Should a Mac-User Upgrade to an Intel 520 SSD

[idata]

Hello All,

I have been contemplating putting the new Intel 520 series 240gb ssd into my early 2011 13" MacBook Pro. However, I do have some serious concerns and would really appreciate some advice.

I know that Apple can be very stubborn in supporting third party hardware where they are not benefiting financially. After reading a number of forums that have reported problems with Macs and Intel ssd's my main concerns are:

1. Getting the beep that tells me the ssd is incompatible.

2. That there is no tool box for OSX.

3. There is no trim support (Snow Leopard)

4. Getting the OSX to recognise the 6gb/s sata interface.

I would love to hear that all of these problems have been resolved and that I'm being paranoid about getting this new drive. Any comforting words or sound advice from people who have successfully installed and intel 520 series ssd into an early 2011 13" Macbook Pro (Snow Leopard) would be gratefully appreciated.

I plan on performing a clean install with the SSD rather than migrarting my existing software from my 5400rpm hdd.

Regards

Rodney Ferguson

Ps. Please do not suggest upgrading to Lion. Unfortunately, I find it truly awful.

[idata]

Specs: MacBook Pro i7 2.4GHz 15"/2x4GB HyperX 1600 MHz.

Placed the the 520 180GB SSD on an external usb case and cloned the entire disk using a Macbook Air w/Lion 10.7.3. Then placed the SSD in the HDD bay because from what I've read the Optibay runs at 3 Gbps. Didn't trim.

I'm using the SSD for the OS & Apps. The 750 GB 7200 rpm (now formatted clean) in the optibay is for storage, Dropbox and Thunderbird mail. Dropbox sometimes loses its path with large files (such as 8 GB backups).

As an afterthought, I probably could've just cloned the recovery partition and then installed Lion with InstallESD.dmg.

The SSD is running fine, though I haven't tested yet if it holds true to 6 Gbps.

[idata]

dhinostroza wrote:

Specs: MacBook Pro i7 2.4GHz 15"/2x4GB HyperX 1600 MHz.

Placed the the 520 180GB SSD on an external usb case and cloned the entire disk using a Macbook Air w/Lion 10.7.3. Then placed the SSD in the HDD bay because from what I've read the Optibay runs at 3 Gbps. Didn't trim.

I'm using the SSD for the OS & Apps. The 750 GB 7200 rpm (now formatted clean) in the optibay is for storage, Dropbox and Thunderbird mail. Dropbox sometimes loses its path with large files (such as 8 GB backups).

As an afterthought, I probably could've just cloned the recovery partition and then installed Lion with InstallESD.dmg.

The SSD is running fine, though I haven't tested yet if it holds true to 6 Gbps.

What software did you use to clone the boot drive to the SSD? I'm having some trouble with this.

Thanks!

[idata]

Hi,

I used the latest version of Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the entire MacBook Air early 2012 SSD. No problem at all. CCC is donationware.

After a weeks worth, the SSD 520 hasn't given any trouble, Dropbox is stable and Thunderbird is much faster. Lion Finder indexing went along without a hitch as well. Some trouble with latest versions of Word and Excel 2011 but hey, can't blame the SSD for that.

Can anyone recommend software to test the SSD speed? I'd like to know how close it can get to 6 Gbps.

[MZube1]

I upgraded http://i.imgur.com/0J2dV6L.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/0J2dV6L.png?1

and made some tweak according to http://blog.alutam.com/2012/04/01/optimizing-macos-x-lion-for-ssd/ http://blog.alutam.com/2012/04/01/optimizing-macos-x-lion-for-ssd/

[Jose_H_Intel1]

Thank you all for posting,

We recommend asking Apple for a list of validated SSD models that work with their systems.