80gg Intel Gen 2 SSD or 500gb Hitachi 7200rpm

[peapody]

I am sure this question has been asked over and over, but I am having a real dilemma here. I got the ssd for free but the size of the drive is hindering me. I only have about 40gb of effective space, and that is not even enough to cover my music library. I know that there is a huge demand for ssds right now. Would I be totally crazy for selling the 80gb ssd for the 500gb 7200rpm? Just having some trouble deciding what to do. Any advice or input would be appreciated!

 

[Big Boss Man]

I would sell the 80GB SSD. Intel is going to release their next generation of SSDs later this year. They are supposed to have capacity up to 600GB.

 

[peapody]

OMG

Really?

I had no idea. It seems like now is a good time to sell the ssd since it is still in very high demand and that there are new ones coming around the corner. I didn't even think about that.

Does anyone know how this harddrive is? In terms of speed noise battery drain etc on a unibody macbook pro? There are very positive reviews about it. I will miss the 15 sec boot up of my ssd haha but I think I will miss my itunes and movie library more --

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145275

 

[koruki]

If its your only computer it might be worth doing, else just use an external hdd for your main storage. Can understand your situation with music as you can't really just keep it on a external as you can't listen to it unless you bring it everywhere.

You can look at swapping a 500GB into where the Superdrive is, I have a mount coming to do just that as I got the 500Gb as the standard drive anyway and pulled it out when I installed the x25-M 160gb.

As for selling because Intel will be releasing new stuff, Intel as well as every other manufacture will always have new products on the horizon so I never use that as a reason to ever wait.

 

[Badger^2]

sandforce based drives are currently the fastest and most reliable

http://www.barefeats.com/hard130.html

but, $700 for 200 gigs...

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extreme_SSD_Sandforce

so some second generation 600 gig SSD is going to cost more than an entire MBP...

A nice FW800 drive would solve you problems -- bus powered, plenty of storage and fast.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

 

[peapody]

If its your only computer it might be worth doing, else just use an external hdd for your main storage. Can understand your situation with music as you can't really just keep it on a external as you can't listen to it unless you bring it everywhere.

You can look at swapping a 500GB into where the Superdrive is, I have a mount coming to do just that as I got the 500Gb as the standard drive anyway and pulled it out when I installed the x25-M 160gb.

This is not my only computer but my main computer. I hate toting around something extra just to get media.

As for your second suggestion. WOW. I didn't even know you can do that! That sounds like the ideal situation for me. I do not use the superdrive much at all, and I have an external cd drive for all those needs. I am going to do some more research on this, but where did you get your mount? I already ordered the 500gb hitachi, but if this mount works out then I won't bother getting rid of the ssd.

 

[Libertine Lush]

You can look at swapping a 500GB into where the Superdrive is, I have a mount coming to do just that as I got the 500Gb as the standard drive anyway and pulled it out when I installed the x25-M 160gb.

I'm asking as a new Apple user.

I've had Windows PCs where the HDD arrived partitioned, with a C: and D: drive, with the latter acting sometimes as a recovery section. With my last laptop, however, there was little space on the C: drive and more on the D:, so I had to spread data inconveniently across 2 locations. The C: is where Windows places all the User folders like Music, Documents, etc, but I had to recreate those folders on D: as well to store all my data, and any time the OS wanted to save data to the expected location, I'd have to manually reroute it to the corresponding folders I made on the D: every time.

When you place 2 drives in a Mac, what's the resulting appearance and functionality like? I understand that you would place your apps in the SSD, but when you open Finder, I assume the default OSX Documents/Music/Movies/etc folders will reside in the SSD, so you have to manually move them to the HDD?

Actually, I have a difficult time phrasing my question, as I have no idea how Finder would look when you have 2 different drives and how it reconiles User folders/data amongst 2 possible locations.