Mid 2007 MacBook upgrade with a new SSD

I've a "mid 2007" MacBook which I had previously upgraded to 2GB of RAM and OSX 10.6 (from the as supplied 10.4) but it was a bit sluggish.

While it didn't merit further substantial investment a few tens of pounds would buy a new "unbranded" SSD of the same size as the original (120GB) and that seemed to be money well spent.

I also bought a USB SATA enclosure and downloaded a trial copy of a disk cloner for Mac. After a few hours I had a bootable SSD (hold "alt" on boot to get a choice).

A quick Google and the instructions for getting in to the part of the laptop where the hard disk is to be found were located (take the battery out and use a small cross head to remove the cover).

The tab to get the SSD out worked well and that point I hit the first snag. The existing SSD was mounted on a meal tray by four Torx T6 screws and I didn't have a Torx screwdriver.

Afre some minor abuse of some other screwdrivers I got the Torx screws out and fitted the SSD using the same screws (and tool).

It went back in (once I got it the right way up !) and to my delight (and relief) the machine booted (perhaps a bit slowly).

Everything seemed to work but I got spells of "spinning beachball". Google suggested a reset (no obvious value) and repairing permissions (via disk utility) which seemed to generally fix the problem.

Thus far the SSD seems a success. I've ignored "TRIM" thus far. Further reports as needed.

UPDATE DECEMBER 2017

The "unbranded" SSD failed after a few months. They sent a replacement (after I sent the broken one back to China tracked for £10) but I decided a "normal" HDD drive of a larger size (500GB) and 7200 RPM (rather than the original 5400 RPM) was the best way to go.

That is now working fine and I won't be buying cheap SSDs again. The replacement SSD is in a low spec Windows 7 machine which runs 24x7 and going OK so far.