Chosen Solution
Hi, As the title says. Will the M550 run on an early 2009 model (5,2). I’ve read something about SATA (2 or 3) cables not supporting, or at least not the ones from the Optical Drive. And thats the point. I want to replace the Optical Drive with my SSD and run both with my HDD, if this is possible? So that’s my 2nd question, will the HDD and SDD both be able to run.
Your system is only SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) So you will need to make sure the drives you use are able to run at this slower I/O. The current Crucial SSD’s line are fixed SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) and won’t work. The Crucial M550 SSD was the last dual speed drive Crucial made. So if that is what you have that will work in your system. The optical drive bay is PATA not SATA! so you’ll need an adapter frame [linked product missing or disabled: IF107-078-1] to mount your drive. Now the tricky part! Which drive do you put into the Optical bay carrier. Keep in mind PATA is very, very slow! So putting the SSD in the optical drive will be slower than your current HDD! If you make it the startup drive. So that won’t be a good idea! Instead you’ll want the HDD in the optical drive and place the SSD in the HD bay, and making it the boot drive. But! We still have one more problem! The HD bay has crash guard where the optical drive does not! So placing the HDD in the optical drive puts it at risk of crashing if you bang the system while the drive is running. So… While you could do it I don’t recommend it! I would recommend getting a larger SSD, and as luck has it Samsung SSD’s are still auto sense! So you could go with a Samsung 860 EVO Note the spec sheets I’ve posted here both list SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) support. What ever drive you go with needs to list it otherwise its safe to assume the drive is SATA III asa most are now fixed SATA III.
Crucial says it will and I ordered one of these drives for a 2009 2.26GHz MacBook yesterday.
