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256GB SSD vs 512GB SSD. Which one?

theluggage said:
So the question is, how much storage do you need 'on the move'?

If ~1TB would be enough then get a Classic with a 1TB HDD then slap in a 1TB SSD when they become affordable, which seems to be on the cards for the coming year. Since the classic will take a generic 2.5" SATA package you won't have to wait for someone to produce a rMBP-specific card or pay for 256GB of SSD (which won't hold its resale value for long) along with the base model.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much exactly what I'm thinking 🙂

Dre180 said:
The problem was going back to that screen after looking at the retina...

Overall I just find it to be a nicer machine for what I use it for, but only you know what's important for your needs. Whatever you decide i'm sure you'll be happy. They're both great.
Click to expand...

Thanks 🙂 I'm concerned that I'll have serious pixel envy if I don't go retina... There again, I like the anti-glare option - I know :apple: talk about "70% less glare" but I'm not convinced...

PatriotInvasion said:
If you'll need addition storage anyway, might as well go with the lowest SSD offered and use an external Thunderbolt or USB 3 drive for big stuff that you use infrequently.

I went with the 13" rMBP 128GB SSD because 256GB wasn't even enough (and neither was 512GB really). And I could buy another computer for what Apple wants for 768GB.🙂
Click to expand...

That's why the 960GB SSD for "less than £450" sounds so interesting! I'd pretty much decided to go for the retina and continue using my external HDD for films, TV, etc but this option complicates things again...
 
F1 Fan said:
I had read somewhere that SSD tech will likely change dramatically in a couple of years so the current crop will see little drop in price. The article you posted here makes for very different reading...

I'm still trying to decide between the rMBP and the cMBP. If if can get the cMBP with an HDD but then upgarde to a 1TB SSD in a couple of years... that could swing it.
Click to expand...

Later this year crucial is supposed to release a 960GB SSD under $600. So, cheaper than a 512 from Apple!

Edit: oh, you already know this!

Another option is to use the optical bay as others have mentioned. Running a non retina, you can run two crucial M4 512GB, stick them in RAID 0, you'll have 1 full terabyte of storage, read/write speeds will double what a single drive will give you. I get over 900MB/s with a RAID 0 SSD setup. Crucial M4 512's are $400, add $20 for the optibay and another few bucks for an external enclosure for your SuperDrive if you want to have an external optical drive, and you'll be set. You'll still be spending less than an rMBP (or perhaps right around the price of a base model) for a loaded machine with 1TB of blazing fast SSD storage. While your at it you can upgrade the RAM too on the cheap. I got 16 gigs for $70
 
el-John-o said:
Later this year crucial is supposed to release a 960GB SSD under $600. So, cheaper than a 512 from Apple!

Edit: oh, you already know this!

Another option is to use the optical bay as others have mentioned. Running a non retina, you can run two crucial M4 512GB, stick them in RAID 0, you'll have 1 full terabyte of storage, read/write speeds will double what a single drive will give you. I get over 900MB/s with a RAID 0 SSD setup. Crucial M4 512's are $400, add $20 for the optibay and another few bucks for an external enclosure for your SuperDrive if you want to have an external optical drive, and you'll be set. You'll still be spending less than an rMBP (or perhaps right around the price of a base model) for a loaded machine with 1TB of blazing fast SSD storage. While your at it you can upgrade the RAM too on the cheap. I got 16 gigs for $70
Click to expand...

the only regret I have about retina is internal SSD raid0...
 
Ploki said:
the only regret I have about retina is internal SSD raid0...
Click to expand...

Yeah. I'm really not sure that there is any real-world difference between a 500MB/s SSD and a 900MB/s RAID0 setup, but, it sure is cool for bragging rights! 😛

But, the coolest thing right now is being able to combine storage. Two 512GB SSD's or in the future, two 1TB SSD's. It's not cheap, but, it allows for more fast storage than any single drive can give presently.

