Yosemite and 5400 RPM HD, how does it run?

[lambertjohn]

Got a Macbook Pro 15 inch from 2010. Inside it's got 8 GB of ram, a 2.8ghz i7 processor, and a Crucial SSD running Mavericks. It runs great! Couldn't be happier with it. However, I'm getting the itch to play with Yosemite, give it a test run, etc. What I thought I would do is pull the SSD and replace it with the original 5400 RPM drive that came with the Mac, then install Yosemite and play around with it for a while, see how I like it. Before I do all that, I'm just wondering, how does Yosemite run on a 5400 RPM drive? Is it usable, or am I wasting my time installing it on a 5400 RPM drive? Thanks.

 

[w0lf]

If you're used to running off an ssd it will feel like torture.

I'd just make like a 25 GB partition on your ssd and install yosemite side by side with Mavericks.

 

[simonsi]

If you're used to running off an ssd it will feel like torture.

I'd just make like a 25 GB partition on your ssd and install yosemite side by side with Mavericks.

/\ This. Having said that if you are mostly going to run just the OS and not do any actual work it will be a slow boot, then mostly once you have the OS in RAM it will run perfectly well from there, you aren't likely to get into swapping much so for testing it should be fine.

I actually have a bootable partition on my 1TB HDD, serves as test and bootable backup if the SSD gets an issue (as it did when FV2 encryption hung at 40% "Optimising").

 

[newellj]

If you're used to running off an ssd it will feel like torture.

I'd just make like a 25 GB partition on your ssd and install yosemite side by side with Mavericks.

Absolutely. The difference will be the SSD, not the OS.

 

[lambertjohn]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I went ahead and bit the bullet and installed Yosemite on my current hard drive, a Crucial 240GB SSD. I decided, what the heck, I'm not a power user, so if it gives me any issues, I'll deal with it. But lo and behold, Yosemite installed perfectly and runs flawlessly. The only hiccup I had was getting my Adobe CS5 suite to work after the installation; I had to re-install Java. But once I did that, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., worked perfectly. I'm also running Office 2011 and it works perfectly--no reinstallation needed.

Despite all the negative press, I'm very happy with Yosemite on my 2010 Macbook Pro. It's as snappy as Mavericks, if not more. Also, I've got the matte 1680x1050 screen, and it looks better than it ever has. I guess the font is crisper and bolder, but whatever it is, the screen looks great! All in all, I'm a happy camper for now. So we'll see how it goes.

 

[simonsi]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I went ahead and bit the bullet and installed Yosemite on my current hard drive, a Crucial 240GB SSD. I decided, what the heck, I'm not a power user, so if it gives me any issues, I'll deal with it. But lo and behold, Yosemite installed perfectly and runs flawlessly. The only hiccup I had was getting my Adobe CS5 suite to work after the installation; I had to re-install Java. But once I did that, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., worked perfectly. I'm also running Office 2011 and it works perfectly--no reinstallation needed.

Despite all the negative press, I'm very happy with Yosemite on my 2010 Macbook Pro. It's as snappy as Mavericks, if not more. Also, I've got the matte 1680x1050 screen, and it looks better than it ever has. I guess the font is crisper and bolder, but whatever it is, the screen looks great! All in all, I'm a happy camper for now. So we'll see how it goes.

Welcome to the great majority of happy Yosemite users

 

[newellj]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I went ahead and bit the bullet and installed Yosemite on my current hard drive, a Crucial 240GB SSD. I decided, what the heck, I'm not a power user, so if it gives me any issues, I'll deal with it. But lo and behold, Yosemite installed perfectly and runs flawlessly. The only hiccup I had was getting my Adobe CS5 suite to work after the installation; I had to re-install Java. But once I did that, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., worked perfectly. I'm also running Office 2011 and it works perfectly--no reinstallation needed.

Despite all the negative press, I'm very happy with Yosemite on my 2010 Macbook Pro. It's as snappy as Mavericks, if not more. Also, I've got the matte 1680x1050 screen, and it looks better than it ever has. I guess the font is crisper and bolder, but whatever it is, the screen looks great! All in all, I'm a happy camper for now. So we'll see how it goes.

I suspect that a fair number of issues that people have comes from serial updating. In a perfect world it wouldn't matter, but a clean install is often better. Glad it worked out for you.

 

[got556]

On my mid '09 MBP with 8 gigs RAM and the trusty old HDD it runs great. One of these days I will clone it to an SSD. But shockingly I am pretty happy with it.

 

[dinepada]

slow as hell i have the same macbook, bootcamp boots faster (like in the half of the time) than Yosemite