OWC posted preorder for 2TB SSD for nMP6,1 today

looks big and ugly

according to the tech specs the OWC SSD will be connected using only 2 PCIe lanes. not impressed at all. plus, the SandForce controller is a no-go in my book. also I expect that the OWC SSD won't support native TRIM for OS X.

Hmm. Interesting specs vs. the Apple OEM SSDs. I suppose this offering is leaning more toward capacity than performance.

I am getting well over 900 reads and 780 writes on the Apple 256GB SSD.

Apple 1TB SSD can be had for well under $800 if you look hard. So this upgrade doesn't make sense to me unless you absolutely need 2TB on board.

Where can you get the Apple 1 TB SSDs? Just eBay? I wonder why it's not feasible for OWC to offer 4-lane performance...

I am still waiting for a Samsung or Micron (Crucial) 2TB 2.5" SATA SSD.

Not even mentioning Intel because I think it would be too expensive.

SuperMatt said:

Where can you get the Apple 1 TB SSDs? Just eBay? I wonder why it's not feasible for OWC to offer 4-lane performance...

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Yes, ebay. Several have bought from one of the regular sources, including myself, and have had absolutely no problems with it.

Two lanes make no sense to me whatsoever - especially at the price they are quoting.

Why is it so big? It seems like it's larger than the size of two of the existing cards, and I don't think the existing cards have heat spreaders?

Their SSD blades for MacBook Airs generate a TON of heat, maybe Apple cornered the market on SSD RAM that doesn't generate fireballs?

RoastingPig said:

looks big and ugly

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Yes, the nMP is big an ugly but the thread is about an SSD that hides under the MP's ugliness. Hope this helps.

Why would I buy the 1TB stick from OWC when it's more expensive than the Apple upgrade?

I bought a 1TB from eBay for my New Mac Pro. No problems AT ALL. 5 Minutes to install and reloaded from USB.

bxs said:

OWC just announced a pre-order 2TB SSD for the nMP6,1..... $1479. It uses the x4 SandForce SF2281 controller with claimed speeds of 730 MB/s reads and 698 MB/s writes. I believe the stock Apple 1TB SSD provides better speeds.

Hmmmm, I thought the SandForce controller gave very poor write speeds for incompressible data.... !

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Strange. The SF2281 is 2011 technology that has been notorious for premature failure (and as you've pointed out, doesn't perform as well with incompressible data). So it's not really surprising that the speeds are underwhelming... but the pricing is ridiculous.

You're much better off buying the Apple 1TB BTO option and adding an external TB SSD if you really need that much solid state storage.

The odd thing is, you could buy their Thunderbay Mini ($379) and four Crucial MX100 512GB SSDs ($200each) for a total of $1179 for 2TB with way better throughput.

itcrashed said:

Yes, ebay. Several have bought from one of the regular sources, including myself, and have had absolutely no problems with it..

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Do yo mind to share the exact words to find those on ebay? I'm out of luck trying to find one

thanks!

edited: It always happens, just ask something and find the solution almost immediatly ...

' the missing key word was "pcie", now I see them'

why does anyone need 2TB internal SSD? the OS takes up only a small part of even a 1TB and if you want storage then the internal SSD is not the best place to do that. I would have 1TB SSD and an external thunderbolt SSD instead, better for performance to keep the media on a separate drive from the OS.

mongeta said:

It always happens, just ask something and find the solution almost immediatly ...

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Happens to me all the time! LOL

Anyone considering this should read this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1003185/

Lou

megalaser said:

why does anyone need 2TB internal SSD? the OS takes up only a small part of even a 1TB and if you want storage then the internal SSD is not the best place to do that. I would have 1TB SSD and an external thunderbolt SSD instead, better for performance to keep the media on a separate drive from the OS.

Click to expand...

Same reason I want more thank 640k! Personally I can't wait for 10TB SSDs so i can just plop everything on one drive and be done with it.

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mikeboss said:

according to the tech specs the OWC SSD will be connected using only 2 PCIe lanes. not impressed at all. plus, the SandForce controller is a no-go in my book. also I expect that the OWC SSD won't support native TRIM for OS X.

Click to expand...

Why is it a no-go. Considering apple is basically making TRIM a no-go unless you like mucking with the OS all the time, I'd rather have the sand force controller as its garbage collection is good-enough that you don't need trim. Personally I hate trim. It's an abortion of a solution and having the drive just take care of itself without software support is my preference.

That said, I'd like that, and for it to have better throughput as well.

ZombiePhysicist said:

Personally I hate trim. It's an abortion of a solution and having the drive just take care of itself without software support is my preference.

