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Ethernet port to use it like usb 3 on 13 in Mid 2009 MacBook Pro?

J

Jetzel

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 2, 2018
4
0
Hi everyone!
I would like to use a SSD to improve my MacBook speed ( for music production and photoshop proposes). Anyways, I read that to have a full perfomance for an SSD you must have a USB 3 connection/port. My Mac doesn't have that one so I was wondering if I can use my Ethernet port to connect an ethernet-usb 3 adapter and have it working?

Thanks!!
 
@Jetzel, AFAIK you cannot, USB 3 -> Gigabit Ethernet adapters are one way, you cannot use them as Gigabit Ethernet -> USB 3 for numerous reasons.
On the other hand I wonder why you want to achieve having SSD performance this way? Your MBP has both internal 2.5" HDD you can substitute to a 2.5" SSD and internal optical drive which again you can substitute to a 2.5" SSD (though an adapting case will be necessary if I recall correctly - they're quite cheap so don't fear). If you substitute optical drive with an SSD you'd have performance and mobility (which you'd lose with external SSD).

See iFixit https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2009+Dual+Hard+Drive/8518 (you don't have to buy SSD from iFixit - they were not proprietary back in 2009 days so you will likely find a cheaper/better SSD elsewhere - but you'd need the caddy to put SSD instead of the optical drive which might be found elsewhere as well but I'm not sure it'll be much cheaper) and you will be even able to use optical drive externally (USB 2 performance for optical drive is more than enough) - see step 19 there.
 
Last edited:
apiro said:
@Jetzel, AFAIK you cannot, USB 3 -> Gigabit Ethernet adapters are one way, you cannot use them as Gigabit Ethernet -> USB 3 for numerous reasons.
On the other hand I wonder why you want to achieve having SSD performance this way? Your MBP has both internal 2.5" HDD you can substitute to a 2.5" SSD and internal optical drive which again you can substitute to a 2.5" SSD (though an adapting case will be necessary if I recall correctly - they're quite cheap so don't fear). If you substitute optical drive with an SSD you'd have performance and mobility (which you'd lose with external SSD).

See iFixit https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2009+Dual+Hard+Drive/8518 (you don't have to buy SSD from iFixit - they were not proprietary back in 2009 days so you will likely find a cheaper/better SSD elsewhere - but you'd need the caddy to put SSD instead of the optical drive which might be found elsewhere as well but I'm not sure it'll be much cheaper) and you will be even able to use optical drive externally (USB 2 performance for optical drive is more than enough) - see step 19 there.
Click to expand...

Thankyou for your response! Will that improve exponentially the speed of my Mac? Also, can I transfer all the data like pictures, passwords, history and bookmarks (etc.)?
 
Jetzel said:
Thankyou for your response! Will that improve exponentially the speed of my Mac? Also, can I transfer all the data like pictures, passwords, history and bookmarks (etc.)?
Click to expand...

Speed improvement with an SSD will be massive. Cold boot times will drop to 15 seconds or so. Wake up from sleep will be a second or so. When you launch an application it will bounce once only. File transfers will improve from 40 MB/sec to 200-250 MB/sec
 
Jetzel said:
Hi everyone!
I would like to use a SSD to improve my MacBook speed ( for music production and photoshop proposes). Anyways, I read that to have a full perfomance for an SSD you must have a USB 3 connection/port. My Mac doesn't have that one so I was wondering if I can use my Ethernet port to connect an ethernet-usb 3 adapter and have it working?

Thanks!!
Click to expand...
You should be using the SSD internally to see improvements. You can clone the current drive to a SSD and simply plop it in and be on your way.

The SSD won't do much for you in terms of speed for photoshop or music production. You'll access data quicker but will still process it at the same speed.

Your computer is nearing the 10 year old mark, I'm not sure it's worth sinking money in it for a marginal performance increase.
 
snaky69 said:
You should be using the SSD internally to see improvements. You can clone the current drive to a SSD and simply plop it in and be on your way.

The SSD won't do much for you in terms of speed for photoshop or music production. You'll access data quicker but will still process it at the same speed.

Your computer is nearing the 10 year old mark, I'm not sure it's worth sinking money in it for a marginal performance increase.
Click to expand...

It wont change the processing speed? Really?
 
Jetzel said:
It wont change the processing speed? Really?
Click to expand...
Disk speed does not affect processor speed in any way. The computer will still feel dramatically faster but anything that uses the processor heavily (encoding a video, for example) will take just as long as before.
 
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chrfr said:
Disk speed does not affect processor speed in any way. The computer will still feel dramatically faster but anything that uses the processor heavily (encoding a video, for example) will take just as long as before.
Click to expand...
Well, is there any way to improve the processor speed then?
 
"Well, is there any way to improve the processor speed then?"

Get a faster Mac.
Really, that's about it.
 
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