256GB SSD & 1TB Ext HDD vs 500GB SSD

[Psyfuzz]

Titles pretty much much the entire story, I'm making the long overdue upgrade of my 2012 Unibody MBP and have the 850Pro in my sights.

There's roughly a £110 price difference between the 256 and 512GB SSD's, which is costly but grants me the benefit of local storage.

256GB & 1TB external hard drive is cheaper and offers a significant increase in total storage capacity, but it's not local and could come to bite me later on.

What's option would you go for?

 

[Roadking714]

512gb SSD can't go wrong with that

 

[thejadedmonkey]

You could always go with a 256gb SSD + swapping out the superdrive for a 1tb HDD.

 

[Psyfuzz]

You could always go with a 256gb SSD + swapping out the superdrive for a 1tb HDD.

I would but I use it a fair bit within my profession, so that guy's got to stay. Do a lot of post-production and music-related editing :/

The stock 500 GB has served me well but I've got a lot of data just sitting on it which could happily live on an external drive and be accessed when needed. I'm just worried about encountering a scenario where I need my files but have forgotten my ext HDD etc.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Any reason for the Pro???

The cost of a 512gb MX100 is about £150, the only difference is the TLC nand gives less endurance but all the endurance tests I've seen are saying unless you have over 20gb of writes to it a day then it'll still outlast your PC

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand

 

[yjchua95]

The cost of a 512gb MX100 is about £150, the only difference is the TLC nand gives less endurance but all the endurance tests I've seen are saying unless you have over 20gb of writes to it a day then it'll still outlast your PC

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand

Crucial SSDs have the crappy SandForce controller, which greatly degrades I/O performance (especially in writes).

 

[steve1960]

Do give your future storage needs some serious thought because I messed up. I had a 500GB SSD in my 2011 MBP and took the opportunity to add another 480GB SSD in the optical drive bay with the intention of putting my iTunes library there and freeing up space on the primary drive.

My iTunes library now takes up 460GB of the 480GB secondary drive so soon I will be searching for another solution for the iTunes library. I kick myself now and wish I had bought a larger capacity secondary drive :-(

 

[alex0002]

Crucial SSDs have the crappy SandForce controller, which greatly degrades I/O performance (especially in writes).

To the best of my knowledge there are no Crucial SSDs with the Sandforce controller.

Crucial M4: Marvell 88SS9174 controller.
Crucial M500: Marvell 88SS9187 controller.
Crucial M550: Marvell 88SS9189 controller.
Crucial MX100: Marvell 88SS9189 controller.
Crucial MX200: Marvell 88SS9189 controller.

There were some older Crucial SSDs with a Phison controller (avoid like the plague) and the new budget model BX100 uses a Silicon Motion controller, which is a bit of an unknown at this stage.

 

[yjchua95]

To the best of my knowledge there are no Crucial SSDs with the Sandforce controller.

Crucial M4: Marvell 88SS9174 controller.
Crucial M500: Marvell 88SS9187 controller.
Crucial M550: Marvell 88SS9189 controller.
Crucial MX100: Marvell 88SS9189 controller.
Crucial MX200: Marvell 88SS9189 controller.

There were some older Crucial SSDs with a Phison controller (avoid like the plague) and the new budget model BX100 uses a Silicon Motion controller, which is a bit of an unknown at this stage.

My bad. Thanks for the correction.

On another note, OWC uses SandForce SF2281 controllers.

 

[tcphoto]

I find it amusing how people think they need to upgrade a two year old machine. I run my photo business from a Late 2008 MBP, a 27" Apple display and a stack of GTechnology external drives. Unless you have a constant flow of big projects that heavily tax your machine, I would spend my money on a couple externals for backup and another for Time Machine.

 

[steve1960]

I find it amusing how people think they need to upgrade a two year old machine. I run my photo business from a Late 2008 MBP, a 27" Apple display and a stack of GTechnology external drives. Unless you have a constant flow of big projects that heavily tax your machine, I would spend my money on a couple externals for backup and another for Time Machine.

Mine is 4 years old but I totally agree, this MBP is going to keep me going for at least another 2 years probably more. Storage is an issue though so many people cut a few corners to reduce cost then find they don't have the space they needed (Me!)

 

[Psyfuzz]

I find it amusing how people think they need to upgrade a two year old machine. I run my photo business from a Late 2008 MBP, a 27" Apple display and a stack of GTechnology external drives. Unless you have a constant flow of big projects that heavily tax your machine, I would spend my money on a couple externals for backup and another for Time Machine.

It's more performance than anything, the 5400 drive just isn't cutting is and really chokes my Logic Pro usage. Same for the RAM.

Quick update overall:

Opted for the 256GB SSD and Ext Drive. More Space, less waste, less ££.