The big drawback though is that, along with double the speed and double the capacity, it's double the failure rate. If either drive fails, that's it! You lose everything. I remedy that with Time Machine and a Time Capsule 2TB though. If there is anything important on your drive you should be backing it up ANYWAY, but especially in a RAID0 configuration.
 
el-John-o said:
Yeah. I'm really not sure that there is any real-world difference between a 500MB/s SSD and a 900MB/s RAID0 setup, but, it sure is cool for bragging rights! 😛

But, the coolest thing right now is being able to combine storage. Two 512GB SSD's or in the future, two 1TB SSD's. It's not cheap, but, it allows for more fast storage than any single drive can give presently.

The big drawback though is that, along with double the speed and double the capacity, it's double the failure rate. If either drive fails, that's it! You lose everything. I remedy that with Time Machine and a Time Capsule 2TB though. If there is anything important on your drive you should be backing it up ANYWAY, but especially in a RAID0 configuration.
Click to expand...

My needs? In real-life i didn't past 200mb/s so far... 🙂

On the other hand you CAN do that via TB... while still having an external screen and having another free TB port 😛

When running RAID0 with HDDs i always had a separate drive partition running RAID1. (you can do that) but with SSD isn't really recommended afaik.
 
Ploki said:
My needs? In real-life i didn't past 200mb/s so far... 🙂

On the other hand you CAN do that via TB... while still having an external screen and having another free TB port 😛

When running RAID0 with HDDs i always had a separate drive partition running RAID1. (you can do that) but with SSD isn't really recommended afaik.
Click to expand...

What you are referring to is RAID 10 (also known as RAID 1+0). It's done with seperate drives, not partitions. With RAID 10, you have at least 4 drives, two 'stripes' which are mirrored.

So;

RAID 0 (striped): +RAID1
Drive 1A Drive 1A Mirror
Drive 1B Drive 1B Mirror

4 drives don't fit in a MacBook Pro! 😛 The options for a two-drive configurations are RAID 1 (mirrored) or RAID 0 (striped). You need at least three drives for RAID 5 and four for 10.

There is no reason you can't do any of these things with an SSD. Some people doom and gloom and talk about reduced life, but it's not realistic. Unless you plan on using your SSD for 40 years...

And yeah, thunderbolt has the bandwidth, but you still need two drives for RAID 0. Makes the enclosures a little bigger. 900MB/s is faster than SATA III (900MB/s is around 8gbps), so you need two drives in RAID0 to hit that speed currently. I'm not sure how well a striped RAID would work over thunderbolt though, be interesting to see what the actual speeds would be in a RAID0 enclosure.

Remember just because the interface bandwidth is fast doesn't mean the drive is fast. It's like all these people spending hundreds of dollars on thunderbolt enclosures for a single spinning hard drive. Fact is, that hard drive isn't even fast enough to keep up with USB 3. Thunderbolt is faster than USB 3, yes, but that hard drive you're using isn't!

-John
 
el-John-o said:
What you are referring to is RAID 10 (also known as RAID 1+0). It's done with seperate drives, not partitions. With RAID 10, you have at least 4 drives, two 'stripes' which are mirrored.

So;

RAID 0 (striped): +RAID1
Drive 1A Drive 1A Mirror
Drive 1B Drive 1B Mirror

4 drives don't fit in a MacBook Pro! 😛 The options for a two-drive configurations are RAID 1 (mirrored) or RAID 0 (striped). You need at least three drives for RAID 5 and four for 10.

There is no reason you can't do any of these things with an SSD. Some people doom and gloom and talk about reduced life, but it's not realistic. Unless you plan on using your SSD for 40 years...

And yeah, thunderbolt has the bandwidth, but you still need two drives for RAID 0. Makes the enclosures a little bigger. 900MB/s is faster than SATA III (900MB/s is around 8gbps), so you need two drives in RAID0 to hit that speed currently. I'm not sure how well a striped RAID would work over thunderbolt though, be interesting to see what the actual speeds would be in a RAID0 enclosure.

Remember just because the interface bandwidth is fast doesn't mean the drive is fast. It's like all these people spending hundreds of dollars on thunderbolt enclosures for a single spinning hard drive. Fact is, that hard drive isn't even fast enough to keep up with USB 3. Thunderbolt is faster than USB 3, yes, but that hard drive you're using isn't!

-John
Click to expand...

