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7200 RPM or SSD?

S

SlickShoes

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 24, 2011
640
0
Hi,

I am about to invest in the high end 15" macbook pro, I am likely to use it for some light photo editing and playing MMOs either natively in OSX or on Bootcamp.

I was wondering how large the difference between these two HDDs would be? Its only £80 to upgrade to SSD and i already have a 1TB external drive i store all of my pictures, music and movies etc on, would i see a massive performance boost or is a 7200 RPM suitable for my needs and into the future? I wont be buying another mac for 2-3 years after getting this so want to make sure it lasts.

Thanks
 
I'm facing the same decision with purchasing the 17". I think I'll get the ssd. "Everyone" says it's SO much better, and faster for all your daily uses. The HD is the bottleneck in all new computers. If you can afford it, and 128gb is sufficient, I'd go with it. If you regret it later you can always get either a bigger ssd (getting cheaper over time) or a 500gb 7200rpm disk (very cheap).

I'm used to having 500GB in my 13", so it might take me some time adjusting. Think I'll get a nice external disk in raid with thunderbolt when available. :)

Bottom line - you will definitely notice the difference from 7200 to sdd.
 
I would get the SSD, 128GB is quite a good deal. You can always replace the SuperDrive with another SSD or HD in case you need more internal storage.
 
I bought the 2010 MBP with 7200rpm drive initially, I then replaced it with an OCZ Vertex 2E SSD.

I had been using the HDD for about 3 weeks before I went to SSD, so I was pretty familiar with the speed of it.

After installing the SSD, EVERYTHING is faster.

The boot time is much faster, the spinning circle doesnt even do a full rotation at boot now. It boots in about 15 seconds.

Opening programs happens instantly....I absolutely love it.

If you can...do it!
 
Cheers, how easy is replacing the superdrive with an HDD?

I have a 2009 macbook pro just now and the last time i used the superdrive was in 2009, would much rather have another HDD in there.
 
Get a 500gb 7200rpm and get a SSD aftermarket when they're more affordable. Even 6 months from now you'd probably get double storage for what you pay now.

128gb is just not worth it. You'll probably see your space disappear day after day for no apparent reason. That's just from the backups, iTunes, cache, cookies and such files that the OS stores.
 
I installed a 256gb Kingston drive on my MBP as the first thing I did before turning it on... For me the 256gb drive is the limit, ideally I would like 512gb, but they are expensive.
You get a boot up of around 15seconds and that instant on from sleep.
Also, the 7200rpm drives have a slight vibration... With the SSD there is no noise, heat or vibration.

Samsung do a hybrid drive, 4gb SSD with 500gb 7200 rpm. This is about a 1/4 the price of a 256SSD. The laptop would boot from the 4gb SSD and launch programs used often from there also. It learns what data you access most often and places it in the SSD part of the drive.
 
clivesmithy said:
I installed a 256gb Kingston drive on my MBP
Click to expand...

It's not confirmed yet but it seems that Apple doesn't use Toshiba SSDs in the
2011 Macbook Pros anymore.
Someone on a german forum posted that he asked an Apple employee about what kind of SSD drive is being used in the 2011 Macbook Pros.
>>>
Kingston
 
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