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Round-up opinions on OCZ, OWC, Intel, and Crucial SSDs for Core i7 MBP?

O

ougrad1764

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 6, 2010
13
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Getting ready to purchase a new 15" MacBook Pro Core i7 2.66GHz and need some advice on SSD drive options. I've reviewed the various threads on specific drives, but was hoping to collect a round-up of opinions here. If this has been done already, definitely point me to the right thread or site. Thanks! :)

Shopping for a SSD in the 120GB (or so) size range to serve as the primary boot drive. Planning to swap out the internal optical drive and in its place relocate the factory 500 GB 7200 RPM HDD that ships with the MBP using the MCE OptiBay HDD enclosure. The 500GB drive will thus be a secondary drive that stores all my media. I'll connect the optical drive via USB only when I need it.

Here are my options for SSDs:
  1. OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX120G 120GB
  2. OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 120GB
  3. Intel X25-M Mainstream 160GB
  4. Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB

Questions:
  1. Given the above list, opinions on BEST OVERALL SSD to serve as the primary boot drive for my system?
  2. Since the current 15" and 17" MBP don't yet support TRIM and Garbage Collection (the 13" does) I'm aware that the OCZ Vertex has onboard TRIM and Garbage Collection support, but what of the other SSD drives?
  3. Of course, the SSD drive will improve battery life, but what of the impact on battery life when I swap the optical drive for the 500GB 7200 RPM drive using the MCE OptiBay kit? Will OS X know to spin down the HDD when not in use?
  4. Will Time Capsule detect and backup both the SSD (primary boot) and HDD (secondary media) drives?
 
Installed OWC Mercury Pro (120 GB) in the optibay (cheap ebay caddy, no need to spend $100 for this) and I am very happy with the performance boost.
Highly recommended!
 
Here's a good stress test comparing the OWC with Intel's 2nd generation drive after couple of million writes. There's one with the Crucial as well (see the drop-down menu). The results speak for themselves.

http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-SevereDuty2.html

OCZ Vertex 2 series (not the Vertex "1" you have listed) uses the same SandForce controller that makes the OWC so great. Personally I wouldn't go with anything else than OWC or the Vertex 2. Once I convince myself the investment makes sense... :p
 
Shaman Beloved said:
Here's a good stress test comparing the OWC with Intel's 2nd generation drive after couple of million writes. There's one with the Crucial as well (see the drop-down menu). The results speak for themselves.

http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-SevereDuty2.html

OCZ Vertex 2 series (not the Vertex "1" you have listed) uses the same SandForce controller that makes the OWC so great. Personally I wouldn't go with anything else than OWC or the Vertex 2. Once I convince myself the investment makes sense... :p
Click to expand...

WOW, that's impressive! Thanks for sharing the review. Glad I went with the OWC, although the Vertex 2 looks good as well.
 
I have the kingston v+ 512gb in my i7 and it blows me away at how fast apps load. I also have a intel 160 in my mac pro and it is just as fast. I didn't do he optibay because I use my drive everyday and couldn't stand to carry it around with me.
 
ougrad1764 said:
[*]Since the current 15" and 17" MBP don't yet support TRIM and Garbage Collection (the 13" does) I'm aware that the OCZ Vertex has onboard TRIM and Garbage Collection support, but what of the other SSD drives?
Click to expand...

And just how pray tell do you know that they don't support Garbage Collection?

I'm assuming you are talking about the Apple SSD's here as we all know that OS X doesn't support TRIM. Garbage collection is something controlled by the SSD, not the operating system.

I've been searching extensively all over the interweb looking for info on whether these Toshiba drives (Toshiba HG2) have garbage collection but haven't found an answer yet. I have found in my research that the Toshiba HG2 drives do support TRIM in their latest firmware.
 
Congratulations with your acquisition, can you tell me how about battery performance (i know that your notebook's battery is kind of old, but i will like to know if you have any improvement from your original hard drive)

How much usable space did you have for your use after formatting?

Cheers! :D
 
killerbee79 said:
And just how pray tell do you know that they don't support Garbage Collection?
Click to expand...

I don't know. That's why I was asking. I thought maybe somebody could be of help.

killerbee79 said:
I'm assuming you are talking about the Apple SSD's here as we all know that OS X doesn't support TRIM. Garbage collection is something controlled by the SSD, not the operating system.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm aware that OS X doesn't yet fully support TRIM, and that GC is done by the SSD itself, that's why I made it a point to say in my post, "Since the current 15" and 17" MBP don't yet support TRIM and Garbage Collection (the 13" does - See here)) I'm aware that the OCZ Vertex has onboard TRIM and Garbage Collection support, but what of the other SSD drives?"

I've been searching extensively all over the interweb looking for info on whether these Toshiba drives (Toshiba HG2) have garbage collection but haven't found an answer yet. I have found in my research that the Toshiba HG2 drives do support TRIM in their latest firmware.[/QUOTE]
 
trabant said:
Installed OWC Mercury Pro (120 GB) in the optibay (cheap ebay caddy, no need to spend $100 for this) and I am very happy with the performance boost.
Highly recommended!
Click to expand...

