13-inch MacBook Pro (Early 2011) RAM / SSD upgrade

I have a 13-inch MacBook Pro early 2011 which has 4 GB of RAM and 320 GB of HDD storage. Everything was fine until once time when I run virtualisation and coding using Eclipse, the macbook pro run very slow. It took around 62 seconds to boot and ran virtual machine very slowly. I need to increase the performance of my macbook because I can’t deal with this condition.

After reading in several Mac forums, someone told me to upgrade both RAM and the hard drive. The RAM should be upgraded to at least 8 GB and the hard drive should be replaced with an SSD (Solid State Disk). Although the price is much more expensive than the HDD, the SSD offers four times faster than HDD in the read/write speed.

Basically you can easily come to Apple retail store nearest to you to upgrade RAM or SSD but Apple may charge you four times or even more expensive than you purchase from general computer stores. Why do we pay more if we can get it for less? As long as the specification of the RAM or SSD are the same, it should work without any problem.

There are many RAM and SSD brands out there which reportedly work well on Mac such as Samsung, Hynix, and Corsair. Why choosing Hynix? Though my default MacBook Pro’s RAM is Samsung I decided to choose Hynix because it is widely used by Apple in some of their MacBook and MacBook Pro computers with a cheaper price compared to Samsung brand so it undoubtedly works well on Mac computers.

I choose Hynix SSD because according to one source, it is the best SSD in the market. Released by SK Hynix on June 2012, it comes in a beautiful white box, the SSD design is pure white and gorgeous. A simple tests shows that it is faster and just as reliable as rival Samsung 830. Several tests prove that Hynix SSD performance is better than Samsung SSD in many categories such as speed. Those are why I choose Hynix for both RAM and SSD.

The Hynix RAM model is (2×4) GB of HMT451S6BMR8C-H9

Hynix RAM model is (2x4) GB of HMT451S6BMR8C-H9

The Hynix SSD model is SH910 2.5-inch SSD
Hynix SSD model is SH910 2.5-inch SSD

Memory upgraded to 8GB of RAM

Memory upgraded to 8GB of RAM

Hynix SSD Information detected by OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion

Hynix SSD Information

After upgrading to 8GB of RAM and replacing to SSD, it only takes 12 seconds to boot the system. The performance is also significantly much faster than before.