MacBook Air: SSD vs HDD

[bpreles]

Jump over to Ars Technica web site and check out their review of the MacBook Air HDD and SSD model. Interesting stuff plus they pose the question is the extra $1,300 for the SSD worth it?

MacBook Air HDD Review

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardw...air-review.ars

MacBook Air SSD Review

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardw...ssd-review.ars

[roland.g]

That's what I was worried about. Battery life. I've heard less than good marks on that so far.

[clayj]

Very thorough reviews.

I'm still happy I got the SSD model, though, for one main reason: No more drive crashes. Even though I keep rigorous backups of my data, I've suffered through several HD crashes in my life, and it's painful every time. Switching to SSD will hopefully eliminate (or reduce substantially) that problem for me. Sure, the SSD is a lot of extra coin right now, but prices will come down...

And I'm used to being on the bleeding edge, anyway. It's good geek cred to have the SSD.

[bxs]

Originally Posted by clayj

Very thorough reviews.

I'm still happy I got the SSD model, though, for one main reason: No more drive crashes. Even though I keep rigorous backups of my data, I've suffered through several HD crashes in my life, and it's painful every time. Switching to SSD will hopefully eliminate (or reduce substantially) that problem for me. Sure, the SSD is a lot of extra coin right now, but prices will come down...

And I'm used to being on the bleeding edge, anyway. It's good geek cred to have the SSD.

I would agree with this reasoning for having the SSD model, be it the 1.8 GHz or 1.6 GHz model (with the 1.6 saving as much as $300 off the 1.8).

I've gone through too many disk crashes and/or simply data corruption at the worst possible time. Loss of data to a business person can add up to $1000s and can be both time consuming and frustrating to the casual home user who may have lost personal current financial data.

The SSD hopefully provides good insurance against data loss when compared to the 1.8" HDD which has not had a very good history of reliability - (opinions and mileage may vary on this though).

If SSD offers same or slightly worse performance to HDD so be it. If it offers significant performance benefits over HDD that's also very good.

Is the SSD worth the extra $999 ? It all depends..... right ?

[gothamm]

In a series of benchmarks, both Macbook Air variants had their asses handed to them by their beefier cousins, the Macbook and the Macbook Pro. But even when just comparing the two Macbook Air models there was such a tiny difference in performance as to make it unnoticeable. Booting up was quicker (about 12 seconds quicker, to be exact), yes, but still slower than a Santa Rosa Macbook Pro. And while random disk tests and reading from the disk was a bit faster on the SSD model, due to slower read times than the HDD, it actually performed worse when it came to sequential disk tests and general writing to the disk.

But what about battery life, that had to be way better, right? Nope. Battery life wasn't affected at all, strangely enough, with the SSD model providing a paltry 2.5 hours of use before needing to be recharged. In fact, it seems like there was really only one place where the performance was better on the SSD model.

HAH!

sorry ssd mba owners, but apple owns you. They will shove down your throat whatever they think is best for you, and you eat that sh*t up like no other! (nice justifications on the posts above btw )


don't get me wrong, i am not hating on the mba. only the grossly overpriced SSD version =]

[MazingerZ]

Originally Posted by gothamm

don't get me wrong, i am not hating on the mba. only the grossly overpriced SSD version =]

What's overpriced about it? From the comments when the MBA was announced, the SSD upgrade was in line with that other manufacturers were charging.

[tstarks33]

Originally Posted by MazingerZ

What's overpriced about it? From the comments when the MBA was announced, the SSD upgrade was in line with that other manufacturers were charging.

Well, I would assume he's talking about price to performance ratio. If something costs over $1000 more, yet is barely faster (and slower in some respects) than the cheaper model, many folks would call that overpriced.

[Catch]

Originally Posted by gothamm

HAH!

sorry ssd mba owners, but apple owns you. They will shove down your throat whatever they think is best for you, and you eat that sh*t up like no other! (nice justifications on the posts above btw )


don't get me wrong, i am not hating on the mba. only the grossly overpriced SSD version =]

"When reviewing the HDD model, using a high I/O browser like Firefox or transferring files over the network to my hard drive threw me more beachballs than a Girls Gone Wild party and rendered the machine relatively useless. The SSD model exhibited little of this behavior—if I were to take my totally unscientific experience and translate it into a number, I would say that such slowdowns were reduced by 90 percent."

