128 gig SSD enough for 2 partitions?

[Geebz]

Ive currently got a 2010 MBP with a 500 gig harddrive. Im thinking of upgrading to the 2011 high-end 15 or 17 inch with a 128 gig SSD BTO from apple. The thing is I currently have a second partition for bootcamp, so I will essentially have to halve the space. Ive had my laptop for about 8-9 months during which I have used around 20 gigs of the mac partition and 50 for bootcamp. Would a 128 gig SSD suffice for me? I assume I would split it roughly 40 gigs for Mac and 80 for bootcamp. Would this suffice for my needs? How fast is each partition likely to fill up? Ive heard that HDDs need some free space in each partition to help performance, is it the same with SSDs or will I be able to safely max out each partition with no degradation in performance? Thanks.

Also Ive currently got a glossy screen and occasionally when I close and open the MBP lid I can see the outline of my moshi keyboard protector on the screen. Will I still have this problem of the screen coming into contact with the keyboard protector if I go with anti-glare when I upgrade? Will there be greater consequences to any such contact since the protector will be coming into direct contact with the screen itself as opposed to the glass panel in the glossy? Thanks.

 

[Erasmus]

SSDs generally require more free space than HDDs to prevent speed degradation. Hopefully this will be decreased with Lion, which apparently has TRIM support.

I would suggest you consider buying an Optibay thing, as I don't think 128GB is sufficient, unless you have another internal HDD. Operating systems eat a lot of storage space, and if you have both OS X and Windows 7, I would expect that would basically eliminate a good 20GB. Add a few apps, some music, and it's all gone.

 

[Geebz]

Hi Erasmus,

Some SSDs have built-in trim support. Wouldnt apple use one of those since snow leopard has no trim support? Is there any way to find out? If Apple uses an SSD with built-in trim support will I be able to safely max out the SSD and suffer no performance hit?

I dont generally use up much space. I have no music files. Most of my files are docs. I mostly need the space for apps and the respective OS off course. If I am able to maintain 10-15 gigs of free space in each partition, will that be enough to maintain performance?

Im not a fan of opening up the machine and doing things myself as Im not the savviest person when it comes to tinkering around with electronics. Its really unfortunate that apple dont offer a BTO to replace the ODD with a HDD.

 

[Erasmus]

I don't really know all that much about SSD performance, although I would recommend if you are going to go 128GB SSD, you should buy yourself a nice, fast, large, portable external hard drive. If you get a computer this fast, you're going to want to use it for media and things like that, which you can put on the external.

If you can keep yourself to a good 20% free, you should be OK.

 

[Warbitrary]

SSDs generally require more free space than HDDs to prevent speed degradation. Hopefully this will be decreased with Lion, which apparently has TRIM support.

AFAIK, this is completely wrong.

Cheap SSDs are going to degrade no matter how much free space there is. Using a quality SSD like an OWC Mercury will maintain performance over time even if you don't have TRIM. Apple SSDs don't degrade after strenuous use, but they are 20% slower than OWC SSDs. I suggest leaving 5GB free on each partition for operation system functions like virtual memory, spotlight indexes, etc.

 

[Geebz]

AFAIK, this is completely wrong.

Cheap SSDs are going to degrade no matter how much free space there is. Using a quality SSD like an OWC Mercury will maintain performance over time even if you don't have TRIM. Apple SSDs don't degrade after strenuous use, but they are 20% slower than OWC SSDs. I suggest leaving 5GB free on each partition for operation system functions like virtual memory, spotlight indexes, etc.

Thanks Warbitrary!