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I guess that we're polar opposites on TRIM.

TRIM is an elegant solution to the problem that SSDs have with trying to figure out which data is valid. Add a simple IO control call so that when the filesystem marks a section of disk space as "free", it can relay that information to the disk via a TRIM command.

Works fine on Linux and Windows - the drive reports during initialization that it supports TRIM, and the OS enables the extra IO call in the filesystem.

It's only a mess on Apples, because Apple OSX doesn't use the industry standard APIs to ask the drive if it supports TRIM.

mikeboss said:

according to the tech specs the OWC SSD will be connected using only 2 PCIe lanes. not impressed at all. plus, the SandForce controller is a no-go in my book. also I expect that the OWC SSD won't support native TRIM for OS X.

Click to expand...

I totally missed this, the first read through... This thing is DOA at half the asking price.

ZombiePhysicist said:

I'd rather have the sand force controller as its garbage collection is good-enough that you don't need trim. Personally I hate trim. It's an abortion of a solution and having the drive just take care of itself without software support is my preference.

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Saying you hate TRIM is like saying you hate to have your system run optimally. TRIM is very important - especially in heavy I/O situations, after a drive has been in service for a period of time, or if it's nearing it's capacity.

Also, there are several issues with Sandforce controllers:

First off, they rely on compression to achieve their performance. Incompressible data like media files (ZIP, RAR, audio, videos, and images) which are already stored in some compressed format, don't offer nearly the same performance.

Second, they can get into a degraded performance state in the absence of TRIM. There is only so much GC can do without knowing what data to preserve and what to discard. In heavy workload conditions, TRIM is essential on any drive.

Third, they don't work well with TRIM.

Fourth, they have notoriously premature failure rates. No other drive has the same record of premature failure as SandForce.

You should really read this article...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6107/corsair-force-series-gs-240gb-review

There are MUCH better choices out there than SandForce and it's been this way for a few years now.

AidenShaw said:

I guess that we're polar opposites on TRIM.

TRIM is an elegant solution to the problem that SSDs have with trying to figure out which data is valid. Add a simple IO control call so that when the filesystem marks a section of disk space as "free", it can relay that information to the disk via a TRIM command.

Works fine on Linux and Windows - the drive reports during initialization that it supports TRIM, and the OS enables the extra IO call in the filesystem.

It's only a mess on Apples, because Apple OSX doesn't use the industry standard APIs to ask the drive if it supports TRIM.

Click to expand...

+1... and thankfully we have TRIM Enabler to make up for Apple's nonsense.

^^^^A BIG +2 here.

Lou

Another overpriced piece of OWC's Sandforce crap, it does not even use the PCIe controller. Who they want to fool?

VirtualRain said:

Saying you hate TRIM is like saying you hate to have your system run optimally. TRIM is very important - especially in heavy I/O situations, after a drive has been in service for a period of time, or if it's nearing it's capacity.

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The existence of TRIM is a good thing that keeps most SSDs running at peak efficiency.

It's also a horrible, ugly hack of a solution.

goMac said:

The existence of TRIM is a good thing that keeps most SSDs running at peak efficiency.

It's also a horrible, ugly hack of a solution.

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What else would you suggest?

AidenShaw said:

I guess that we're polar opposites on TRIM.

TRIM is an elegant solution to the problem that SSDs have with trying to figure out which data is valid. Add a simple IO control call so that when the filesystem marks a section of disk space as "free", it can relay that information to the disk via a TRIM command.

Works fine on Linux and Windows - the drive reports during initialization that it supports TRIM, and the OS enables the extra IO call in the filesystem.

It's only a mess on Apples, because Apple OSX doesn't use the industry standard APIs to ask the drive if it supports TRIM.

Click to expand...

How is it elegant? It doesn't work on its own. It requires your screen saver or the like to kick in and inform the drive, do something. Instead, a really elegant solution would just take care of this in the drive, instead of requiring a rube goldberg domino switch to turn it on. It's an abortion. That said, to each their own.

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VirtualRain said:

I totally missed this, the first read through... This thing is DOA at half the asking price.



Saying you hate TRIM is like saying you hate to have your system run optimally. TRIM is very important - especially in heavy I/O situations, after a drive has been in service for a period of time, or if it's nearing it's capacity.

Click to expand...

Ummmm no it's not. Garbage collection does the same thing automatically. Now I'm not advocating that sand force is any good, or has a good algorithm, just that we shouldn't need a rube goldberg domino switch in the OS for a drive to keep itself tidy and running optimally. The driver makers should just handle this themselves. TRIM is a hack and crutch.