Once you have lived a little longer and had more experience with real life, you will understand that its easy to quote things other so called 'experts' say to support your argument. See what I did there sport?

I read the article and am still happy that for me the SSD model was the right choice. If the MBA turns out to be what I am hoping for I will be buying the same one for my wife. The article changed nothing for me. On the contrary, I think the SSD, judging by the article, will make opening applications and files will feel extremely snappy.

Thanks for posting the original articles, they were very informative.

Regards,

C

[tstarks33]

Originally Posted by Catch

"When reviewing the HDD model, using a high I/O browser like Firefox or transferring files over the network to my hard drive threw me more beachballs than a Girls Gone Wild party and rendered the machine relatively useless. The SSD model exhibited little of this behavior—if I were to take my totally unscientific experience and translate it into a number, I would say that such slowdowns were reduced by 90 percent."

Once you have lived a little longer and had more experience with real life, you will understand that its easy to quote things other so called 'experts' say to support your argument. See what I did there sport?

I read the article and am still happy that for me the SSD model was the right choice. If the MBA turns out to be what I am hoping for I will be buying the same one for my wife. The article changed nothing for me. On the contrary, I think the SSD, judging by the article, will make opening applications and files will feel extremely snappy.

Thanks for posting the original articles, they were very informative.

Regards,

C

There will be barely any noticeable different when opening programs. Don't buy SSD MBA for that reason...

[gothamm]

Originally Posted by Catch

"When reviewing the HDD model, using a high I/O browser like Firefox or transferring files over the network to my hard drive threw me more beachballs than a Girls Gone Wild party and rendered the machine relatively useless. The SSD model exhibited little of this behavior—if I were to take my totally unscientific experience and translate it into a number, I would say that such slowdowns were reduced by 90 percent."

Once you have lived a little longer and had more experience with real life, you will understand that its easy to quote things other so called 'experts' say to support your argument. See what I did there sport?

I read the article and am still happy that for me the SSD model was the right choice. If the MBA turns out to be what I am hoping for I will be buying the same one for my wife. The article changed nothing for me. On the contrary, I think the SSD, judging by the article, will make opening applications and files will feel extremely snappy.

Thanks for posting the original articles, they were very informative.

Regards,

C

I like your points and elaborate explanation but dude...its $1300 dollars. how can you possibly justify the 10-15% performance boost (if that)

[filman408]

Originally Posted by gothamm

only the grossly overpriced SSD version =]

Apple sell's it to us at-cost (wholesale).

If you look online for the same drive, places are asking around $1400+ for it.

[MacRumors]

ArsTechnica compares the Solid State Drive (SSD) and Hard Disk Drive (HDD) versions of the MacBook Air to see if the SSD upgrade is worth the additional cost.

Their benchmark results are consistent with earlier benchmarks revealing that the SSD drive is slower at writing and sequential reads than the HDD. The SSD, however, is faster than the HDD at random (non-sequential) disk access.

This difference shows itself in "real world" test such as Exporting a 60MB Quicktime, Compiling an Application or Unzipping an archive. As expected, the large file export, which performs a large sequential write to disk favored the HDD model. Meanwhile, building Webkit and Unzipping an archive showed off the speed advantage of the SSD.

Ars also looked at battery life of the MacBook Air and in their HDD review found that their Air averaged a paltry 2.5 hour battery life in their "real world tests". Questions on the validity of these results have been raised, with other anecdotal claims of battery life as long as 4-5 hours on the same configuration. Indeed, reports are varied:

Forums: 56% left after 2:15, 5+ hours?; Engadget: 2:25 watching movie, 3:35 light usage

Ars, however, is pretty confident in their battery life tests for their machine and felt it was consistent with some other reports. They found that the SSD didn't seem to offer a significant longer battery life (on average), however, their battery tests were not standardized.

In the end, they felt the SSD upgrade was not worth the additional cost ($999), but noted the biggest advantage of the SSD was a lack of disk-access related slowdowns that they experienced on the HDD model.

