Mac Mini SSD (solid state drive) discussion thread

burninglegs said:

Is there a dedicated SSD thread buried somewhere here in the Mac Mini forum? I did a search and didn't find anything. I thought maybe a "dedicated" thread might be helpful?


Anyways I have a general question as I am looking at getting a SSD to upgrade my late 2012 i7 Mini. I want a 500-512GB drive. Looking for the best bang for the buck. From my limited understanding and reading, Samsung (840 Pro/850 Pro) and Crucial M500 seem like they are good bang for the buck. Are those basically the best options for bang for your buck at the moment?

Click to expand...

Let me see how many times one can use "bang for the buck" in a paragraph.....

First off, the Samsung 840/850 Pros are not good "bang for the buck" because they are much more expensive than the Samsung 840 EVO which has much better "Bang for the buck". Also the Crucial M500 has great "bang for the buck" but has been virtually discontinued and now the best "bang for the buck" is probably the Crucial MX100 series as they are the replacement for the best "Bang for your buck" of the Crucial line. The Crucial M550 is slightly more expensive, but is also somewhat faster so you might find that to be a better "bang for your buck" but that is entirely up to you...

How many times did I use "Bank for your buck"?

The real answer is there is no "dedicated" SSD thread because there is no need one for one. There are hundreds of websites that will tell you what to buy and what X SSD has over Y SSD. They will perform just as well in OSX as they do in Windows. They will perform no differently in a Mac Mini than they would in any other Mac (assuming all were running an SATAIII controller unlike the 2012 and older Mac Pros which only had an SATAII controller).

So true bang for your buck is probably the MX100 unless you are looking for super performance, but since all you stated (repeatedly) was "Bang for your buck" was your criteria....

Of course you could even look at lesser SSD's than even the Crucial MX100 (some of the old Sandforce 2200 series or Psion conroller based SSD's) since they have great "bang for your buck" if all you want is a high Gigabyte to $$ ratio (is that the Bang for your buck you are looking for?)....

Crucial MX100.

cinealta said:

Crucial MX100.

Click to expand...

Can't beat it for value.

If you want 1TB it's the Samsung 840 EVO.

They are the best BFYB.

burninglegs said:

Is there a dedicated SSD thread buried somewhere here in the Mac Mini forum? I did a search and didn't find anything. I thought maybe a "dedicated" thread might be helpful?


Anyways I have a general question as I am looking at getting a SSD to upgrade my late 2012 i7 Mini. I want a 500-512GB drive. Looking for the best bang for the buck. From my limited understanding and reading, Samsung (840 Pro/850 Pro) and Crucial M500 seem like they are good bang for the buck. Are those basically the best options for bang for your buck at the moment?

Click to expand...

You can still get Crucial 960GB M500 SSDs at B&H for $409.99. I've got three of them and they work great but since they've been replaced by the MX100 it might be worth paying a little more and getting the current model.

scottsjack said:

You can still get Crucial 960GB M500 SSDs at B&H for $409.99. I've got three of them and they work great but since they've been replaced by the MX100 it might be worth paying a little more and getting the current model.

Click to expand...

AFAIK the M500 was replaced by the M550. The MX100 is entry-level (lower cost, lower performance).

cinealta said:

AFAIK the M500 was replaced by the M550. The MX100 is entry-level (lower cost, lower performance).

Click to expand...

Yes, you are correct. The M550 costs just a little more than the M500. I would definitely get M550s if I had to do it over again right now.

The MX100 performs similar if not better than the M550 in most tests though. However it doesn't come in 1TB, where as the M550 does (960GB).

2012 mac mini dual drive kit with samsung 850 pro

Need help!! I just added a samsung 850 Pro SSD drive to my 2012 mac mini. I bought the iFixit SATA cable, so I had to move my 1TB HD to the upper bay and the SSD to the lower bay in order to make it work. Both drives work great, but I am having a strange issue. I have Yosemite installed on the HD and Maverick installed on the SSD. When I boot the HD drive, the wifi works great. When I boot the SSD the wifi does not correctly. After resetting the wifi connection several times [SSD], the connection came on once, but very slow connection speed. I turned the wifi off and plugged the ethernet cable in and internet connection works great. I also tried reformatting the SSD several times, but that did not work.

MikeMeyers said:

Need help!! I just added a samsung 850 Pro SSD drive to my 2012 mac mini. I bought the iFixit SATA cable, so I had to move my 1TB HD to the upper bay and the SSD to the lower bay in order to make it work. Both drives work great, but I am having a strange issue. I have Yosemite installed on the HD and Maverick installed on the SSD. When I boot the HD drive, the wifi works great. When I boot the SSD the wifi does not correctly. After resetting the wifi connection several times [SSD], the connection came on once, but very slow connection speed. I turned the wifi off and plugged the ethernet cable in and internet connection works great. I also tried reformatting the SSD several times, but that did not work.

Click to expand...

mavericks and 10.10.1 yosemite have intermittent wifi issues addressed in 10.10.2 perhaps its that you are rolling back to on old version?

I have a Refurbished Mac Mini(MM) i5 2012, 500GB Hard Drive in which I just upgraded the RAM STICK from 4GB to 16GB.

I use my MM mainly for surfing the web, watching some movies and some light typing of correspondence.