No, I'm saying having drives equally partitioned (1:2 i.e.) and having first two partitions from each drive in RAID1 and second two partitions in RAID0. 🙂

I know about that, that's why I'm looking for dual 2.5" TB enclosure. So far there is none. Single drive 2.5" enclosure is BS, usb3 is enough.

RAID0 over TB:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/11

pretty close to 900mb/s
 
el-John-o said:
What you are referring to is RAID 10 (also known as RAID 1+0). It's done with seperate drives, not partitions. With RAID 10, you have at least 4 drives, two 'stripes' which are mirrored.

So;

RAID 0 (striped): +RAID1
Drive 1A Drive 1A Mirror
Drive 1B Drive 1B Mirror

4 drives don't fit in a MacBook Pro! 😛 The options for a two-drive configurations are RAID 1 (mirrored) or RAID 0 (striped). You need at least three drives for RAID 5 and four for 10.

There is no reason you can't do any of these things with an SSD. Some people doom and gloom and talk about reduced life, but it's not realistic. Unless you plan on using your SSD for 40 years...

And yeah, thunderbolt has the bandwidth, but you still need two drives for RAID 0. Makes the enclosures a little bigger. 900MB/s is faster than SATA III (900MB/s is around 8gbps), so you need two drives in RAID0 to hit that speed currently. I'm not sure how well a striped RAID would work over thunderbolt though, be interesting to see what the actual speeds would be in a RAID0 enclosure.

Remember just because the interface bandwidth is fast doesn't mean the drive is fast. It's like all these people spending hundreds of dollars on thunderbolt enclosures for a single spinning hard drive. Fact is, that hard drive isn't even fast enough to keep up with USB 3. Thunderbolt is faster than USB 3, yes, but that hard drive you're using isn't!

-John
Click to expand...

Actually, it's mirrored, and then striped. There is a distinct difference.

The "1" in RAID 1+0 (aka, RAID10) refers to the mirror, while the "0" refers to the stripe.

It's more common than RAID 0+1 (striped, and then mirrored) because RAID10 is more fault tolerant (you can lose more drives in a RAID10, than you can in a RAID01, and still be operational.)

What you're describing is actually RAID01.
 
Ploki said:
No, I'm saying having drives equally partitioned (1:2 i.e.) and having first two partitions from each drive in RAID1 and second two partitions in RAID0. 🙂
Click to expand...

Well that's a weird software RAID then, and... makes no sense. So half of your drive is mirrored, half isn't, and the half that isn't is not taking advantage of the speeds of RAID0 because it's slowed down by the mirror partition! And the mirrored partition is at risk of corruption due to the striped partition! It's like the worst of both worlds. You're probably much better off sticking with just RAID 0. You aren't saving the data on the RAID 0 side like that. That's also not really a RAID, as those are 'standards' and what you've described is not really a configuration. It's just something your OS has let you do to combine some storage.

Unless you are saying the partitions all exist in one drive, which makes NO sense. Like, one drive has two partitions in RAID 0, and another has two partitions in RAID 1. In which case, you are wasting a LOT. the RAID 0 drive isn't getting any advantages, it's actually being slowed down. RAID 0 only works by striping between two drives (like working with both hands instead of one). Now, you're trying to have one hand do the work of two! The RAID1 drive, all you've done is eliminated half of it's storage space, however it does not have ANY redundancy because it's still just one drive, if it fails it fails.. all of it. It's also not mirroring or protecting the RAID 0 partition. The ONLY way to mirror a RAID 0 partition is in RAID 10. (You can backup a RAID 0 setup though). In RAID 10 you also lose half the storage. For example, if you had 4 80GB drives in RAID 10, it would appear as a single 160GB drive in the OS. That's because two of the drives are striped (creating 160GB) and being mirrored on the other two.

However, even a weird setup like that would be perfectly fine on an SSD. Most of the stuff you hear is garbage perpetuated on the internet. Anytime anything is new, weird things come out about it. SSD's are fine in any RAID configuration.
duervo said:
Actually, it's mirrored, and then striped. There is a distinct difference.

The "1" in RAID 1+0 (aka, RAID10) refers to the mirror, while the "0" refers to the stripe.

It's more common than RAID 0+1 (striped, and then mirrored) because RAID10 is more fault tolerant (you can lose more drives in a RAID10, than you can in a RAID01, and still be operational.)