Article Link

[DizzyRose]

How many comparisons do we need? I'm sure we've got the point now

[tibi08]

Disappointing as I wanted to spunk the extra cash on this.

Hmm, building Webkit. I do that all the time.

[ts1973]

Let me be the first to say it in this thread, before anyone beats me to it : who cares about the air, where the hell is that Macbook Pro ?

Seriously, this is no news : everyone knows by now that writing to flash media is slower than writing to a normal hard drive. I however do not really doubt Arstechnica's results, they have a pretty solid reputation when it comes to reviewing.

[arn]

Originally Posted by ts1973

I however do not really doubt Arstechnica's results, they have a pretty solid reputation when it comes to reviewing.

I don't doubt that they got those times on their laptop. I just don't know if you can apply that to your own life and a purchasing decision regarding the Air.

arn

[MacBiscuit]

Perhaps what this shows is that a larger footprint laptop (say the next MBP) could usefully use both SSD and HDD. Use a small capacity SSD for the OS and a large capacity HDD for storage...

[arn]

battery life tests are annoyingly inconsistent.

There needs to be a "standard" battery suite that runs, and you let it run until the battery is drained. This is of no help by itself... but at least you could run it against many different machines to get a sense of relative battery life.

arn

[tibi08]

Originally Posted by arn

battery life tests are annoyingly inconsistent.

Yes but why. Is there anything to learn here about how to extend your battery life?

[xUKHCx]

Would this be altered by going to a larger form factor 2.5" and SATA rather than PATA. i.e. for the MB and MBPs.

[arn]

Originally Posted by xUKHCx

Would this be altered by going to a larger form factor 2.5" and SATA rather than PATA. i.e. for the MB and MBPs.

The 2.5" drives are doing to be different SSD. It seems SSD varies depending on who you buy it from. MacLife did a SSD benchmark on a $725 32GB 2.5" SSD drive in a MacBook Pro.

http://www.maclife.com/article/dv_na..._32gb_sata_ssd

The SSD Mac was 50 percent faster in our Photoshop CS3 Action test, 33 percent faster when exporting a GarageBand track to iTunes, 57 percent faster when creating a PDF in Adobe InDesign, and 171 percent faster when adding 196 JPEGs to iPhoto. Any task that would spin the hard drive platters in a normal Mac is crazy fast in an SSD-equipped Mac—booting was 148 percent faster than on the normal MacBook Pro, and launching Photoshop CS3 was 229 percent faster. Flash memory is easier on the battery—the SSD Mac lasted 3 hours and 14 minutes doing normal office tasks, a 14 percent gain.

[happydude]

yeah, to me, just doesn't sound like the $1000 isn't worth it . . . glad there's a new option that is finally making it in that has benefits, but as of now . . . until price comes down and capacity goes up, HDD still seems more worth it to me.

[xUKHCx]

Originally Posted by arn

The 2.5" drives are doing to be different SSD. It seems SSD varies depending on who you buy it from. MacLife did a SSD benchmark on a $725 32GB 2.5" SSD drive in a MacBook Pro.

http://www.maclife.com/article/dv_na..._32gb_sata_ssd

Oh thats good to know because I saw these earlier and thought that moving to SSD on my MB would not really be worth it, not that im considering this for a least a year due to price and by then i'm sure the tech will have matured to give faster results probably for less battery power as well.

[Wild-Bill]

In my opinion, it's just not fiscally responsible to purchase the MBA with the SSD at this time. The writing is on the wall that SSD drives are the wave of the future for OS and application-level access, but the price premium at this point in time is just not worth the benefit.

For those who are contemplating an MBA with the SSD but have "sticker shock" so much so that they have not pulled the trigger, I say wait. I suspect (and this is my opinion only) that in 6-8 months time we'll see the prices begin to come down. This time next year they should be priced more reasonably.

[sterlingindigo]

Originally Posted by MacBiscuit

Perhaps what this shows is that a larger footprint laptop (say the next MBP) could usefully use both SSD and HDD. Use a small capacity SSD for the OS and a large capacity HDD for storage...

I've read this before (perhaps from you) and I really like the idea.