The reason for the RAM upgrade is a move from OSX "Mountain Lion" to "Yosemite" in the very new future.

So, would swaping my MM HD for a SSD be a good idea before I move-on to the "Ram Hog" OSX "Yosemite"??

I have had my MM for about a 1 1/2 years and I am using about 100GB of the 500GB maximum on my present HD.

I have a Crucial M500 240GB SSD and it works flawlessly with Yosemite!

tibas92013 said:

So, would swaping my MM HD for a SSD be a good idea before I move-on to the "Ram Hog" OSX "Yosemite"??

Click to expand...

You've already maxed out the RAM. The next best thing you can do is the HDD to SSD upgrade. If nothing else, it will be a lot more responsive on boot up and app launching.

OWC still sells the M500. They have 960GB model for $348. Is the drive too outdated because that is a pretty good price for 960GB?

cinealta said:

Crucial MX100.

Click to expand...

Inexpensive and works well.

----------

powerbook911 said:

OWC still sells the M500. They have 960GB model for $348. Is the drive too outdated because that is a pretty good price for 960GB?

Click to expand...

I only paid $176 for my Crucial MX 100 512GB on sale. I would say $348 is a good price for 960 GB.

Crosscreek said:

I only paid $176 for my Crucial MX 100 512GB on sale. I would say $348 is a good price for 960 GB.

Click to expand...

+1 for the 512GB MX100. That's a sweet spot for a sweet product for the Mini. I paid £150 in the UK but I get the VAT back so only about £125.

M.

I just grabbed a 512gb mx100, kept the 1gb in for a storage drive, so far so good.

I'd add that, given recent news, I would *not* put the 840 EVO on the shopping list until performance questions really get resolved (speaking as the owner of one, by the way).

newellj said:

I'd add that, given recent news, I would *not* put the 840 EVO on the shopping list until performance questions really get resolved (speaking as the owner of one, by the way).

Click to expand...

What were these problems? Do they exist with the variants of the 850?

The purported fix released by Samsung apparently didn't work. http://techreport.com/review/27727/some-840-evos-still-vulnerable-to-read-speed-slowdowns

AFAIK it affects only the 840 EVO.

I went ahead and ordered 512GB MX100 to replace the lower drive in my 2011 mini server. I will have to move my iTunes folder (250GB) to the other internal drive as right now I'm setup as a 1 TB raid 0.

I feel somewhat regretful for not going for the 960GB M500 so all the content would have been on one drive and all SSD. Plus it was only $140 more, but I felt like it was a dated drive, I don't know.

Osamede said:

What were these problems? Do they exist with the variants of the 850?

Click to expand...

It's a screwup in the 840 Evo's controller algorithm that causes the SSD to slow down over time. Samsung released a firmware update to restore the performance of the drive.

The 850 series uses a different controller, and the issues don't exist on them.

yjchua95 said:

It's a screwup in the 840 Evo's controller algorithm that causes the SSD to slow down over time. Samsung released a firmware update to restore the performance of the drive.

The 850 series uses a different controller, and the issues don't exist on them.

Click to expand...

I'm looking at the
- Samsung 845DC Pro 400GB SSD Data Center
- Samsung 845DC EVO 480GB SSD DataCenter

Is that 845 line related to the 840 or the 850? Or is it something else entirely?

Osamede said:

I'm looking at the
- Samsung 845DC Pro 400GB SSD Data Center
- Samsung 845DC EVO 480GB SSD DataCenter

Is that 845 line related to the 840 or the 850? Or is it something else entirely?

Click to expand...

These drives are meant for datacenter purposes, where read intensive ops are common. Write speeds will be a fair bit lower compared to regular SSDs, but random read operations will be far better.

That said, you'll be better served with a Samsung 840 Pro or Evo. The 845 line shares the same form factor as the 840 series, but the 845 series are optimized for random read performance.

Even an 840 Pro has better IOPS than the 845DC Pro. The 845DC Pro is rated at 92K IOPS random read and 50-51K IOPS random write, while the 840 Pro is rated at 100K IOPS random read and 90K IOPS random write.

yjchua95 said:

These drives are meant for datacenter purposes, where read intensive ops are common. Write speeds will be a fair bit lower compared to regular SSDs, but random read operations will be far better.

That said, you'll be better served with a Samsung 840 Pro or Evo. The 845 line shares the same form factor as the 840 series, but the 845 series are optimized for random read performance.

Even an 840 Pro has better IOPS than the 845DC Pro. The 845DC Pro is rated at 92K IOPS random read and 50-51K IOPS random write, while the 840 Pro is rated at 100K IOPS random read and 90K IOPS random write.

Click to expand...

This is to go in a Mac Mini for use as a HTPC/Plex server/whole whouse Squeezebox server/general family file server.

The Samsung material seems to define the 845 DC Pro as "write intensive" and the 845 DC Evo as "read intensive".

Reason I am looking at these is because of power loss protection that only this and the Intel 730s seems to have. We tend to suffer power outages from time to time and so far this has probably contributed to early bricking of a Crucial M4 that I had in a self-built Win 7 desktop that was doing these duties described above.

Also, If I understand what you are saying the Samsung 840 Pro has no problems whatsoever?