What you're describing is actually RAID01.
Click to expand...

Ah, thanks for clearing that up!
 
el-John-o said:
Well that's a weird software RAID then, and... makes no sense. So half of your drive is mirrored, half isn't, and the half that isn't is not taking advantage of the speeds of RAID0 because it's slowed down by the mirror partition! And the mirrored partition is at risk of corruption due to the striped partition! It's like the worst of both worlds. You're probably much better off sticking with just RAID 0. You aren't saving the data on the RAID 0 side like that. That's also not really a RAID, as those are 'standards' and what you've described is not really a configuration. It's just something your OS has let you do to combine some storage.

Unless you are saying the partitions all exist in one drive, which makes NO sense. Like, one drive has two partitions in RAID 0, and another has two partitions in RAID 1. In which case, you are wasting a LOT. the RAID 0 drive isn't getting any advantages, it's actually being slowed down. RAID 0 only works by striping between two drives (like working with both hands instead of one). Now, you're trying to have one hand do the work of two! The RAID1 drive, all you've done is eliminated half of it's storage space, however it does not have ANY redundancy because it's still just one drive, if it fails it fails.. all of it. It's also not mirroring or protecting the RAID 0 partition. The ONLY way to mirror a RAID 0 partition is in RAID 10. (You can backup a RAID 0 setup though). In RAID 10 you also lose half the storage. For example, if you had 4 80GB drives in RAID 10, it would appear as a single 160GB drive in the OS. That's because two of the drives are striped (creating 160GB) and being mirrored on the other two.

However, even a weird setup like that would be perfectly fine on an SSD. Most of the stuff you hear is garbage perpetuated on the internet. Anytime anything is new, weird things come out about it. SSD's are fine in any RAID configuration.
Click to expand...
Numbers say otherwise. Did it with two Scorpio Blacks,
RAID1 partition got 140mb/s reads, 70mb/s writes, RAID0 partition got 140mb/s R/W. 🙂

I didn't fail test it though, but it should keep the RAID1 partition intact.

I did that with Caviar Blacks in the Mac Pro as well.
You have to have equal partitions, and you can use different RAID methods. So with two drives you can have half of each drive performance and half redundancy.

Why not?
 
Ploki said:
Numbers say otherwise. Did it with two Scorpio Blacks,
RAID1 partition got 140mb/s reads, 70mb/s writes, RAID0 partition got 140mb/s R/W. 🙂

I didn't fail test it though, but it should keep the RAID1 partition intact.

I did that with Caviar Blacks in the Mac Pro as well.
You have to have equal partitions, and you can use different RAID methods. So with two drives you can have half of each drive performance and half redundancy.

Why not?
Click to expand...

I suppose. Though you'd get faster speeds in RAID0 though, or at least I always have. I'm getting over 400MB/s RW in a RAID0 configuration in my desktop using Caviar Blacks. As a matter of fact... I think around 140RW is around what I was getting on the 'oddball' drive that isn't in a RAID... I still think the redundant array is slowing you down and the striped array isn't doing anything for you. I'll run that test again though and see, I've got a 500GB Caviar Black hanging out on it's own.

Edit: Yep, a solo drive is running at 144.8 read and 141.6 write. So the RAID0 could still be useful for combining storage so your OS only sees one volume, but you aren't gaining any speed. The RAID1 is slowing you down, but that's sometimes to be expected.

With the RAID1 partition present, you just can't get the speed of RAID0, the RAID1 partition weighs it down. Again, probably useful for keeping one volume instead of having to deal with multiple drives (the REAL reason I went with RAID0 in the MBP, so I have just one drive, not two appearing in the OS). But you aren't getting a speed bump.

These guys got about the same speeds I did with a 2TB Caviar Black (mine is a 500GB)

http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_black_review_2tb

I still think you ought to consider adding a pair of drives and running RAID 10. You'll get a speed boost AND redundancy on the ENTIRE drive. It'll appear as one drive in the OS (the size of two combined drives) be faster than a single drive, and be redundant enough to handle a drive failure.
 
