Speeding up my wife's computer by 50%

Mijn probleem

My wife's MacBookPro was becoming ever more sluggish. I had seen this before: the last time it happened, a hard drive had a catastrophic failure and data was lost. I decided it was time to banish moving parts from her computer forever. SSD, here I come!

Mijn oplossing

The hardest part was getting the drive set up -- it took about an hour to download OS X, and another half hour or so to set up the drive and install. I used the provided usb adapter and enclosure to install it directly to the new disk, and then swapped the old disk out. The swap itself took a whopping 15 minutes! The provided toolkit was impressive -- it and the enclosure together cost a meagre $20, and it was money well spent. I can't comment on its long-term sturdiness yet, but it looks very promising.

The end result? My wife's computer performs 50% faster (at least subjectively, because of load times) and suddenly has 150% of its former battery life. I think I just added another 2 years to that computer's lifespan.

Mijn advies

I had no idea how simple it would be. Be not afraid!

But do look up how to install OS X onto an external drive. That's actually the hardest part, easy as it is.