40GB Intel X25-M SATA 2,5 SSD Postville G2 as a startup disk for Mac Pro 1,1

[Tafkas]

Now that I've read a lot about the wonderful benefits of SSDs (speed, response, etc.), I seriously think about getting one for my Mac Pro 1,1.

The prices here in Germany seem to be around 2.50 EUR / GB at this moment. Regardless of the size of the SSD. Of course, I do not want to invest money unnecessarily for unused space. Therefor, I consider a small 40GB SSD as a nice tradeoff.

My configuration currently looks like this:

Hard Drive 1: SAMSUNG HD753LJ 750GB hard drive and 2: WDC WD2500JS-41SGB0 250GB (The original disk).
Right now, everything is stored on the Samsung hard drive, while on the WDC I keep a few backups.

The plan is:
Dsik 1: 40 GB SSD in question (see title)
Hard Drive 2: Samsung HD753LJ 750GB and
Hard Drive 3: WDC WD2500JS-41SGB0 250GB (The original disk).

In addition, I would slim down my system so that only OS X, applications, everyday documents, and developer stuff (Xcode, Mac ports, etc) is put on the SSD. Movies, music, downloads and photos will be put on the Samsung and the WDC remains as it is.

Does that make sense? How much space should be kept free on the SSD?

 

[tomllama]

I'm going through a similar thought process, just a little farther along.

I'd be surprised if 40Gb is enough space. I currently use the original 250GB as my boot drive (I also have a MP1,1) but use a mirrored pair of 1TB Caviar Black's for all user data for my wife and I and have 5x250GB in a SeriTek/5PM enclosure for space to be used for video work (striped RAID). I have more disk space than I need to make life easy. I do a lot of video work for fun and want to keep it handy.

My boot drive with no significant user files uses 160GB of space. About 30GB of that is a 'drive' for Parallels and I'm too lazy to do all the work to significantly reduce the files on the drive. So, I decided to maintain a 250GB boot and bought an OCZ Colossus that was delivered today (I'll start getting it installed tonight). I want to see what it does to startup times and how it impacts the 'user feel'.

 

[disconap]

If your boot drive is 160gb, you should really think about slimming it down by dumping anything you don't use (the mac voices, printer drivers, language support, etc.) as well as possibly moving your itunes library, mail, photos, and downloads/documents folders to a new drive, if not your whole user folder. Performance will increase if you can get that 250gb back down to 25-30% capacity (though with a Colossus there really won't be much of a difference).

To the OP--I have two 30gb OCZ Turbo drives striped in a RAID0 as my G5 tower boot drives and have slimmed Leopard and apps down to about 30gb (I use CS4, which is the bulk of that space), which I can easily do since I have a network server that holds most of my files and a fast RAID for active files and scratch. The dell mini I'm on right now has a 64gb Kingston low end ssd, and I'm using a little more than 12gb of it, though I use the drive that shipped with the comp as a USB storage drive for my files. And my server has a Patriot 30gb as it's boot drive, slimmed to about 8gb (the latter two are both in Snow Leopard). Keeping boot drives slim does actually help, since OSX hasn't added TRIM style support yet, so the more space you have the longer before you encounter slowing/performance degradation and need to wipe the whole drive clean.

From the above, it's pretty obvious I like SSDs, I'm even making an IDE one out of CF cards for my ibook, since the platters in it keep dying. I do favor them, though I admit I don't see the need to break the bank on large, high end ones, as it'll be a couple years before anything I do will see much of an advantage from them. But the mid range ones I own have DEFINITELY improved performance, energy consumption, and heat generation from my machines (especially our server, which is now silent, EXTREMELY low power, and speedy).

 

[nanofrog]

Now that I've read a lot about the wonderful benefits of SSDs (speed, response, etc.), I seriously think about getting one for my Mac Pro 1,1.

The prices here in Germany seem to be around 2.50 EUR / GB at this moment. Regardless of the size of the SSD. Of course, I do not want to invest money unnecessarily for unused space. Therefor, I consider a small 40GB SSD as a nice tradeoff.

My configuration currently looks like this:

Hard Drive 1: SAMSUNG HD753LJ 750GB hard drive and 2: WDC WD2500JS-41SGB0 250GB (The original disk).
Right now, everything is stored on the Samsung hard drive, while on the WDC I keep a few backups.

The plan is:
Dsik 1: 40 GB SSD in question (see title)
Hard Drive 2: Samsung HD753LJ 750GB and
Hard Drive 3: WDC WD2500JS-41SGB0 250GB (The original disk).

In addition, I would slim down my system so that only OS X, applications, everyday documents, and developer stuff (Xcode, Mac ports, etc) is put on the SSD. Movies, music, downloads and photos will be put on the Samsung and the WDC remains as it is.

Does that make sense? How much space should be kept free on the SSD?

40GB might be too small, so the 80GB (assuming you're sticking with Intel G2's) would likely be a better choice. You have more to work with, and should be able to keep enough available for wear leveling (~20% in general, but as the Intel's have 10% already hidden from the usable partition, only 10% needs to be kept available as a bare minimum). More won't hurt though.

 

[disconap]

Based on Newegg's prices (as of yesterday) you could buy 2 40gb and stripe them for about $90 less than buying one 80gb. If you're just using it for a boot drive, that makes more sense as you save cash and get better performance anyway...

 

[Tafkas]

I am in Germany right now. Here the price for the 80GB Intel X25-M is pretty much the same as two 40GB Intel X25-V ssd drives. In this case I think I consider getting the 80GB Intel X25-M.