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cypress822

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 11, 2012
120
0
Was pricing out new 2011 iMac on apple.com...one really has to ask if $600 for only 250gb ssd is worth it.
If the refresh iMac has standard ssd...cant imagine the 2012 iMac prices are not going to take at least a modest bump up in price.
 

Zarkizon

macrumors member
Sep 10, 2011
62
0
Yeah, it's not worth the money to BTO a Mac with an SSD from Apple. I got a third party 256 GB SSD and it was just $200.
 

cypress822

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 11, 2012
120
0
zarkizon,
did you install it yourself?
is there such a thing as external ssd?
 

Mister Bumbo

macrumors 6502
Apr 30, 2012
391
0
is there such a thing as external ssd?

There are external SSD's yes, but to benefit from them you need to use Thunderbolt so that the transfer-method (cable) isn't a bottleneck, there's external TB SSD's, and there's also a SATA-Thunderbolt-adapter. Not sure if USB 3 would be valid, haven't checked yet.

So what you can do is either buy an external SSD, or an internal SSD that you put into a SATA-Thunderbolt adapter, in which case you also need a thunderbolt cable.

The problem with external SSD's is that they're overly expensive per amount of storage, compared to internal ones, also - some of them require external power input. The problem with internal with adapter is compability issues. A problem also with all external boot drives is that there can be slight problems with waking up the computer from sleep etc, since the computer might not power them at all times (if no external power source).
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Apr 13, 2010
6,361
248
Howell, New Jersey
zarkizon,
did you install it yourself?
is there such a thing as external ssd?


HERE ARE 2 threads on external ssds



https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1317577/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1280118/


I currently use 2 little big disks. with 3 samsung 256gb ssd in a raid0 as a 768gb boot disk.


the fourth slot is a 256gb ssd as a work drive. I also use the internal hdd as my back for the external raid0 768gb boot drive.


There are external SSD's yes, but to benefit from them you need to use Thunderbolt so that the transfer-method (cable) isn't a bottleneck, there's external TB SSD's, and there's also a SATA-Thunderbolt-adapter. Not sure if USB 3 would be valid, haven't checked yet.

So what you can do is either buy an external SSD, or an internal SSD that you put into a SATA-Thunderbolt adapter, in which case you also need a thunderbolt cable.

The problem with external SSD's is that they're overly expensive per amount of storage, compared to internal ones, also - some of them require external power input. The problem with internal with adapter is compability issues. A problem also with all external boot drives is that there can be slight problems with waking up the computer from sleep etc, since the computer might not power them at all times (if no external power source).

You are correct that they are costly. but the internal option in an iMac is 600 for 256gb. the option of a lacie little big disk with 2x 512gb crucial m4's as a 1024gb raid0 is 1159. 4x the room at less them 2x the price.

and 2 500gb hdds tossed in after the mod.


to cypress822 all my prices are usa based. also are screen shots of my osx raid0
 

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