SSD for 2011 MBP: Summary

This is a great idea. I am looking forward to this thread. Subscribed!

Vertex 2 - Uses SF-1200 controller so same issues as with other drives

Kingston SSDNow V+ and V series - Uses the same controller as the SSDs Apple uses (Toshiba T6UG1XBG), so no issues (one guy in MR IRC has one of these and has confirmed this)

Vertex 3 and other SF-2000 SSDs - No issues AFAIK (Anand tested this)

Crucial/Micron C400 and Corsair P3 - Not tested AFAIK but uses the same controller as Intel 510

Intel G3 X25-M - Supposedly due on March, 28th. Thread about this

Great idea - but it definitely needs to be dug deeper. Some SSD's with stuttering/pauses/beach balls have said removing iStat Pro fixed their problems. The ones w/o issues haven't said if they instaleld iStat Pro or not. (at least not from what I've seen.)

jijitrash said:

Hi all,
I wanted to agglomerate the different findings about SSD usage in the 2011 MBPs:

From reading the different threads I learned that some drives are known to operate without problems, whereas others require some tweaking before they run.

Which drives work
-normal, without ANY problems, and without tweaking
-normal, AFTER some tweaks (which tweaks?)
-do not support all features (for instance no hibernation or no sleep), but run
-are not recommended due to incompatibility

So far I have learned:

-Intel 510: spinning beachball problem on some machines. No solution known

-OWC Mercury Pro: hibernation does not work, sleep does not always work. Apparently with one older firmware both works, but the FW updates make the error re-occur

-Intel X-25: works without problems

-Vertex 2: ??

-Crucial C300: spinning beachball after sleep, not recommended

-all drives with Sandforce 1200 controllers have the hibernation problem

Please correct me if I am wrong.

It would be great if we can summarise the findings from the different threads in this one.

thanks

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C300: Actually owned and run one for over a year, no beachballs after sleep, no slowdown or any other rubbish spouted by non-owners, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Hellhammer said:

Crucial/Micron C400 and Corsair P3 - Not tested AFAIK but uses the same controller as Intel 510

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I'm gonna guinea pig myself with this drive in a few days. Hopefully there won't be issues.

JasonH42 said:

C300: Actually owned and run one for over a year, no beachballs after sleep, no slowdown or any other rubbish spouted by non-owners, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

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That means you installed this in a SATA II environment right? I think some people are experiencing hiccups when connected to the SATA III interface.

Great idea!

I'm giving this a bump up

But in another thread, it appears that OWC's new firmware has fixed the problem for some and not for others :/ and OWC themselves state that only 10% of users get this problem. It's an unacceptable game of Russian roulette but not as bad as having guaranteed problems with another brand.

By the way, OWC, OCZ, and other Sandforce controllers do not have a Mac OS updater. -1 On all of them.

jijitrash said:

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Click to expand...

You are correct in general.

-Intel X-25: reliable but speed degrades over time - poor garbage collection

-all drives with Sandforce 1200 controllers have the hibernation problem

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Several drives that are used as a boot drive when in an optibay have hibernation problems.

Which drives work
-normal, without ANY problems, and without tweaking

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-Stock Apple SSD in BTO: No problems at all - slightly slower than other drives but hardly noticeable to most users. The only drive with TRIM support.

RedDiamond said:

Intel X-25: reliable but speed degrades over time - poor garbage collection

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I have had a 160gb x-25 G2 for some time now and I did experience performance degradation.

However, I finally found a process that does trim the drive and did restore performance. I followed instructions given in a Macrumors forum by a user named Antiram. Use at your own risk. This is what the person wrote:

hdparm is a disk utility for linux, which can also trim sector ranges. The hdparm package contains wiper.sh, a script to trim filesystems. I made a patch to trim unmounted hfsplus (and ntfs) filesystems for wiper.sh. After a success report from a snowleopard user, i informed the hdparm developer and after further tests, the patch is now in the hdparm-9.36 package.

i have no mac, the patch was made to trim my ntfs partition from linux. The extension to hfsplus was made some month ago, because hfsplus has a similar bitmap allocation file.

