Upgrading RAM in mid 2011 MacBook Pro

Hi folks!

I'm replacing the hard drive in my MBP with a hybrid 1tb drive from Seagate in a few days. My MBP constantly gets the beach ball and even after trying disk repair, it will not transfer files to my external HD.

I do have a reinstall disk and a time machine back up I did in the spring so I shouldn't lose too much data. I am hoping to somehow get the last few photos I edited onto some sort of drive or at least upload them to the cloud before changing out the HD.

My question is this: I currently have 8gb of RAM (upgraded at time of purchase) and I was thinking of adding a new 8gb ram from Crucial, switching out the one of the 4gb.

Is this necessary, or can it wait? I am pretty convinced it is the HD as the MBP makes a weird whistling sound that is barely audible when I try to open the web, a document, etc.

Also, I had issues with it earlier in the year and the genius at Apple told me it was "going out" and to back up with time machine asap bc he didn't know hoe long I would have...

Thanks in advance. Hope this works because I don't have a grand to drop on a new Mac and I personally don't really care for the newer ones anyhow.

It sounds like it could be the HD as you suspect, and a Hybrid drive will work great for you. I wouldn't think swapping your memory for a single 8gb card would do much.. unless your problems are memory related.

Have you tried just reformatting? What version of OS X are you on?

Is this necessary, or can it wait?




it can most definitely wait. tour hard drive or processor is the bottleneck. if you replace the HD and you are still having long loads, its not software or ram unless you have faulty ram

a reply to: redshift20

Lol, you're going to crack up, 10.6.8! I'm the if it's not broke, don't fix it, so I never upgraded the OS. The only issue I am now having is the the latest editions of Lightroom and Photoshop aren't compatible, so I am considering upgrading the OS and starting with a fresh install of....is it Yosemite now?

I have the majority of my important files on two EHD's...One is solely for Time Machine, the other for whatever. Memory is so cheap these days, so why not?

If I upgraded the total RAM would be 12gb. Swapping one 4 for the 8...

Maybe I'll just replace the battery instead of the RAM.

originally posted by: lovebeck
a reply to: redshift20

Lol, you're going to crack up, 10.6.8! I'm the if it's not broke, don't fix it, so I never upgraded the OS. The only issue I am now having is the the latest editions of Lightroom and Photoshop aren't compatible, so I am considering upgrading the OS and starting with a fresh install of....is it Yosemite now?

I have the majority of my important files on two EHD's...One is solely for Time Machine, the other for whatever. Memory is so cheap these days, so why not?

If I upgraded the total RAM would be 12gb. Swapping one 4 for the 8...

Maybe I'll just replace the battery instead of the RAM.

I don't know if mac has a ram diag like windows does but if it does, run it. Ram shouldn't be one of your last worries.

a reply to: lovebeck

8gb of ram



i am from the days of 256 mb of ram and you want to add 8 gb


Things just worked so easy then www.fourwinds10.net...

When people talk open source, it means they can at least analyze what is happening in the background. Even at that, "open source" Linux is, at present, an over bloated badly hobbled piece of garbage which despite this still runs better than any microsoft O.S. because at least it is not trying to hide it's actions.

I wouldn't bother upgrading the RAM unless you want to swap out both sticks for a matching pair of 8GB sticks for 16GB total. But just one... nah. I haven't built a computer with any more than 8GB of RAM anyway, and it's plenty.

a reply to: lovebeck

El Capitan is the newest. I have it on both my macs.. Seems to work well. You might make sure that MBP can accept mismatched ram sizes. I don't have one so I don't know, but I know some older computers were cranky about that sort of thing.

originally posted by: Aldakoopa
I wouldn't bother upgrading the RAM unless you want to swap out both sticks for a matching pair of 8GB sticks for 16GB total. But just one... nah. I haven't built a computer with any more than 8GB of RAM anyway, and it's plenty.

That's what I was going to do...but didn't want to spend the $90 on it.