Last edited:
el-John-o said:
I suppose. Though you'd get faster speeds in RAID0 though, or at least I always have. I'm getting over 400MB/s RW in a RAID0 configuration in my desktop using Caviar Blacks. As a matter of fact... I think around 140RW is around what I was getting on the 'oddball' drive that isn't in a RAID... I still think the redundant array is slowing you down and the striped array isn't doing anything for you. I'll run that test again though and see, I've got a 500GB Caviar Black hanging out on it's own.

Edit: Yep, a solo drive is running at 144.8 read and 141.6 write. So the RAID0 could still be useful for combining storage so your OS only sees one volume, but you aren't gaining any speed. The RAID1 is slowing you down, but that's sometimes to be expected.

With the RAID1 partition present, you just can't get the speed of RAID0, the RAID1 partition weighs it down. Again, probably useful for keeping one volume instead of having to deal with multiple drives (the REAL reason I went with RAID0 in the MBP, so I have just one drive, not two appearing in the OS). But you aren't getting a speed bump.

These guys got about the same speeds I did with a 2TB Caviar Black (mine is a 500GB)

http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_black_review_2tb

I still think you ought to consider adding a pair of drives and running RAID 10. You'll get a speed boost AND redundancy on the ENTIRE drive. It'll appear as one drive in the OS (the size of two combined drives) be faster than a single drive, and be redundant enough to handle a drive failure.
Click to expand...

The speeds I posted were for 320GB scorpio blacks!

Don't have a mac pro anymore, sold it and bought retina. Don't need it honestly, and don't want the hassle of two systems.
Why would RAID1 be weighing it down? By what logic?
 
Ploki said:
The speeds I posted were for 320GB scorpio blacks!

Don't have a mac pro anymore, sold it and bought retina. Don't need it honestly, and don't want the hassle of two systems.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I use my desktop less and less now. Laptops are just getting a lot faster. Years ago, a laptop was like a smartphone today. Decent for checking e-Mail, maybe (if you could find a place to 'plug in', hehe), doing some basic word processing, etc. But ultimately, they relied on a desktop computer. I remember 'syncing' my laptop and my desktop.

Today though, even though some don't want to admit it, they are very powerful. Perhaps not for doing intense Final Cut Pro or Maya work, but for most users most of the time a notebook can handle it. (More than just web browsing, but even gaming, photoshop, etc.) It's why they are becoming so popular.

I read an article that said in the next few years, you won't be able to go to a big box store and buy a desktop. It makes sense. Walk in to best buy, what do the desktop computers there do that a laptop can't do? Nothing! Sure a Mac Pro or another 'workstation' class computer, or a homebuilt gaming rig will out pace a notebook, but not the desktops companies are currently selling. It's not that desktops will go away, it's just that they will become a small market niche product. Something you'll have to order online, which is fine, because the people who will still need them are tech savvy enough to handle it!

Honestly, for many professionals even now, it's not the horsepower of the Mac Pro per se, but the expandability. Being able to run multiple hard drives, and adding add-in cards to interface with different things is often more the use case. (Not always, some do need the horsepower of a Xeon machine!) Though I suspect in a few years as thunderbolt matures, that can replace the Mac Pro even more! As it works it's way into Windows machines, there will become less and less uses for many people to own a desktop. There will always be some (Gamers, servers, and high end workstations) but nearly like what it was a few years ago. Heck, I owned my 3rd or 4th desktop computer before I even SAW a laptop computer for the very first time.
 
duervo said:
Actually, it's mirrored, and then striped. There is a distinct difference.

The "1" in RAID 1+0 (aka, RAID10) refers to the mirror, while the "0" refers to the stripe.

It's more common than RAID 0+1 (striped, and then mirrored) because RAID10 is more fault tolerant (you can lose more drives in a RAID10, than you can in a RAID01, and still be operational.)

What you're describing is actually RAID01.
Click to expand...

If there're 4 drives, there's no difference between RAID0+1 and RAID10. If there're more drives, it always depends on configuration. 3 mirrors of double stripes is still as reliable as a double stripe of triple mirror.
 
el-John-o said:
Yeah. I use my desktop less and less now. Laptops are just getting a lot faster. Years ago, a laptop was like a smartphone today. Decent for checking e-Mail, maybe (if you could find a place to 'plug in', hehe), doing some basic word processing, etc. But ultimately, they relied on a desktop computer. I remember 'syncing' my laptop and my desktop.