macusers with linux knowledge could use/test wiper.sh, but make a backup before. Eg. using the latest Ubuntu 10.10 live cd to trim a unmounted hfsplus filesystem:
boot the Ubuntu 10.10
open terminal in Applications->Accessories->Terminal
then do the following steps:

sudo bash
add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu maverick universe"
apt-get update
apt-get install gawk
apt-get install sleuthkit
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/hdparm/files/hdparm/hdparm-9.36.tar.gz
tar -xzf hdparm-9.36.tar.gz
cd hdparm-9.36
make
make install
cd wiper

now you can use wiper.sh. "sda1" is the first partition of the first disk. "sdb1" is the first partition of the second disk and so on. do at first a dry run:
./wiper.sh /dev/sda1

if everything looks ok do a real run with:
./wiper.sh --commit /dev/sda1

make a backup before. Here is the output from a testrun on a 100Mb hfsplus gpt partition.
http://paste.ubuntu.com/523327/
You can use eg. "fsstat -f hfs /dev/sda1 " to get further filesystem informations to find the right partition. eg.
http://paste.ubuntu.com/525053/

edit: don't use version 9.36 on a resized filesystem.

I have been using an Intel x25 G2 in my mac mini (nvidia 9400) for my work desktop over a year now and no regrets. Ive also ran the same in my gaming system at home and my old laptop, no issues there.
I have the 17 2.3 2011 quad core now and put the 160 x25 in it.
no issues after a week of hard testing. and the drive is well used. I did have to apply the last firmware update from Intel.
That said I think ill jump to a c300 or vertex 3 in a few months.

Some food for though read both:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4186/ocz-vertex-3-preview-the-first-client-focused-sf2200

and

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review

Cheers.

kappaknight said:

That means you installed this in a SATA II environment right? I think some people are experiencing hiccups when connected to the SATA III interface.

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I was but I upgraded to a 2011 MBP at launch, running at SATA III 6Gbs now, no problems at all - it's just faster.

JasonH42 said:

I was but I upgraded to a 2011 MBP at launch, running at SATA III 6Gbs now, no problems at all - it's just faster.

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Good to know. I'm hoping to jump on a similar boat REALLY soon.

On a separate note, the OCZ Vertex 3's are now showing up at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=vertex+3&x=0&y=0

hope this becomes a sticky.

i have intel x25m and its awesome with no problems.

SF1200 problems have already mentioned.

maybe you can split your list up into current gen (x25, sf1200, c300, v+ now) and next gen (G3, c400, sf2200).

What about the theory that the MBP's SATA-cable is responsible for the problems with SATA-III drives? Has that ever been confirmed?

Tyrion said:

What about the theory that the MBP's SATA-cable is responsible for the problems with SATA-III drives? Has that ever been confirmed?

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That would be a bitch move on Apple's part to limit the SATA 6Gbps bandwidth using the cables.

But we'll see... If this is the case, I am forgetting my endeavors to get a SATA 6Gbps drive.

kappaknight said:

Good to know. I'm hoping to jump on a similar boat REALLY soon.

On a separate note, the OCZ Vertex 3's are now showing up at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=vertex+3&x=0&y=0

Click to expand...

Glad to see this but I'm going to let someone else figure out how well these work with OS X first before I take the plunge.

kappaknight said:

Good to know. I'm hoping to jump on a similar boat REALLY soon.

On a separate note, the OCZ Vertex 3's are now showing up at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=vertex+3&x=0&y=0

Click to expand...

Not to be confused with actual products, these are vendors trying to collect some money now for a product sometime later. It also looks like they are charging a nice premium.

Excellent thread!

I have owc 120gb 2nd hand which I will use for a few months until V3 becomes mainstream and sata3 probs smoothed out by new firmware

Also lion out in few months so will hold off on buying a v3- it looks amazing tho!

Ps didn't anand report probs with v3 on MBP; sata 3?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1106013/

x-25 on 2011mbp, works awesome. OSX Lion coming out in June will have TRIM support.

OWC - no sleep / hibernation problems

I have an OWC Mercury Pro 480GB with no problems at all (MBP 2011 15" 2.3GHz, 8GB OWC RAM).

Never had sleep nor hibernation problems with previous FW 343A and also not with new FW360A. So count me the the 90% of users who did not experience problems with pre 360A firmware.


This beast is fast even though it only has SATA II interface. 8% over-provision was a the killer argument why I have OWC SSDs in my MBA and MBP.

nice, keep us posted :]

Posting this on my 2011 MBP 15"......

I have an Crucial C300 128gb installed and runs like a dream!!

HOWEVER!!!

I had to repair all disk permissions first and re-install OSX over the top of my existing install. It left all my information, apps etc on the disk, but by some miracle made it work.

So I can clearly attest to the Crucial SSD's working.

If it hadn't this machine was going straight back to Apple