My friend came to me upset that his 2011 Macbook Pro was getting unbearably slow, so I recommended that rather than buying a new $2000 Macbook and having to deal with the hassle of reloading all his software and transfering documents, that he simply spend a tenth of the price to speed up the one he currently has with this SSD. I helped him do a clone of his old hard drive to this SSD and after that was done we loaded this in and turned on his computer, and everything was still there but his loading time was at least 5 times faster than previously, and his applications loaded almost instantaneously. He is very happy with the performance increase.
One problem you may run into is that you may have to re-input the product key for your Microsoft Office software if you have that installed, as it is tied to your hardware and any hardware changes like this one will deactivate your current registration.
I purchased 2 of these for use with my older MacBook Pro's. The 480GB model was on sale for $99, and i was in the market.
In my case, the plan was to install as replacement for internal spinning boot disk, and then do a clean fresh install (Yosemite on mid-2009) and Sierra on (mid-2012).
Install was a breeze, there are several videos on YouTube. I would rate as "EASY".
Following instructions easily found on Internet, I had already created a USB-flash installer for the MACOS. Powered-up system with new SSD installed and held down OPTION key. I was able to pick the USB drive where the installer resided (you wont see the SSD disk at that point). From there, easily used Disk Utility to format SSD and then installed new instance of MACOS. SImple and easy.
As several reviewers mentioned, this is not the fastest SSD out there, but notably improves speed of system startup and any disk access for older MacBook Pro laptops. However, unlike others, I am not taking a star away because SanDisk doesnt represent itself as top shelf speed. At the price, this is a 5-Star product.
I cannot speak yet to reliability, but SanDisk has strong brand reputation for flash storage, so I expect little issues.
5 stars for the disk itself. SanDisk as a WD company now and this ssd is a decent performer. Got this on prime day for a very decent price to upgrade a budget grade hp laptop and boy it has put new life into it! A 20 to 60 second boot is now a mere 7 seconds.
I took a star off, as the drive info listed on sandisks website makes it seem as if there is free cloning software for download. That is not the case.
I had to get a cheap usb to sata Connector, (startech usb 3.0 to sata for 10 bucks) then restored from a macrium reflect drive backup. Not as fast as doing a 1:1 clone, and maybe not the way most would be familiar with, but it was the only way I could go from a 1tb to a 480gb without paying for additional software features.
Also I’m not one to use one of the many freeware-like cloning apps that seem to be Chinese. This is what sandisk had recommended in the online pdf file. IMO It needs to be from a legit company for it to be considered safe.
But this drive seems to be a great buy.
This is my third SSD install and was relatively easy. One complication was my Intel Optane/1T HDD setup on my Dell tower. Optane supposed to work with SSD drive but never did. Just slowed it down. Kept spitting out error messages. Would not configure properly. Finally got Optane turned off and everything is much faster now.
The old mechanical hard drive surged constantly producing a never ending whining noise. SSD took care of that.
One other issue I had during cloning process, using Reflect 7 was the number and size of partitions. The biggest of 5 partitions in the stock setup one would not fit unless dragged over to the SSD target LAST. Even though it was out of order, it still worked fine. So if you run into this issue, thats the solution. I used external USB connection to do the cloning from the internal HDD. Took about an hour but was perfect.
This SSD was much more cheaply made and lighter than the last one installed. All plastic. But seems to work OK.
Be aware there are ZERO instructions with this and no cloning software or any extra brackets, screws or hardware to mount or clone via USB. Do your homework before ordering. Not for newbies.
Mechanical HDDs should be banned. Super slow and noisy. Go with SSD. Very fast and Very cheap now. The only way to go.
I noted several reviews that talked about finding software to clone the drive but there's an easier way...
I bought this SSD for a mid 2012 Macbook Pro, and this was as simple to install as any Hard Drive; I used the same process I have used for numerous drive replacements.
I use an external HD enclosure with a regular HDD for Backups.
To install this SSD, I first installed it in that same enclosure, and used Disk Utility to erase and reformat the drive.
Then I installed the SSD into the laptop and put my Backup drive in the external enclosure again.
I restarted the laptop (which then automatically booted from the Backup drive) and after it booted I selected the option Restore From Backup.
System used the (external) Backup Drive to copy everything to the new SSD. It took about two and half hours to transfer around 500 GB.
When it was done the system worked perfectly, and much faster than the old one!
(This is exactly the same method I used in the past to install a new HDD.)
Feature Product
- Easy upgrade for faster boot-up, shutdown, application load and response (As compared to 5400 RPM SATA 2.5" hard drive. Based on published specifications and internal benchmarking tests using PCMark Vantage scores.)
- Boosts burst write performance, making it ideal for typical PC workloads
- The perfect balance of performance and reliability
- Read/write speeds of up to 530MB/s/440MB/s (Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending upon drive capacity, host device, OS and application.)
