Back when I bought my MacBook in January 2012, I immediatly bought a memory upgrade from the 4Gb that was included to 8Gb (the max for this MBP if I’m not mistaken). This was enough to keep my computing experience satisfying for a long time, up until two weeks ago. I’ve been tinkering with my NAS and had the need to copy loads of files from and to the NAS. I noticed my harddrive had a hard time writing and my MacBook seemed sluggish at other tasks. How I fixed it? I upgraded my Macbook Pro with an SSD.
For a while now, I’ve been trying to decide whether I should upgrade my MacBook Pro i5 (early 2012 version) or if I should sell it and buy myself a new one. Although the last scenario seems attractive (who doesn’t like a brand new toy), I’ve decided to go for the only upgrade that can still buy my MacBook some years to go; an SSD.
The process of placing an SSD in my MacBook was suprisingly easy. It took me more time to get/buy the needed tools than the actual placement of the disk.
Tools I needed
- a Torx T6 screwdriver (needed for the screws on the sides of the HDD in the MacBook)
- a Phillips #00 screwdriver (needed for the screws on the bottom of the MacBook)
- a new SSD (I bought a Samsung 850 EVO (500GB))
- a bootable USB stick with OSX Yosemite installer on it
I used a single resource for doing this; a nice video with a good explanation of the needed steps:
This upgrade brought me more speed, yay! Also, there’s less heath from the MacbookPro, which is a nice side-effect. My hope is to be able to work on my MacbookPro for at least two more years before I grow tired of sluggishness or lack of speed. Let’s wait and see :).