Just wanted to post a quick "THANKS!" for the suggestions. :)
 
I recently moved my 640 GB WD into the DVD bay and put the 100GB OWC SSD into the main drive slot.

WOW WOW WOW

Seriously. Do it now. I can't compare with other SSDs but since it seemed like the best solution without TRIM support, I went with the OWC. I moved my image files (DNGs and TIFFs) to the HDD and kept the Lightroom catalog and caches on the SSD. It is really like a new machine. I don't think I've seen the beachball once since I installed the new drive. (15" MBP C2D, early-2009 2.4 with 4G RAM)

It was an easy swap; as easy as any normal hard drive. After formatting, it reported as 99 GB free. My Time machine backup is a little over 23 GB of system files (not including any data or cache) so I have plenty of room to spare on it still. I intend to import any large batch of photos onto the SSD to work with them and them move them to the HDD after.
 
Careful now... OWC used to use the SF-1500 controller and that's what the review units were based on. Now, the slower SF-1200 controller is used but the drive is still being marketed as the same.

See more info here.

I would probably go for a Vertex 2 if you want a drive that performs like OWC's SF-1500 drives (no longer available).
 
fobis said:
Careful now... OWC used to use the SF-1500 controller and that's what the review units were based on. Now, the slower SF-1200 controller is used but the drive is still being marketed as the same.

See more info here.

I would probably go for a Vertex 2 if you want a drive that performs like OWC's SF-1500 drives (no longer available).
Click to expand...

From what i see, the SF-1500 it's more enterprise oriented, and SF-1200 regular users for notebooks and desktops.

It's not bad the OCZ Vertex 2, but several customers had complained about the sudden death of theirs SSD Drives, and lose of performance along time. Also, these kind of drives use too much over provisioning space (200 gb vs 240 gb) for the SAME SF-1200 technology.

OWC has been the only one from what i see that is capable of remains with his original performance along time.
 
I was debating between Intel and OWC and ended up getting the Intel 160gb because OWC 100gb is too small and 200gb is way to expensive imo.

I'm sure this Intel will hold me over until they release their G3 which would bigger in capacity and cheaper.

OWC with SandForce controller looks promising but I'll wait until they are truly proven.
 
ougrad1764 said:
I don't know. That's why I was asking. I thought maybe somebody could be of help.



Yes, I'm aware that OS X doesn't yet fully support TRIM, and that GC is done by the SSD itself, that's why I made it a point to say in my post, "Since the current 15" and 17" MBP don't yet support TRIM and Garbage Collection (the 13" does - See here)) I'm aware that the OCZ Vertex has onboard TRIM and Garbage Collection support, but what of the other SSD drives?"

I've been searching extensively all over the interweb looking for info on whether these Toshiba drives (Toshiba HG2) have garbage collection but haven't found an answer yet. I have found in my research that the Toshiba HG2 drives do support TRIM in their latest firmware.
Click to expand...
[/QUOTE]

When you said that the current 15" and 17" MBP don't yet support TRIM or Garbage Collection I though you were talking about the MBP's that come with an Apple SSD. It would not be correct to say these don't support garbage collection because we don't know that.

The 13" MBP doesn't support TRIM, saying that it does is an incorrect statement. That is an OS thing and that runs the same OS as the other MBPs. They are simply reading the SMART info on the SSD and reporting whether or not TRIM support exists for that drive which will always be "no" on a Mac until Apple adds the support for it in OS X.

That website is just using that new info line to try and make a guess as to why it is there and start excitement.
 
If your are between the OWC drive and the OCZ vertex 2 drive, this might help you. I just got this answer from the owc service about their ssd's performance:

"Hello,

The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD and the OCZ unit are going to be very similar in performance since both are based on the Sandforce
controller. All currently shipping drives have no limitations on their performance. They will obtain:

Random 4KB Writes: Up to 50,000 IOPS
Random 4KB Reads: Up to 30,000 IOPS

The OWC SSD carries a 3 year warranty thru OWC."
 
I am also thinking of purchasing either an Intel or OWC SSD.How did you resolved any time machine issues you encountered after the install from splitting media/system files?
 
reLAXER564 said:
I am also thinking of purchasing either an Intel or OWC SSD.How did you resolved any time machine issues you encountered after the install from splitting media/system files?
Click to expand...

I Time Machine the system drive (SSD) and rsync my media. I decided to wipe my previous Time Machine backups when I did the split.
 
Vertex 2 has my vote for any others looking to upgrade. And PS don't expect any spectacular battery time increases. We are talking maybe an extra 10 mins if anything at all.
 
I've been VERY pleased with the performance of the Crucial C300 drive.

No slowdown due to native GC.

JohnG
 
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