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What is the best size for your SSD?

What size SSD drive did you buy?

  • 40GB-48GB

    Votes: 1 1.4%

  • 60GB-64GB

    Votes: 5 6.8%

  • 115GB-128GB

    Votes: 22 30.1%

  • 240GB-256GB

    Votes: 29 39.7%

  • 480GB +

    Votes: 8 11.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 9 12.3%
  • Total voters
    73
bzollinger

bzollinger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
542
3
It's known that the size of the SSD that people choose is directly related to their specific uses, what programs they use most often and other needs. While juggling the "age old question" of what size should I buy, and not finding any specific poll I thought I'd start one.

Currently I'm on the fence between the 120GB & 240GB. I think I could make the 120GB work, but if I want my iPhoto library to be on the SSD then 240GB is the only option for me. It's too bad that you don't get much of a $$/GB break when buying larger sizes...

What size SSD did (or will) you buy?
What brand?
And what were the primary reasons for doing so?
 
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bzollinger

bzollinger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
542
3
For the SSD owners...

Do you keep your iPhoto libraryon the SSD drive? If you didn't is iPhoto just as slow as if it were on a spinning drive?

My iPhoto is over 60GB, so that's a lot of SSD space and $$!
 
E

eddjedi

macrumors 6502a
Sep 7, 2011
628
851
Don't most people with SSDs have ONLY the OS and apps on it, and then move their home folder (music, photos etc) to a second drive? That way you get great performance and only need a small SSD.
 
bzollinger

bzollinger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
542
3
eddjedi said:
Don't most people with SSDs have ONLY the OS and apps on it, and then move their home folder (music, photos etc) to a second drive? That way you get great performance and only need a small SSD.
Click to expand...

That's my understanding too. But for example if you put your apps on it, but not the content in iPhoto's case won't it be slow overall? It should launch fast but when browsing the thumbnails, the data source would be a regular hard drive which is much slower right?
 
E

eddjedi

macrumors 6502a
Sep 7, 2011
628
851
I guess in an ideal world you'd have everything on the SSD for the max speed benefit, but that's not feasible yet. They don't even make SSDs big enough to fit a modest person's files on. So for now I think that's your only option, and would still be far quicker than having on SSD at all. My understanding is that the boot time and app loading times are the things you'll notice most anyway.
 
DustinT

DustinT

macrumors 68000
Feb 26, 2011
1,556
0
eddjedi said:
I guess in an ideal world you'd have everything on the SSD for the max speed benefit, but that's not feasible yet. They don't even make SSDs big enough to fit a modest person's files on. So for now I think that's your only option, and would still be far quicker than having on SSD at all. My understanding is that the boot time and app loading times are the things you'll notice most anyway.
Click to expand...
Thats far from true. My MBP and my wife's MBA are both 240g SSD equipped and I think you'd be surprised what you can keep on there. Of course, my first hard drive was a 10 megabyte drive back in 1990 so, my standards are a bit different from some. A little pruning goes a long way. At home, I've got a huge disk array from Drobo that I can store all my HD rips, raw image files and .iso files for software. Why do I need access to all that on my laptop when I'm at work or school? What, am I going to watch 4 - 5 seasons of Top Gear, in HD, at work?
 
Z

zodqyv

macrumors regular
Mar 28, 2010
222
0
I picked "other" because you didn't have a category my Intel 160GB X-25Ms fit into. I have some from each generation and love them. Only now I am considering larger Intel drives.
 
bzollinger

bzollinger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
542
3
zodqyv said:
I picked "other" because you didn't have a category my Intel 160GB X-25Ms fit into. I have some from each generation and love them. Only now I am considering larger Intel drives.
Click to expand...

Oh sorry bout that...I kinda forgot that there's that whole segment in the 160GB zone. That's a good size too.

----------
DustinT said:
Thats far from true. My MBP and my wife's MBA are both 240g SSD equipped and I think you'd be surprised what you can keep on there. Of course, my first hard drive was a 10 megabyte drive back in 1990 so, my standards are a bit different from some. A little pruning goes a long way. At home, I've got a huge disk array from Drobo that I can store all my HD rips, raw image files and .iso files for software. Why do I need access to all that on my laptop when I'm at work or school? What, am I going to watch 4 - 5 seasons of Top Gear, in HD, at work?
Click to expand...

What do you suggest I do with such a large iPhoto library? Get the 120GB which I can afford and keep it on my other disks? Or try to pony up the 4 bills for the 240GB??

BTW- I have no problem spending the $$ it's the wife ya know....
 
Y

Young Spade

macrumors 68020
Mar 31, 2011
2,156
3
Tallahassee, Florida
bzollinger said:
What do you suggest I do with such a large iPhoto library? Get the 120GB which I can afford and keep it on my other disks? Or try to pony up the 4 bills for the 240GB??
.
Click to expand...

Well if you can "afford" to get the 128, get that and then store all of the large files that you don't access readily on an external drive or something.

Get what you can afford and work around that; it doesn't take longer than 5 minutes to stop, think about what you can buy, buy that, and then structure how you work around it.

That's the only logical way to go about doing it anyway isn't it?
 
bzollinger

bzollinger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
542
3
Young Spade said:
Well if you can "afford" to get the 128, get that and then store all of the large files that you don't access readily on an external drive or something.

Get what you can afford and work around that; it doesn't take longer than 5 minutes to stop, think about what you can buy, buy that, and then structure how you work around it.

That's the only logical way to go about doing it anyway isn't it?
Click to expand...

That is a good and logical way of going about it. However I'm trying to find out specifically how iPhoto will work if it's not all on the SSD.....
 
derbothaus

derbothaus

macrumors 601
Jul 17, 2010
4,093
30
bzollinger said:
Do you keep your iPhoto libraryon the SSD drive? If you didn't is iPhoto just as slow as if it were on a spinning drive?