- Shock-resistant for proven durability -even if you drop your computer (Shock resistant (up to 1500G) and vibration resistant (5gRMS, 10-2000 HZ/4.9 gRMS, 7-800 HZ), Temperature (from 0 degrees Celcius to 70 degrees Celcius))
- 3-year limited manufacturer warranty
Description
SanDisk, a pioneer in solid state storage technologies and the brand pros trust, delivers improved speed and performance with the SanDisk SSD Plus. With sequential read speeds of up to 535MB/s** [480GB, 960GB and 1TB]; 530MB/s** [120GB & 240GB], this solid state drive performs faster than a typical hard disk drive(1). You'll appreciate faster startups, shutdowns, data transfers, and application response times than with a hard disk drive(1). The SanDisk SSD Plus also offers quiet, reliable performance, and dashboard(4) status monitoring for your favorite media applications. | *1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes. Actual user storage less. | **Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending upon drive capacity, host device, OS and application. 1MB=1,000,000 bytes. | (1) As compared to 5400 RPM SATA 2.5” hard drive. Based on published specifications and internal benchmarking tests using PCMark Vantage scores. | (3) Shock resistant (up to 1500G) and vibration resistant (5gRMS, 10-2000 HZ/4.9 gRMS, 7-800 HZ), Temperature (from 0 degrees Celcius to 70 degrees Celcius) | (4) Download required
I use these in older laptops,\
Customers I have needing an upgrade to a much older laptop usally get this on my recomendation.
It's not as expensive as a Samsung drive but it does the job just as well on an older computer that cant really fully take advantage of the speed anyhow.
This one went in to an old dell, it did make a fairly significant difference to boot times and usage
The customer was very happy, and the price is hard to argue with when you compare the performance to price ratio.
An ssd of any kind is hands down the cheapest and fastest upgrade you can do to a computer.
They always provide a very obvious performance upgrade.
This old laptop feels 5 years newer now and then some.
Will buy again and soon
Hmmm...I think Amazon lumps all the different sizes together. I am reviewing the 120GB SSD Plus.
I noticed that the read speeds are as advertised = UP to 500+MBps.
The write speeds, however seem to top out at 80-90 MBps for the one that I have. I have also have one of these in 240GB size and the write speeds on it go up to 500+MBps. So I don't know if I received a bad one or if the 120GB size is limited in this way.
Because the drive works well (just slower than expected write speeds) I did not attempt to return and I am living with it in a repaired laptop. It works well, just a bit slow with writes. Again, maybe someone else has a review on the 120GB where they are seeing better writes and I have a dud....
I've purchased this SSD to upgrade my HP Pavilion Wave 600 PC from 3.5" HDD to this 2.5 SSD, lucky me, there are screws for both 3.5" and 2.5". It fitted perfectly, and with the help of Macrium Reflect software, I was able to clone the HDD to SSD smoothly within 16 min (9% used out of 1TB).
Now the PC super responsive, boots up and open apps instantly unlike the HDD which was always overloaded just by windows processes. See images before and after.
Read Speed: 500+ MB
Write Speed: 350+ MB
Recently purchased this SSD to upgrade my old HP Pavilion dv6000 Intel Centrino based laptop running Windows 8.1 with its original Toshiba 160GB SATA drive. I read many posts and reviews on how to go about performing this upgrade and I ended up using a free software called EaseUS Todo Backup. It worked flawlessly in cloning my old drive to the SanDisk, which I connected via a USB adapter. The old laptop now boots fast and all functions requiring hd read/write are much faster than before. It seems the battery life also lasts longer too. I can't yet speak about the longevity of this drive, but so far this has been an excellent upgrade.
I had looking for an inexpensive solid drive since I got my PC tower and couldn't resist this SSD because of the brand-name and price. At the discount price of thirty dollars it's a steal.
My need for a solid-state disk is different from most users. My tower already has a 256 GB Samsung PCI SSD that it boots off of and 3 terabytes of mechanical disk storage. While this is more than adequate for normal usage, editing files in Photoshop / After Effects started to become a pain as the boot disk filled up and the mechanical hard drive proved too slow for rapid storage. This Sandisk SSD provided a great and inexpensive "scratch disk" to store temporary files on.
Installing it in my PC tower was unfortunately a bit of a pain and one of the reasons I only gave the disk four stars instead of five. The packaging is minimal and does not include any extra cables or instructions. Fortunately enough my PC motherboard already included a SATA cable when I bought it. After getting the disk installed and connected I booted up my PC only to find that Windows did not recognize any drive. Well, it turns out that the drive was fully operational and just didn't come preformatted for some reason. Using the disk management software built into Windows fixed that.
As for the performance, it's adequate for the price. The write speeds are somewhat disappointing because they're only slightly faster than the speeds my 7200 RPM drive usually obtains, but the read speeds are over 10x as fast. There's also a noticeable improvement when working in applications like Photoshop, save operations typically only take a few seconds now compared to the ten second save times I was getting with mechanical hard drives. The capacity is more than enough for a scratch disk.
Overall I like the SSD despite a few faults. Most users should be able to get a good performance out of it.
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