Today though, even though some don't want to admit it, they are very powerful. Perhaps not for doing intense Final Cut Pro or Maya work, but for most users most of the time a notebook can handle it. (More than just web browsing, but even gaming, photoshop, etc.) It's why they are becoming so popular.

I read an article that said in the next few years, you won't be able to go to a big box store and buy a desktop. It makes sense. Walk in to best buy, what do the desktop computers there do that a laptop can't do? Nothing! Sure a Mac Pro or another 'workstation' class computer, or a homebuilt gaming rig will out pace a notebook, but not the desktops companies are currently selling. It's not that desktops will go away, it's just that they will become a small market niche product. Something you'll have to order online, which is fine, because the people who will still need them are tech savvy enough to handle it!

Honestly, for many professionals even now, it's not the horsepower of the Mac Pro per se, but the expandability. Being able to run multiple hard drives, and adding add-in cards to interface with different things is often more the use case. (Not always, some do need the horsepower of a Xeon machine!) Though I suspect in a few years as thunderbolt matures, that can replace the Mac Pro even more! As it works it's way into Windows machines, there will become less and less uses for many people to own a desktop. There will always be some (Gamers, servers, and high end workstations) but nearly like what it was a few years ago. Heck, I owned my 3rd or 4th desktop computer before I even SAW a laptop computer for the very first time.
Click to expand...
I use it for Audio production and I couldn't rely on my C2D to handle everything, so I had a 2.8x8 octo.. retina handles it with ease. It's incredible, 4years, same performance in 100x smaller form factor.

c2d mbp was my first laptop, retina is my 2nd. 🙂 octo Mac Pro my first mac.
 
Just over a year ago I remember there being an issue with the SSD manufacturer for the Macbook Air, with people saying that the Samsung drive is better than the Toshiba one.

Is that still the case today with the rMBP? Is it still a lottery with the SSD?
 
betman said:
Just over a year ago I remember there being an issue with the SSD manufacturer for the Macbook Air, with people saying that the Samsung drive is better than the Toshiba one.

Is that still the case today with the rMBP? Is it still a lottery with the SSD?
Click to expand...

If I remember right, there wasn't an 'issue' per se, as in one drive failing or being unreliable, however there was a significant speed difference. (One drive had much faster write speeds I believe). So some folks with the Samsung drive (I think) got faster speeds than the other drive. It's been one beef I've had with Apple. Though I understand it can be hard to source parts for the volume of sales Apple has (especially when they use non-standard parts). I mean it's easy to get Western Digital hard drives for iMac's because WD sells bazillions of those drives to data centers and every other computer manufacturer. But Apple was asking for a special custom drive, and just couldn't get the volume. BUT, it's still a chink in Apples armor that there is some inconsistency in their products.

That said, I don't think it was an issue in reliability, just an issue in speed. An issue that probably wouldn't matter for 99% of real-world use. However, I can certainly understand. If I pay the same amount the next guy pays, then I ought to get the same performance right?

Anyway, all of that aside, I personally haven't HEARD about the same issue in the rMBP, but perhaps others can comment. What I'm interested to hear is if anyone has fit a 2.5" drive in the 13". iFixIt said that there IS room for a 13" MacBook Pro to hold a 2.5" drive, but it'll take some adapting to get it to 'plug in'. I'm curious if anyone is yet 'adapting' it. That could add a LOT of value to the 13", as you could get a 512GB drive for $400.
 
256GB, plus 480GB OWC SSD, plus OWC external blade SSD housing.

Faster SSD, plus a "bonus" USB3 256GB SSD for the grand total of 30 bucks more than just getting the 512GB SSD from Apple.
 
el-John-o said:
If I remember right, there wasn't an 'issue' per se, as in one drive failing or being unreliable, however there was a significant speed difference. (One drive had much faster write speeds I believe). So some folks with the Samsung drive (I think) got faster speeds than the other drive.
Click to expand...

That was it. People really wanted a Sammy double with both the screen and SSD.

Do the current rMBP models also feature various manufacturers for the SSD?
 
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