My iPhoto is over 60GB, so that's a lot of SSD space and $$!
Click to expand...

No it is much faster. The storage drive for Home (HDD) folder speeds up because of the lack of 4K and 256K blocks constantly writing keeping track of the OS. You get pure bandwidth and faster seeks as you are only usually seeking a few locations at a time. The whole experience speeds up. You will see a great improvement even if you do not put your iPhoto library on the SSD.
My Lightroom catalogs used to take 30 secs or so to chew through. Now with SSD boot and home folder on HDD they take 5-10 secs.
 
xgman

xgman

macrumors 603
Aug 6, 2007
5,672
1,378
Cost aside, I don't see how anyone who really uses the hell out of the MP can do with less than 400gb. I tried with 240 for a while and it didn't cut it. Even with loading lots of stuff over to a normal drive.
 
bzollinger

bzollinger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
542
3
derbothaus said:
No it is much faster. The storage drive for Home (HDD) folder speeds up because of the lack of 4K and 256K blocks constantly writing keeping track of the OS. You get pure bandwidth and faster seeks as you are only usually seeking a few locations at a time. The whole experience speeds up. You will see a great improvement even if you do not put your iPhoto library on the SSD.
My Lightroom catalogs used to take 30 secs or so to chew through. Now with SSD boot and home folder on HDD they take 5-10 secs.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comment. This is good to know. My wife uses iPhoto quite a bit, so the last thing I want is to hear her complain about how much $$ I spend on the computer and it is still "slow" to her.
 
derbothaus

derbothaus

macrumors 601
Jul 17, 2010
4,093
30
bzollinger said:
Thanks for the comment. This is good to know. My wife uses iPhoto quite a bit, so the last thing I want is to hear her complain about how much $$ I spend on the computer and it is still "slow" to her.
Click to expand...

Understand too well;)
Doing the SSD/ Home Folder split is about the best you can do right now without insane cost. No one I know uses 3-4 480GB SSD's for everything. That would be 5000.00 anyway. If iPhoto is still slow then Apple and it's single archive model is to blame. If this is the case, keeping everything on the SSD will still not speed it up much.
 
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bzollinger

bzollinger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
542
3
Yep, it's the old $400 and some breathing room. Or $200 and having to split things up and keep an eye on it.

I'm going to dig into my setup a little more and figure out what's what, and where it all is. Right now I've got some split out of my home folder but not all of it....
 
I

Inconsequential

macrumors 68000
Sep 12, 2007
1,978
1
You missed out 160GB.

I have a 160GB X25-M in my Mac Pro for ~70GB of Lightroom Libraries and caches and a 80GB X25-M in my MBP for Boot, Apps, etc.
 
derbothaus

derbothaus

macrumors 601
Jul 17, 2010
4,093
30
Also keep in mind that SSD's are faster with less data on them. The more full the drive the slower the transfer rates. Not huge but noticeable. The more bare cells available the higher parallel transfer rates. This does not affect access times like HDD's. 65% full OWC 6G on SATAII gets 215MB/s Write, 265MB/s Read. 25% full 261MB/s Write, 268MB/s Read. ymmv. So if you can afford it get a biggest you can even if you are only filling it 20%-60%.
 
bzollinger

bzollinger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2005
542
3
Concorde Rules said:
You missed out 160GB.

I have a 160GB X25-M in my Mac Pro for ~70GB of Lightroom Libraries and caches and a 80GB X25-M in my MBP for Boot, Apps, etc.
Click to expand...

Yah, someone else mentioned that...now I can't edit the poll. So I guess you're in the "other" group!

----------
derbothaus said:
Also keep in mind that SSD's are faster with less data on them. The more full the drive the slower the transfer rates. Not huge but noticeable. The more bare cells available the higher parallel transfer rates. This does not affect access times like HDD's. 65% full OWC 6G on SATAII gets 215MB/s Write, 265MB/s Read. 25% full 261MB/s Write, 268MB/s Read. ymmv. So if you can afford it get a biggest you can even if you are only filling it 20%-60%.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've read this. If I get the 120GB drive it'll be running 68% full out of the gates, then getting fuller as I go.

I like the 160GB intel option but with the $$/GB I mind as well bump up to the 240GB OWC.
 
AlteMac

AlteMac

macrumors regular
Jul 21, 2011
212
78
New York suburb
Will I am a bit crazy. I do mostly photo editing: I have a 200G main SSD with all apps on it and nothing else. There is a 600G SSD that is my main photo storage (it is now at 50% capacity); There is a 256G SSD for older photos (also about 1/2 full), and a 4th SSD that has a clone of my OS on one partition with the balance used for caches in photoshop. Needless to say, the system screams even with Photoshop CS5 and large files. There is also 20G of RAM. My personal theory is you cannot have too much HD space and you cannot have too much RAM, so go for tyhe biggest you can afford. My answer, therefore, is "none of the above"

p.s. Time machine runs on an external 2TB regular HDD, and all the photo files are backed up on portable HDs, sunched with Chronosync, and then periodically synched again to a second computer at another location.

Now prepared to be attacked for overkill, but it keeps me happy.
 
sapporobaby

sapporobaby

macrumors 68000
Sep 27, 2007
1,599
1
3 earth minutes from your location....
bzollinger said:
Yah, someone else mentioned that...now I can't edit the poll. So I guess you're in the "other" group!

----------



Yes, I've read this. If I get the 120GB drive it'll be running 68% full out of the gates, then getting fuller as I go.

I like the 160GB intel option but with the $$/GB I mind as well bump up to the 240GB OWC.
Click to expand...

You can always put in two SSD's like I did into my MBP 15 inch.
 
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