Late 2011 Macbook Pro continued issues-Need advice

It just works

yea i was going to echo the ssd suggstions.

Chances are if you are rough with a laptop, getting one that doesnt have moving parts will be better.

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yea i was going to echo the ssd suggstions. Chances are if you are rough with a laptop, getting one that doesnt have moving parts will be better.

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Not hard on it in particular. It has almost no noticeable dents on the outside, maybe dropped it once, but not in a violent manner, and I have never spilled anything on it (keyboard cover). I had a Toshiba laptop for 8 years that wasn't a SSD, and it still works, and I put far more physical wear & tear on that.

I put the laptop in a neoprene sleeve, in a Swiss Army laptop backup with the laptop sleeve. I am certainly not just throwing the computer into a book bag with lots of heavy books.


ETA: Just from being in the Apple Repair store, there were plenty of older/more beat up computers in there w/o SSD's that didn't have the issues I had.

Am I saving too many files?

Downloading too much software?

Not sure what I am doing that's so rough on the HD.

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Watch the video and see if what the guy does is within your comfort level of following instructions. It will fit. Same form factor and connections. I'd say you should clone your existing hard drive to the SSD but it sounds like it's dead, so you'll be starting from scratch. You'll need to reload OS X, which I think is a simple task via built-in Internet recovery. Someone who regularly works with Macs might know of a different/better way. EDIT: Worth noting that the hard drive is connected by a thin ribbon cable coming from the motherboard. Your first post seems to indicate that the cable was replaced both times, but it's still worth opening up the laptop (see video instructions) and checking to see if that cable has any damage to it (exposed metal, punctures, small tears, etc.) or a loose connection.

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Already had opened it up, checked it out and gone through the video when I read this. It looks easy enough.

And yes, my other question was about reloading OSX. That won't cost me any extra will it? I don't mind reloading from scratch if this is going to work a lot better than the shitty refurbished HD's.

So if I purchase that exact HD you linked, it will fit, run faster, and is far more likely to last longer than the previous HD's?

I won't hold you liable if it doesn't ftr.

So feel free to speak frankly. Appreciate the help. If I knew it was this easy I would have done this the first time around, but I was under the impression Apple would take care of it satisfactorily, but it seems they never intended to give it a real repair despite the fact that it was never my fault to begin with.

Oh, okay. I know for a fact I have that then. That was the first thing I did when the issue started. It recovered the OSX, but the HardDrive was not showing from the Disk Utility Boot Menu, so I assume its damaged and unreadable.

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And yes, my other question was about reloading OSX. That won't cost me any extra will it?

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Nope

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So if I purchase that exact HD you linked, it will fit, run faster, and is far more likely to last longer than the previous HD's?

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Yes to all three (fit, faster, last longer), but with caveats for two of those.

It'll be faster, but what you actually use the macbook for will dictate how much you'll notice the speed difference. Simple data access is the most common bottleneck for the average user. Your OS will load faster, programs will launch faster, and files will open faster because SSDs are low latency. Hard drives have to physically seek data on the spinning disk, but SSDs use flash memory. Whatever data you need to access on an SSD is essentially already ready and waiting. However, an SSD isn't going help you render or encode video/audio/3d models any faster, or suddenly allow you to run more programs at once (e.g., a bunch of browser tabs). Most importantly, an SSD won't solve anything if your hard drive failure issue extends beyond the hard drive itself.

On the topic of reliability, that's also a somewhat complex issue. Because it's vital that a hard drive's moving parts are designed with the utmost level of precision, one of the primary causes of failure in a traditional spinning hard drive is a physical disruption in operation -- mechanical components wear out (from overheating, contamination, manufacturer defects, etc.) or the hard drive endures a heavy impact (dropped, thrown, stepped on). Because hard drive failures are influenced by so many external factors, failure rate and reliability are two very different concerns. The old joke is the life span of a hard drive is between 15 seconds and 15 years. There are some online sources with hard drive failure rate data, but they carry their own sets of different caveats.

SSD failures, on the other hand, have a different primary influence. No delicate read/write heads, no magnets, no motors or other moving parts, etc. The risk of mechanical damage is virtually eliminated. What is introduced instead is additional electrical risks such as bad capacitors, memory cell leaks, controller failures, etc. Provided none of those issues occur, SSDs do have a finite number of writes before the cells can no longer be written to (without getting into the weeds too much, suffice it to say that this amounts to decades of use). There's currently no reliable data about general SSD failure rates in the field, because companies use different types of NAND flash and controllers, and the technology in the consumer market is still relatively new and evolving. I guess the lack of reliable data means I can't say with certainty that SSDs are absolutely more reliable than HDDs under all operating conditions, but they're certainly less prone to what kills a lot of laptop hard drives at least.

Question: When going through with removing the HDD and installing the SSD why are the instructions I find telling me to disconnect the battery? Why is this necessary even though I can remove the HDD without disconnecting it?

Yeah, I was thinking about that, safety reasons, its been uncharged for 2+ days now. So the charge has likely dissipated enough. Also,

the Samsung SSD Link you sent me initially had the price at $162.00 roughly, now its $174, what gives? $12 increase in 2 days?

May need some assistance here. I have installed the SSD into the Macbook Pro with no issues, but it seems now I am meant to put OSX onto a USB? I cant find anything online that clearly states the steps I need to be taking to get this thing up and running.

Almost any instructions I've come across involve the step where you already have a HD in the comp and you download this from the comp. I have nothing essentially, and just want to start from scratch.

Thanks for the response, but it seems like I dont have that Intall option. Its only reinstall.

What happens

Command + R (or Command + Option + R)

It goes through Recovery screen

Then the Options are

Boot from Time Machine
Reinstall OSX
Help
Disk Utility

And I am trying to install Mac OS X 10.7