Upgrading late 2011 MBP 17"

[applefanboi]

Hi everyone!

With my tax refund I have decided to use a portion of it to upgrade the RAM and HDD on my MBP. Right now I only have 4 GB so looking to go to at least 8.

As for the HDD I'm looking to make the switch to a SSD, I'm thinking of using only the 128 GB option and buying a time capsule to store movies, media, etc.

My question is what to look for in buying the parts to install. Normally on my windows machine I'd use TigerDirect.com or Newegg.com but I have no idea what I need to be looking for on type of drive to get etc.

Any input or thoughts would be appreciated. I'm looking to make the upgrades next weekend.

 

[applefanboi]

yeah I found the memory fairly easy.

i just wanted to double check before I purchased anything... i've never upgraded laptop parts before, just my old desktop back in the day Definitely will check out Other World Computing and get some ideas.

Is there an easy way to install OS X onto the new HD? I guess I could find software or something to clone a backup of my drive to my external HD and copy from there, but I'd guess I would need to be able to boot up into the OS first... My mac came with Lion and then I made the upgrade to Mountain Lion and don't have any discs... I guess I could always take it to the apple store perhaps, I do need to get my keyboard cleaned good...

 

[applefanboi]

Awesome, thanks again! I've decided to go with the OWC 128 GB SSD drive and 8 GB of Kingston RAM.

 

[ghostface147]

128 gig SSD? Man that is tiny. Remember, OS X doesn't support TRIM (which keeps an SSD "clean") on non-Apple SSD drives out of the box. There are tweaks that enable it however.

 

[applefanboi]

It is tiny, but I think the SSD would really help with my games and such.

What is TRIM and what do you mean by "keeping it clean?" =_= see, there are many things that I'm just out of the loop on...

 

[applefanboi]

Okay, bit of a delay, but finally replaced the spinning drive with a SSD and I LOVE it. Now to replace the optical drive with the old spinning drive...

I've found a few on Amazon for pretty cheap. Would this work for my Mac? Again, it's a late 2011 MacBook Pro 17"

Protronix Hard Drive Caddy for Unibody Macbook / Macbook Pro SuperDrive (13 15 17) - Amazon.com

 

[Peter Cohen]

Personally I'm a big fan of Other World Computing.

OWC Data Doubler