SSD 2.5 vs. 3.5 and is there a difference?

[SeanDL]

I'm looking to finally upgrade my Mac Pro to use an SSD as a boot drive, and I've been eyeing the OCZ Vertex 2 drives as a result of the beloved Sandforce controller. My question is, the only OCZ drives I've been able to find at the price point I want in my area are the Vertex 2 3.5 120 gig editions.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid-state-drives/sata-ii/3-5--sata-ii/vertex-2-3-5--ssd/ocz-vertex-2-sata-ii-3-5--ssd.html

Is there any reason NOT to get this over the 2.5 version? I'm not planning on putting it in the optical bay as both are in use, and would just go in a regular hard drive bay. It's unfortunate that I wont one day be able to use it in my Macbook Pro should I ever upgrade however, beyond this am I suffering any penalty by going with the larger size?

I only ever see posts talking about the 2.5 counterpart, so any input would be appreciate before I waste money on a drive that wont have the performance I'm looking for. Thanks in advance.

[johnnymg]

I'm looking to finally upgrade my Mac Pro to use an SSD as a boot drive, and I've been eyeing the OCZ Vertex 2 drives as a result of the beloved Sandforce controller. My question is, the only OCZ drives I've been able to find at the price point I want in my area are the Vertex 2 3.5 120 gig editions.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid-state-drives/sata-ii/3-5--sata-ii/vertex-2-3-5--ssd/ocz-vertex-2-sata-ii-3-5--ssd.html

Is there any reason NOT to get this over the 2.5 version? I'm not planning on putting it in the optical bay as both are in use, and would just go in a regular hard drive bay. It's unfortunate that I wont one day be able to use it in my Macbook Pro should I ever upgrade however, beyond this am I suffering any penalty by going with the larger size?

I only ever see posts talking about the 2.5 counterpart, so any input would be appreciate before I waste money on a drive that wont have the performance I'm looking for. Thanks in advance.

I just installed a 3.5" OCZ SSD in my 5.1 and I would highly recommend this route. This drive mounts right to the factory drive sled and makes installing the drive a breeze.

cheers
JohnG

[VirtualRain]

The only issue I can foresee with 3.5" SSD's is a limited resale market compared to 2.5" drives (as you point out with respect to using it in your laptop). Of course that may not be all that important.

[ActionableMango]

I just got two OCZ 3.5" drives myself. Pros are that they plop right in, less expensive to begin with, and don't need to spend additional $$$ on an adapter. Cons are you can never mount them in a 2.5" application. Sure, resale value might be hurt due to a limited audience, but you save money up front in the first place. Besides, the way prices are falling on SSDs, theoretical resale value years from now probably won't be squat.

[johnnymg]

I just got two OCZ 3.5" drives myself. Pros are that they plop right in, less expensive to begin with, and don't need to spend additional $$$ on an adapter. Cons are you can never mount them in a 2.5" application. Sure, resale value might be hurt due to a limited audience, but you save money up front in the first place. Besides, the way prices are falling on SSDs, theoretical resale value years from now probably won't be squat.

JMO, but "resale value" and "SSD" should NEVER be used in the same sentence. :p. They are dropping like rocks so they should be considered and expendable.

[VirtualRain]

JMO, but "resale value" and "SSD" should NEVER be used in the same sentence. :p. They are dropping like rocks so they should be considered and expendable.

Yeah, true enough. It's probably more a matter of re-purposing older SSD's for less critical systems (eg. one of my SSD's may ultimately end up in my Mac Mini HTPC).

[johnnymg]

Yeah, true enough. It's probably more a matter of re-purposing older SSD's for less critical systems (eg. one of my SSD's may ultimately end up in my Mac Mini HTPC).

Fair enough! That's a reasonable issue to put in the decision tree.

cheers
JohnG

[SeanDL]

A follow up:

I picked up the drive, however the temperature for it is not showing up under iStats menu. Is this normal behaviour or is something wrong with my drive? It is functioning perfectly well but if the sensor is broken I'd rather know now and exchange it. Or is this just how iStats typically handles SSD's?

[johnnymg]

A follow up:

I picked up the drive, however the temperature for it is not showing up under iStats menu. Is this normal behaviour or is something wrong with my drive? It is functioning perfectly well but if the sensor is broken I'd rather know now and exchange it. Or is this just how iStats typically handles SSD's?

That's normal.

Are your fans spinning up to max?

FWIW, I put the OCZ in bay 2 and the fans are working properly. Didn't try bay 1 where the original HD still resides.

JohnG

[SeanDL]

Fans aren't spinning any different than usual, operation seems as normal. I took the stock drive out of bay one and stuck it in bay 2, put the SSD in bay 1. So far no real issues, I can really understand all the appeal in these drives now. Photoshop just launches to life.

[sdschwendener]

I have some experience with ssd.. right now I am running a 3.5" 180gb ocz vertex 2 180gb in a mac pro early 2008 which gets a 7.1 hard disk score in windows 7 prof 64 under proper bootcamp. My brothers computer I built just recently which uses a Crucial C300 128gb 2.5".. this is sata III (6.0) and in a sata III mobo gets a 7.4 subscore in windows 7 home 64.

Of course, no mac pro has sata 6 gbps

[badlydrawn]

Hi, got the vertex 2 3.5 90gigs here in a 1,1 2006 MacPro. Runs nicely, no problem with SL.

Just a small question since there are so many vertex 2 users here:

Do you guys get these small spikes of write activity (1-2mb/s) every few seconds during your normal operations? I have most of my user folder on the drive (offloaded mail, downloads, docs, music, pictures, swap file, and safari cache), and get these spikes. Anything note worthy here?

[xgman]

Hi, got the vertex 2 3.5 90gigs here in a 1,1 2006 MacPro. Runs nicely, no problem with SL.

Just a small question since there are so many vertex 2 users here:

Do you guys get these small spikes of write activity (1-2mb/s) every few seconds during your normal operations? I have most of my user folder on the drive (offloaded mail, downloads, docs, music, pictures, swap file, and safari cache), and get these spikes. Anything note worthy here?


that could be any number of things running in the background. Most likely a app or 3rd party utility that is either updating or refreshing in the background or it could even be an Apple service I suppose. Run an activity monitor to see what is going on.

[badlydrawn]

Hi, thanks for the suggestion, checking through now. Is there a way to see what services are accessing the hdd/ssd at any given time, like win7 resource monitor? There are quite a few services I am not sure of (Airport base station agent-don't even have wifi card, etc).