[Question] Swapping out Macbook HDD for SSD

[SpecialKO]

So I have a 2009 13" Macbook Pro, and I don't really want to replace it yet. Performance is still fairly decent, and since I don't really play games on it beyond the odd round of Diablo 3 (and I used to play EvE on it), replacing it didn't seem to have a lot of benefit.

That said, I would still like to eke out some better performance, and a friend of mine suggested that since I've already maxed the RAM I should just swap out the HDD for an SSD of similar size now that SSDs of 256GB or lower are priced pretty decently.

Question is 2-fold:
1) Am I likely to see an actual performance improvement (I know there will be some, but not sure whether it would be worth the cost)?
2) What is the least painful way to do that? The way I hear it from random Google links is backup my current drive to Time Machine, use Lion to make a USB boot drive, install the SSD, restore from Time Machine, but I'd like a sanity check on this one from the folks here, if possible.

 

[Espy]

My understanding, and there are those who know way more than me here, is that you will see thing in general move faster, like loading programs and such. It doesn't mean you will see programs work faster though.
As to restoring I would do a clean install of lion and then transfer your files back over. Takes more time but it lets you clean stuff up and gets rid of any issues you may have floating around.

 

[PatrThom]

Putting in a SSD will decrease the time it takes to load stuff not so much because the CPU can gobble up data faster from SSDs than regular drives, it is the fact that there is such a significantly lower access time that situations requiring the computer to read from widely scattered locations on the drive are dramatically sped up.

You will most notice the difference during anything that is disk-intensive. Level loads, boot time, switching between programs, launching/quitting/installing programs, whenever the hard drive was getting thrashed. It will not speed up sequential stuff such as downloads, recording, or anything that was just going to plod along on the hard drive anyway.

--Patrick

 

[SpecialKO]

As to restoring I would do a clean install of lion and then transfer your files back over. Takes more time but it lets you clean stuff up and gets rid of any issues you may have floating around.

I am also considering this for the reasons you say. Just need to make sure I have the disks/installers for programs I actually need.

 

[PatrThom]

1) Am I likely to see an actual performance improvement (I know there will be some, but not sure whether it would be worth the cost)?

Keep in mind this is a "best case" scenario, where the thing that is being demonstrated (lots of little file accesses) is what the SSD is really good at.



Also, this is not any kind of endorsement of the products being demonstrated, this is just the first video I could find showing the side-by-side comparison.

--Patrick

 

[SpecialKO]

What about for something like Chrome, which (so I've heard) opens up a separate instance of itself with each tab? I know it won't affect how quickly the pages get downloaded, and the ability of the computer to function with tons of tabs open has more to do with my RAM, but will opening and closing tabs be faster?

I work in market research, so opening programs, writing large powerpoint files, and constantly opening and closing tabs of interesting info are what I do most of the day.