but he didnt include the OWC at the time), which you can find in this blog post.

Don’t forget to read through the comments, as there’s value in there too.

I’d say that excluding the OWC (which I prefer), the Crucial C300 should be the next in line.

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  • Are there any Mac benchmarks of OWC vs Crucial drives?
    – Kyle Cronin
    Nov 8, 2010 at 15:58
  • @Kyle I have found one here: tweaktown.com/reviews/3261/…
    – Martin Marconcini
    Nov 8, 2010 at 18:56
  • stay away from the OWC drives that don't use the sandforce controller. I have personal experience with the vertex (not vertex 2) throwing unrepairable file system errors about once every other day.
    – Robert S Ciaccio
    Nov 9, 2010 at 1:57
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    @calavera The Vertex Drives are OCZ not OWC :) (and I had two Agility OCZs that completely failed and were replaced by warranty). That’s why I don’t like the OCZ drives, but some ppl had good experiences with them. OWC on the other hand, is a different story :)
    – Martin Marconcini
    Nov 9, 2010 at 12:28
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    LOL I always get their acronyms mixed up. Indeed, I meant the OCZ drives :)
    – Robert S Ciaccio
    Nov 9, 2010 at 15:15
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I've just bought the Crucial C300 SSD and it's amazingly quick. From benchmarks around the web like this one at bit-tech you can see its the best for the money around at the moment! I got the 128 GB for just over £240 and never looked back.

You can do a time machine backup and restore it to your SSD but as its a laptop you might need to plug it into a USB-SATA to setup. In my case I started fresh (coming from a windows background, I prefer it)!

Here's a video of Crucial testing two MacBooks. One with a disk drive and one with the C300. You can see how much improvement you get from it!

Also, start time for me is now around 20seconds with an even quicker shutdown.

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I just installed the OCZ Vertex 2 80gb drive last week. LOVE it. Super fast.

I highly recommend it.

I installed the 500gb drive I was using as my boot disk, in the optical bay, and just cloned the drive to my SSD. Then wiped the 500gb and partitioned it into 2 pieces. one 80GB and one 420gb. I clone my SSD to the 80gb partition every 12 hours using Carbon Copy Cloner, that way if the SSD ever dies on me I can just boot the the other drive and be back in business while I wait for the replacement.

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I just installed an OCZ Vertex 2 in my MBP, and it flies. It's not the fastest SSD on the market, but it's a good balance of price and performance, and it's still lightning fast

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    The 120GB is only 30 dollars less than the OWC (just fyi) ;)
    – Martin Marconcini
    Nov 9, 2010 at 1:09

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