Will an SSD drive make a 2007 MacBook Pro worth keeping around?

April 29, 2018 8:02 AM

Would an SSD drive breathe new life into my 2007 MacBook Pro?

I have a late 2007 MacBook Pro (2.2 GHz, 4GB of RAM, 128GB video RAM, stock 120GB hard drive) running Mavericks.

Would swapping the hard drive out for an SSD be worth it to keep the laptop usable for a few more years? Right now it takes noticeable time to run Firefox and open larger applications like Photoshop CS4. There is significant lag to open files. (I did an SSD upgrade on my girlfriend’s 2010 MacBook Pro and now it runs great!)

I primarily use my Mac for web browsing, Word processing, and blogging.

* My budget is very tight right now, and I have an SSD drive from another computer I can use for the upgrade.

Other considerations:
Would running a newer OS also help in tandem with the SSD, or would I see a hit on better performance and be better off sticking with Mavericks?

posted by mtphoto to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Best answer: I installed an SSD on a 2012 Mac and it did totally rejuvenate the machine. I suppose other systems could always fail, and that's the risk - but you would still be able to keep that hard drive, so you don't lose the investment. My philosophy was that even if I got only one more year, it was a net savings as opposed to purchasing a new computer.

It's nice to be able to upgrade to the latest versions of everything. I don't know about the hardware limitations you might have on an older Mac, though.
posted by Miko at 8:12 AM on April 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Firefox is a notable resource hog on my machine, you might want to try chrome or Safari, those two browsers definitely run much more efficiently on my mac. Also, see if you can get your ram upgraded to 8gb, that, together with a ssd upgrade should really help things out.

Note: My experience, like you, is that swapping in a ssd on a 2010 macbook really boosted things.
posted by TrinsicWS at 8:58 AM on April 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: An SSD upgrade made a huge difference on my late-2008 MacBook Pro. Next time you have a few bucks available, it sounds like your machine may support more RAM; that would help, too.
posted by magicbus at 9:07 AM on April 29, 2018

Response by poster: Mike,

I appreciate your insight, because I want to hold out on buying a newer computer as long as possible. At this point, the original hard drive in the laptop is nearing 11 years old, so it’s very possible it could fail in the near future.

Are you running the latest OS on your 2012 Mac?
posted by mtphoto at 9:27 AM on April 29, 2018

Best answer: At a cost of $0 and some time, I'd do the SSD upgrade. I would not spend any money upgrading a computer that old. 4 GB RAM is pretty tight these days, though. Every Mac says you could get to 6 GB in a working but unsupported configuration, but I don't know if that's worth throwing any money at. Personally I wouldn't spend money on RAM, since it's not officially supported and you wouldn't be able to repurpose the RAM afterward. As noted, that computer is well past its expected (and supported) lifespan. You can't get repair parts if it dies.

Personally I'd put the newest supported OS on it, but "supported" includes "by whatever apps you use." CS4 has some specific constraints (like, problems during installation or with the save dialog on newer OSes), but if it's working for you on Mavericks then it should continue working for you if you stay on Mavericks. Firefox support is from Mavericks up; Chrome requires 10.10 (Yosemite). The newer the OS, the more likely you'll have a problem with CS4 (but also the better OS support for a whole lot of other things, so … figure out your level of comfort).
posted by fedward at 10:13 AM on April 29, 2018

I'm running High Sierra, 10.13.4
posted by Miko at 10:46 AM on April 29, 2018

Best answer: I was surprised how much El Cap was more smooth on my machines than Mavericks had been. I also put an SSD in my 2012 desktop machine (because of a failure - make good backups people!) and it's an all-new machine. I'm running Sierra on my newer machines but El Cap on my older ones and it's been fine.
posted by jessamyn at 10:55 AM on April 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Swapping the original drive for an SSD drive is the single best upgrade you can do, so if you've got a disk available already, I wouldn't doubt about it. Like you and others here, I upgraded my older (2010) Macbook Pro with an SSD and the difference is incredible. I also upgraded the RAM, from 8 to 16 GB, but the biggest difference in performance comes from the new hard drive. As for the OS: my machine runs High Sierra smoothly, but a 2007 machine can't; El Capitan might work?
posted by Desertshore at 11:25 AM on April 29, 2018

Something to note in re: upgrading MacOS:

*This system can run the last version of OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" and OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" although it does not support the AirDrop, AirPlay Mirroring, or Power Nap features. It also supports the last version of OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" and OS X 10.11 "El Capitan," but no advanced features are supported. It is not supported booting into 64-bit mode when running Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard," either. It does support "OpenCL" and Grand Central Dispatch, though. It is not capable of running macOS Sierra (10.12) or subsequent versions of the macOS at all.

posted by General Malaise at 12:50 PM on April 29, 2018

2012 Macbook Pro with SSD and 16GB RAM self done upgrades. It is well worth it and I am running the latest OS. SSD, in particular, has made the machine way more speedy. On the web surfing front, seriously, take a look at your DNS and proxy settings. Mine got weird and made my browsers slow and not connecting to sites. But yes, SSD all the way.
posted by jadepearl at 2:07 PM on April 29, 2018

Response by poster: @Desertshore @General Malaise,
I’ll plan to install El Capitan. Any higher would probably run very slowly, even if I could run it.
Knowing that it’s not capable of running 10.2 Sierra is helpful!

I wish my system maxed out at 8GB of RAM instead of 4. After the HD upgrade, that will be one of the other big limiting factors going forward.

After you guys did your SSD upgrades, did you notice sleep happening faster?
Right now it takes a full minute or more for my Mac to go to sleep.
posted by mtphoto at 3:02 PM on April 29, 2018

Short version: definitely upgrade to the SSD, especially since you already have the drive and the know-how from doing that for your girlfriend's Mac.

Longer: 2009 MacBook Pro here, upgraded from 4GB RAM to 8GB. When I did that, I still had a spinning HDD. It was fine for 10.6, but when I upgraded to 10.9 (Mavericks), the system was very slow. I found advice online that 10.9 really worked better on SSDs than HDDs, because of more system disk access. I installed a 500 GB SSD, and the speed increase was amazing. I've moved up to 10.11 (the highest macOS version this MBP will take), and it's still going great. The SSD made more difference than the RAM did. I haven't noticed any sleep delays.

You'll probably want to research the SATA speeds of your Mac and the SSD that you have. A newer SSD will only run as fast as the Mac's SATA controller. So it'll feel a lot faster than the old HDD, but you might not reach the native speed of the SSD.

However, with only 4GB of RAM, you might be cautious about upgrading the OS. I'd make a clone of your current system (Super Duper works great for me), and try booting from the clone to make sure it's functional. Only then would I move to 10.11, and I'd try it out for a few days while keeping track of any documents you create/mod in the meantime. If you run into problems, copy off the new documents and restore the earlier clone to the Mac.

Good luck with it! Glad to see someone else who likes to keep useful tech running.
posted by NumberSix at 4:45 PM on April 29, 2018

that's what I did to my 2009 MBP and I've been able to edit videos using Premiere Pro since doing it! Go for it!
posted by drinkmaildave at 7:02 PM on May 2, 2018