Macbook pro confusion...

[corbin]

I was wondering if i could upgrade my macbook pro early 2008 to have 4 gigs of 800 mhz ram? or does it take a different speed/amount...

I was also wondering what it would take to downgrade from 10.9.5 because its sluggish all the way to 10.7?

Any help appreciated, Corbin

Macbook pro 15 inch early 2008 2.5 ghz intel core 2 duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT 512 MB

Imac 24 inch Early 2008 2.8 ghz intel core 2 duo, 6 GB 800 MHz DDR2, 512 MB Nvidia GeForce 8800

 

[honestone]

First, you can upgrade the RAM, but it would need to have the same "specs" as the RAM currently inside the machine. Each RAM "stick" must conform to the following specs:

"667 MHz PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM"

Here is one such choice:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/5300DDR2S4GP/

Also, this guide shows how to do this upgrade:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBoo...uo+Models+A1226+and+A1260+RAM+Replacement/652

Secondly, you MacBook Pro has a slow, 5400 rpm drive inside it. They are certainly not speed demons, especially if you have done little to no disk maintenance/repairs. Additionally, assuming the machine has the original 250 gig drive, the drive is getting "old". You could upgrade to a speedier, 7200 rpm drive. This guide shows how to do this:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBoo...ls+A1226+and+A1260+Hard+Drive+Replacement/670

 

[corbin]

Thanks i recently upgraded my imacs ram and it had 667 MHz ram in it i was wondering if the macbook would be able to use this.
also how much storage can it support can it support 1 or 2 terabytes?
Thanks

 

[corbin]

Also my drive is aq bit of an oddball its a 5600 rpm 250 gb and i have no idea why...

 

[corbin]

Also can it support a solid state drive? or is that not possiblw without modification

 

[honestone]

Thanks i recently upgraded my imacs ram and it had 667 MHz ram in it i was wondering if the macbook would be able to use this.
also how much storage can it support can it support 1 or 2 terabytes?
Thanks

Again, only if it meets the specs I mentioned for your Macbook Pro:

"667 MHz PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM"

 

[honestone]

Also my drive is aq bit of an oddball its a 5600 rpm 250 gb and i have no idea why...

5600 rpm is not much faster. Did the machine originally come with that drive?

Also, 7200 rpm is a decent boost in speed. But, more importantly, you would need to be more diligent in performing disk maintenance/repairs. And, given that your machine cannot use SSDs, disk defragmentation and optimizing would be a definite benefit. A robust disk maintenance/repair program that can do all that (plus other useful tasks) is Tech Tool Pro. I have it (along with Disk Warrior), and I have been successfully using it for a number of years (along with Onyx) for disk maintenance/repairs. My two current Macs have SSDs in them, so only file optimization is applicable. But, for the prior Macs I had, the defragmentation/optimization feature of Tech Tool pro definitely helped.

 

[honestone]

Also can it support a solid state drive? or is that not possiblw without modification

When I was researching the hard drive upgrade for you, I also tried to see if you could upgrade the machine with an SSD. But, that is not the case. In fact, one link stated that SSD upgrades for MacBook Pros can only be used for model year 2009 or later.

 

[corbin]

Okay thanks for the help time to find a nice cheap drive, i only have 35 dollars at the moment any drive that i could by for that much on amazon? i would need 250 GB or higher in it

 

[honestone]

The ifixit link I provided had a link for a 500 gig 7200 rpm drive (it was a Seagate one at Amazon, for $59). Seagate drives work rather well with Macs. In fact, two of my external drives are 7200 rpm Seagate drives.

What you could do is google that Seagate model number (from Amazon) and see if it is cheaper anywhere else. That si what I would do.

 

[corbin]

Okay thanks for all the help, do you know the max hard drive size?