I'll stick with the plan and maybe swap out the battery. I'm nervous as I've never done ANYTHING like this before. But, YouTube is a great teacher!

originally posted by: redshift20
a reply to: lovebeck

El Capitan is the newest. I have it on both my macs.. Seems to work well. You might make sure that MBP can accept mismatched ram sizes. I don't have one so I don't know, but I know some older computers were cranky about that sort of thing.

It can, as far as I can tell. I'll upgrade/replace the HD and the battery. I'll wait on the RAM. But, when I do upgrade it'll be to 16GB. Lots of information about it. I don't have the Retina MBP...those you can't do much with bc the RAM is soldered to the board. On the model I have you just pop them out and in, pretty simple as far as I can tell!

Anyone know if that canned air is safe to use to blow out the dust? It's never been opened before so I imagine I'm in for quite a bit of nastiness!

Also, I'll look into ElCapitan. I couldn't think of the name, so thanks for reminding me! I'll have to figure out how to boot from a USB if I do go with ElCapitan...Unless the Apple Store will sell me a disc? But then how will I get all my apps like PS, word, etc. on there?

a reply to: lovebeck

You can use the 10.6 install disc that came with your MBP and then upgrade to El Capitan once you are up and running. I am on 10.6.8, too, and was offered the upgrade just the other day. I am also an "if it ain't broke" person. I'll upgrade sooner or later though.

originally posted by: MotherMayEye
a reply to: lovebeck

You can use the 10.6 install disc that came with your MBP and then upgrade to El Capitan once you are up and running. I am on 10.6.8, too, and was offered the upgrade just the other day. I am also an "if it ain't broke" person. I'll upgrade sooner or later though.

Yeah, I'm thinking that's what I'll probably do. The goods won't arrive until sometime on Friday, so I do have some time to study and go over my options.

I'd like to upgrade Lightroom, for sure, at some. Point so I'm going to have to update the OS. Right now, I cannot load RAW (NEF) files from my newest Nikon fully frame directly into Lightroom. Instead, I have to convert them into a different file type then open them. It's a PITA.

I'm seriously behind in editing because the Mac had been basically useless except for light web browsing. So I'm pretty eagerness to get it going again, regardless of the OS!

a reply to: lovebeck

You SHOULD be able to upgrade directly to El Capitan from Snow Leopard. I believe you just download it from the App Store. Here is a site with the requirements.

Are you on creative cloud? Or do you own physical copies of LR & PS? I'm on their "Photography" plan.. $9.99 / month for both. I kinda hate paying monthly for it, but on the other hand, you always have the latest version.

A few things that can help is to reset the PRAM and also in the diagnostics is a tool to check the disk permissions etc of the volume as sometimes they can get a bit corrupted but after 5 years its probably due a reinstall anyway. Quite a few of the more serious Apple people I know reinstall every 6 months or so as like windows, cruft slowly develops and slowly drags performance down.

I'm back, with an update!

I believe I have successfully upgraded from 4GB to 8GB (Crucial) RAM, installed the 1TB Seagate Hybrid HD, cleaned up under the hood a bit and installed Snow Leopard without ANY issues!

YEAH!!

After updating to OS X 10.6.8 and gaining access to the Mac App Store, I'm currently re-downloading El Capitan.

I did repair disk permissions after the first update (to 10.6.8) which a lot of people apparently forget how to do, so hopefully once I install El Capitan and verify/repair disk permissions again, I'll be off and running to the Adobe CC!! FWIW, when I restarted after the update to 10.6.8, it only took about 25 seconds to boot, if that! Which is awesome, compared to the constant beach ball and a good 3 1/2 minutes to get to the home screen.

If you own a Macbook or Macbook Pro (non Retina version) you can make these upgrades yourself because if I can do this, ANYONE can do it!

Thanks for the input! I'm SOOOOOOO happy to have my Macbaby in working order again!

Thank you ALL for the input and all that jazz!! I'll post another update once I get El Capitan installed.

All Done!!

I'm running El Capitan OS X 10.11.1 and so far, so good!

Having the new HDD has stopped the beach ball and the new RAM is very noticeable. Beats spending $$$$$$$ on a new one!



If you have any questions, or your Macbook isn't running nearly as well as it should be, let me know. I'll direct you to all the info, goods and tutorials I used to take care of business!