macbook Archives - domi.co.uk

When I got my SSD installed in my MacBook, I swapped out the (defective) DVD for a caddy from Mac:Upgrades to house the original boot drive. This was completely unrecognised, but I didn’t have time to worry about it, so put the old boot disk in an external FW400 case and used the data from there. I assumed there must be something wrong with the ATA interface on my MacBook’s motherboard, which could explain the DVD not working.

Long story short, I popped open the MacBook and another almost identical one with working DVD and tried all the combinations of disks I could. The odd result of this is that the original boot disk was the only one that didn’t work in the caddy – every other drive I tried worked. Very odd. Anyway, I just put a different drive in the caddy and used its external case for my rebellious original boot disk. I can’t think of an explanation for that set of circumstances…

I’d read a few blog posts here and there about how swapping your old MacBook’s hard drive for an SSD made amazing improvements, so I decided to give that a go. My 2006 MacBook is definitely creaking, but I don’t work mobile that much, and I can usually use the iPad for whatever I need to really get done before I get back to HQ. (Which is to say, I haven’t quite found sufficient excuse to buy a new MacBook, Air, Pro, or otherwise…)

So, I got a Crucial M4 from Amazon. On swapping that in for the (already upgraded) hard drive the improvement was way past my expectations. Instant app startup is something you don’t want to lose once you have it! My iMac’s main (or usually, *only*) bottleneck is the hard drive. Now my BlackBook is starting apps seemingly faster than that, even though there’s a difference of four times the memory, and four times the cores (if you allow hyper-threading into the equation).

I need to have a word with my local Apple specialists about changing my iMac HD for an SSD…

Nice one, Crucial, and SSDs in general!

Tag: macbook

MacBook DVD swap-out

Solid State Stress Reliever