If you’re reading this, chances are you’re in one of the scenarios below:
Scenario 1:
Have an old MacBook/Pro and feel if your MacBook is not able to serve your needs well? Wait, do not let it be thrown away or sold at a cheap price. Because with a little effort (and cost) we will be able to prosecute MacBook Upgrade and make it endure for at least the next few years.
So let your nephew who has been begging for your MacBook waiting for a few more years. Because you’ll fall in love with your MacBook (Pro) again!
Scenario 2:
You see someone selling a used MacBook on Amazon for a very cheap price, and you really crave it once.
Scenario 3:
You are a technician who is dismantling a MacBook belongs to a person who is in one of the two scenarios above.
Let’s Start Our MacBook Upgrade
Read the tips for MacBook Air here.
- SSD
Older MacBook doesn’t have SSD since SSD was not even invented yet. But now you can easily replace your old HDD with SSD. SSD was first introduced in MacBook Air, hence the slim body and anti-shake. I even dropped my SSD on purpose and the data can still be accessed. SSD has no moving parts, so any kind of shaking won’t destroy the data in it (unless if the damage is done physically).
This can be done on MacBook Pro & MacBook
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2 SSDs!
The average SSD comes in a smaller capacity than the HDD. This actually makes sense, because anyway most of the data we can save in Cloud services.
Read more about Cloud storage here.
But this will be a problem if you need physical storage media to do video and photo editing (among other tasks) that require real-time data rotation.
This is when we’ll be using 2 SSDs at once, by putting it into the caddy that we then put into our MacBook.
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This can be done on MacBook Pro & MacBook
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Using RAID 0
If you still have an extra HDD, why not use two HDD’s inside your MacBook? Use the same method with the 2 SSDs above, insert your HDD, then make your 2 HDDs into one Raid 0. Raid 0 works to use both HDDs that you have simultaneously with speed as its primary goal.
I was tempted to make 2 SSDs into RAID 0, but I did not feel any significant change. Apparently, this is still a questionable thing to its usefulness.
Here is how we’ll do it:
- Press Cmd and Space to open Spotlight
- Type diskutil to open the Disk Utility
- Go to File > RAID Assistant…
- Choose Stripped (RAID 0)
- Click Next
- Choose your disks
- Set the properties*
- Everything should be well guided from there
*Be careful when choosing Chunk Size, as this will prevent the occurrence of the Bottle Neck effect. Remember how the Bottle Neck effect in the movie Saving Private Ryan? This is similar.
Choose a small chunk size if your MacBook data usage is small but often (eg typing blogs and other Office tasks), and use large sizes if you’re working on large data (for example, continuously applying Photoshop or Final Cut Pro X filters).
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Resetting It Completely
After years of usage and hundreds of times installing and removing applications, lots of junk files are left on our Mac. Of course, we can use “app forced to us to install it”, know what application I mean?
But nothing is cleaner than actually resetting our Mac to be as new (even with the latest OS version).
First of all, make sure you have an internet connection.
The trick is to hold down the Cmd + R key when turning on the Mac. Then select New Install from there. Leave your Mac, and do activities as usual (unless your usual activity is to use a MacBook). Once that process is complete, your MacBook will look like new.
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Other OS
Mac OSX is by far the most sophisticated OS I’ve ever had. But, just like what Apple always does, the older device would be rendered useless from one update to another. This is the time you should consider to run your old MacBook on other operating systems that run perfectly on your old MacBook.
Here is the list of other OS that runs smoothly on my MacBook Pro Mid-2010:
Read here to learn a trick for MacBook Pro on Deepin/other Linux.
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Alternative Apps
Another way for MacBook Upgrade is by using alternative applications. Doing this can also make your MacBook feels lighter. For example, replace heavy Adobe Photoshop with GIMP, replace Adobe Lightroom with Photos, Replace Final Cut Pro X with iMovie.
Read more about Free Photoshop alternatives here.
It’s like circumcising many functions, but we can use several small separate apps to get similar results, without the temptation of trying hundreds of tool functions in Photoshop that we don’t need have never touched before (and this is related to the chunk size we discussed earlier).
That concludes our topic about MacBook Upgrade, see you on the other topics.
