It certainly looks like a minefield out there. These manufacturers will rush a product out to get the sales. R&D takes a backseat to fast profits. The bottom line on these drives, at the prices that are being charged, is reliability. Early adopters are paying the price for incompatibilities and inconsistent hard drives. It might be better to hang back until the dust settles. I am currently using a Samsung 470, which only has 3GB capability, but has a reputation for reliability in my 2011 MBP 13
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6 GB Sata SSD Early Adopters
- Thread starter jimbo1mcm
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I've had no issues with my Vertex 3. I've only had issues with the Mac itself and that was due to the lack of shielding around the supplied SATA cable.
Well, I tried a few methods and finally settled on the following. It was pretty simple really.
I downloaded and burned a Ubuntu 11.04 cd. Then I booted off that and google'd the guide for updating the firmware on OCZ's site. In that guide there's a link to the Linux firmware tool, fwupd. Just following those simple instructions allowed the firmware to be updated in less than 5 minutes.
This made me laugh. comparing a drive with quoted read 250MB/s and Write 220MB/s to vertex 3 which is ~420MB/s minimal and up to ~480MB/s max. Hardly call it minimal and looking at the price there is very little difference.
Combine that with no TRIM in OSX yet and your looking at a dead end drive.
Interesting. Ubuntu 11.04 wouldn't boot on my squiffy config: external CD, Vertex 3s in HDD and ODD bays.
Is yours a 2010 or 2011 model? And was it 32-bit or 64-bit Ubuntu?
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Makes sense. It doesn't seem like any current Linux distro plays nicely with sandy bridge.
Show me proof of speed differences that are NOT pieces of paper with numerical figures. The factory SATA II drive boots and shuts down at the same speed to slightly faster than any SATA III drive to date. The amount of data that can be moved as 250 MB/s of the Samsung (which is usually less write speed), compared to the +475 MB/s read and write of the SF2000 drives is simply not utilized by most programs today. Unless you are working with ridiculously high amounts of data, most SSDs are going to have the same speeds to them. Most programs have been designed with the HDD in mind...
If you can boot your computer up in an extra 1.3 seconds, run Word .3 seconds faster, or run an OLS regression analysis on a spreadsheet with over 1 million values 3 seconds faster, have you saved enough time to stop for coffee and a doughnut?
^
I think the extra speed won't make use on casual programs.
But if you are into HD video recording, this speed is indeed useful.
I have 720/1080P footage from my Sanyo HD2000 and Canon 5DMKII. With the stock SSD, I can have 2 streams running together. I add one more and it will lag. On my Vertex3? 4 1080P or more if it's 720P.
And HD video is very normal nowadays. A speedier SSD would definitely help.
I think the extra speed won't make use on casual programs.
But if you are into HD video recording, this speed is indeed useful.
I have 720/1080P footage from my Sanyo HD2000 and Canon 5DMKII. With the stock SSD, I can have 2 streams running together. I add one more and it will lag. On my Vertex3? 4 1080P or more if it's 720P.
And HD video is very normal nowadays. A speedier SSD would definitely help.
Unless you're moving large amounts of data daily or very often then it doesn't matter if you have a SATA II or SATA III drive. Synthetic benchmarks mean very little when opening Word or Firefox. The feel of the drives will be almost identical. To each their own though.