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SSD boot disc on a Mac Pro, anyone tried it?

B

Boomhowler

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 23, 2008
324
19
Hi, I've just ordered a Mac Pro and have been thinking of inserting a SSD-disc to install Leopard and some often used programs. Have anyone tried this? I got a suggestion to just buy a (much cheaper) 10k-rpm disc instead, which is a viable option, but I'm really interested in this "new" ssd-stuff :)

I know, it ain't that new, but it's almost affordable now...

So, have anyone tried this and did you see a rise in performance?
 
Boomhowler said:
Hi, I've just ordered a Mac Pro and have been thinking of inserting a SSD-disc to install Leopard and some often used programs. Have anyone tried this? I got a suggestion to just buy a (much cheaper) 10k-rpm disc instead, which is a viable option, but I'm really interested in this "new" ssd-stuff :)

I know, it ain't that new, but it's almost affordable now...

So, have anyone tried this and did you see a rise in performance?
Click to expand...

10K RPM Disc over SSD? Anyone that told you that is either an idiot or has never seen an SSD disk in person.

I set up a slow-as-molasses Macbook Air recently with the SSD drive...

The damn thing boots 3x as fast as my Quad 2.8 Mac Pro.

Almost EVERY app loads in a single bounce or LESS.

It's unbelievable.
 
aaronw1986 said:
I hope you are being sarcastic, or else I am concerned for you.
Click to expand...

No, I'm not. Its very expensive, low capacity, slow sequential data throughput and has shown some reliability issues.

The only reason its faster than a HD in many cases is it has no moving heads causing delays.

In a laptop it has significant advantages, especially over slow 1.8" and 2.5" drives. In a desktop, buy the 10K rpm drive and wait a few product generations before you blow your money on one. The .5 seconds you'll save waiting for applications to load or the 10 seconds you'll save on boot time are definitely not worth dropping a grand on a low capacity early generation SSD.
 
Lord Zedd said:
SSD is overrated.
Click to expand...

I think "expensive" is the word you are really looking for. I'm not sure too many people would choose HD's over SSD's if the price and storage size were the same. I'm not saying that HD's will die, just that SSD's will be VERY competitive.
 
I'm not sure we'll ever see SSDs in the next few years be price competitive with hdds in terms of $189 for a Terabyte.

Thats not the point.

To use it as a boot drive, however... will significantly remove the "hdd" bottleneck from the system and make your fast powerhouse machine "feel" that much faster... which is what I think we are all excited for.

Or for the incredibly crazy ones... 2 - 4 ssd's in Raid 0 as the boot disk.
:eek:
 
GotPro said:
10K RPM Disc over SSD? Anyone that told you that is either an idiot or has never seen an SSD disk in person.

I set up a slow-as-molasses Macbook Air recently with the SSD drive...

The damn thing boots 3x as fast as my Quad 2.8 Mac Pro.

Almost EVERY app loads in a single bounce or LESS.

It's unbelievable.
Click to expand...

I had a samsung ssd sata-II 2.5" for my macbook pro and it didnt boot 3x faster than my quad mac pro (I timed it). I have a 150gb 10k raptor drive on my mac pro with leopard installed and it booted anywhere about 4-8 seconds slower than the ssd drive.

I thought the ssd drive was overrated as well, because when launching apps like microsoft word I timed them. And the mac pro with the raptor drive actually loaded it 1 second faster than the ssd drive (with no cache, loaded programs for the first time after a fresh restart). And when you close a program using a raptor drive and reopened it, it was actually faster than the ssd drive. So in the end I sold the ssd drive and kept my hitachi travelstar 7k200 inside my mbp.

Basically even with the 7k200 it feels the same (I dont feel any difference from the ssd to a 7200rpm hdd). Only difference I can see is the boottime was faster on the ssd but once the os loaded up it was faster than my hitachi travelstar on the mbp (felt like the raptor in a notebook) but against the mac pro with the raptor the boottime was 22 seconds on the ssd and the mac pro with the raptor drive around 30-34 seconds.. but I dont want to pay 1k+ for just the faster boot drive speed.

I sold the samsung ssd for more than I paid for since I was the only person selling it on ebay so that actually worked out well for me. But once ssd drives are in the $150-$300, I wont bother anymore. Just not that HUGE of an impact in speed.

Another thing is that the SSD drive got pretty warm just a tad bit cooler than my hitachi (not a huge difference yet). I think were still a long ways to go until SSD drives are improved.
 
Lord Zedd said:
No, I'm not. Its very expensive, low capacity, slow sequential data throughput and has shown some reliability issues.

The only reason its faster than a HD in many cases is it has no moving heads causing delays.

In a laptop it has significant advantages, especially over slow 1.8" and 2.5" drives. In a desktop, buy the 10K rpm drive and wait a few product generations before you blow your money on one. The .5 seconds you'll save waiting for applications to load or the 10 seconds you'll save on boot time are definitely not worth dropping a grand on a low capacity early generation SSD.
Click to expand...

They aren't "overrated". I agree, right now they are just too expensive to be practical. However, once the price drops and the capacity is around what we currently see in regular hard drives, they will dominate the market. You may have been looking for currently impractical and expensive, but not overrated.
 
On the flip side, some SSDs offer horrid performance. If you decide to go this route, make sure you get the one with the best/most reviews.

My office gets SSDs (I think Samsungs?) in our new laptops. The performance is indeed incredible, though, not sure how soon they'll ever be a worthy and viable option for a desktop. I wouldn't pay $600+ for even a 250GB SSD.
 
aaronw1986 said:
They aren't "overrated". I agree, right now they are just too expensive to be practical. However, once the price drops and the capacity is around what we currently see in regular hard drives, they will dominate the market. You may have been looking for currently impractical and expensive, but not overrated.
Click to expand...

I guess what he meant was overrated for its current price?? But yea once they are in the $200-$350, definitely the much better buy over the HDD.
 
jb60606 said:
On the flip side, some SSDs offer horrid performance. If you decide to go this route, make sure you get the one with the best/most reviews.
Click to expand...

Very true. Some are good for 120MB/sec but many are in the 30-60MB/sec range.

Read the fine print and do your research on the specific model you are looking at before you buy it!
 
Wow! Thanks for the amount of replies, I'll definitely read more before I buy anything :) I also have a friend that works at a computer store, I'll see if I can get him to borrow me the discs (haha, yeah, right, funny) or at least let me buy them with the rights to return the worse one...
 
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