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MacBook Air on HDD: This is it's performance (Surprisingly better than expected)

Would you consider a MacBook Air without an SSD?

  • Yes, I'd definitely want that extra storage. I'm a patient person.

    Votes: 2 4.2%

  • No, I want it quick. SSD is the best.

    Votes: 46 95.8%
  • Total voters
    48
Blackberryroid

Blackberryroid

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2012
588
0
/private/var/vm/
I booted off on my 2012 i7 MacBook Air with an HDD (5400 RPM) and it's not that bad, honestly.

The Bad
Booting time (Mountain Lion): 1 Minute, 35 Seconds (EEK!) :eek:
Opening Final Cut Pro X: 40 Seconds
Opening Safari: 12 Seconds

The Good
Geekbench 64 bit performance: 7657 (Surprisingly as fast as the one with SSD. Nice.) I was expecting 2000-5000.

The Bottom Line
So basically, everything else is nearly the same in performance except for the parts where it needs to access the disk (booting, copying, loading, importing, etc.)

So, would you consider a MacBook Air with HDD, cheaper price and more storage?
 
Last edited:
The original MacBook Air had an iPod hard disk (4200rpm).

Not really a fair comparison with a decent HDD.

The reason why Apple only offer SSDs isn't just boot speeds/app launch.

There are advantages in terms of battery life and not having mechanical, moving parts.
 
Did you do it via Thunderbolt? Because I'm confused as to how you managed to replace this:

ssd-670x483.png%3Fw%3D670%26h%3D483


With this:

0dd91d09-2259-4381-81a6-da6f64dfd9e6.jpg


Inside this:

New-Macbook-Air-5.jpg
 
elppa said:
not having mechanical, moving parts.
Click to expand...

Honestly, who would say that the good old HDD is noisy? Back in the old days, when Steve Jobs was introducing the Power Mac G4 Cube, he called it "Virtual Silence".

----------
NutsNGum said:
Did you use it via Thunderbolt? Because I'm confused as to how you managed to replace this:

ssd-670x483.png%3Fw%3D670%26h%3D483


With this:

0dd91d09-2259-4381-81a6-da6f64dfd9e6.jpg
Click to expand...

I didn't replace it. I booted it off externally. It was quite hard making it work, though. The standard installer won't boot. Apple must have made sure that their OS won't boot externally.

And by "replaced", I mean "replaced" the booting device, so it's not literally "replaced".
 
Blackberryroid said:
You can't boot off the RAM. But, if you could, it would take literally 0.005 seconds. From what I heard, the RAM could access data in 1 second that a Hard Drive could in 1 and a half months.
Click to expand...

Wait what? I'm referring to the hard drive not the RAM. I'm not that dumb haha.

I meant you didn't tell us you booted externally.
 
Hard drives are far superior for storing data because of the better value per GB but SSDs are better for booting from.

I'd rather have a normal sized laptop with the OS and apps on an SSD and all my data on a 1TB HD. That'd be ideal for me, but sadly Apple don't sell anything like that. I could use external storage, but on a laptop that just kind of defeats the object if I need it plugged in all the time.
 
If it means the MBA will be cheaper and the prices of the proprietary SSDs in the Air are similar to current 2.5'' SSDs (less than $1 / GB), then yes, I would.

Unfortunately, that's not the case, so no.
 
I'm not sure you could shoehorn a 2.5" HDD into an MBA case no matter how the other components were engineered. Any compromise with respect to size would seriously denigrate the market for the MBA, in my view.

I had an original MBA with HDD, and it's still going strong ... I cascaded it down to a friend. It was slow, but it got the job done. The portability was unmatched for the time, but the HDD let the machine down.

As another poster said, we've moved on. Perhaps a MBP with a 2.5" SSD and no optical drive would be worthwhile ... appropriately slimmed down, it would still be a capable machine. But it would be heavier than the MBA, and - in any case - that's a path down which Apple has decided not to walk.
 
jmoore5196 said:
I'm not sure you could shoehorn a 2.5" HDD into an MBA case no matter how the other components were engineered. Any compromise with respect to size would seriously denigrate the market for the MBA, in my view.

I had an original MBA with HDD, and it's still going strong ... I cascaded it down to a friend. It was slow, but it got the job done. The portability was unmatched for the time, but the HDD let the machine down.

As another poster said, we've moved on. Perhaps a MBP with a 2.5" SSD and no optical drive would be worthwhile ... appropriately slimmed down, it would still be a capable machine. But it would be heavier than the MBA, and - in any case - that's a path down which Apple has decided not to walk.
Click to expand...

I didn't put an HDD inside the Air, it's booted off externally.
 
Your original post is misleading. You said you replaced it. I can boot my iMac from a USB thumbdrive instead of the HDD; that's not "replacing" it.
 
Geekbench measures processor, RAM, bus and cache speed. None of their tests include any sort of measure of I/O; as a matter of fact, the benchmarks are designed to be I/O independent and just measure processor, memory and OS performance. I wouldn't expect to see any difference in Geekbench scores between an SSD and an externally-booted HDD.
 
Blackberryroid said:
I didn't replace it. I booted it off externally. It was quite hard making it work, though. The standard installer won't boot. Apple must have made sure that their OS won't boot externally.

And by "replaced", I mean "replaced" the booting device, so it's not literally "replaced".
Click to expand...

How was it difficult to make it work? I just installed a Thunderbolt SSD for my iMac to boot from...the process was plug in, format, clone, and select as boot disk. Everything worked perfectly the first time.
 
Blackberryroid said:
I replaced the SSD of my 2012 i7 MacBook Air with an HDD (5400 RPM) and it's not that bad, honestly.

The Bottom Line
So basically, everything else is nearly the same in performance except for the parts where it needs to access the disk (booting, copying, loading, importing, etc.)
Click to expand...

So basically every part of the whole performance that can affect user experience...nah thanks...:rolleyes:
 
Unhyper said:
Your original post is misleading. You said you replaced it. I can boot my iMac from a USB thumbdrive instead of the HDD; that's not "replacing" it.
Click to expand...

By "replacing", I meant "replacing" to default boot drive. I consider that replacing.

But since you really want everything literally, I changed the title and my post. So we can all be happy. :D

I didn't really think anyone would actually worry about the replacing part, this thread was meant to focus on the performance.
 
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