Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Any way to use those ExpressCard SSD disks to speed-up booting on my MBP?

C

cstromme

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 26, 2007
162
0
I see Vista has a feature called ReadyBoost, is there something similar for Leopard? Or can I just install Leopard manually on a SSD installed in my ExpressCard slot?

Anybody done this? Or anybody that knows the speeds one might be able to get compared to the P-ATA HD installed in the MBP?
 
ReadyBoost uses a USB based flash drive as additional virtual memory (cache) in the Vista world, but you are not booting from that. Booting from a SSD will be faster, but a MBP already boots pretty quickly.

Is the boot time your main concern here, or are you looking for more performance somewhere else?
 
wait you can have the ssd in the expresscard?
i need more memory and cannot touch the insides as its under warranty
that would be very nice if it just totally fit in the expresscard and was flush

like a little thing you could clip out to use to remove it but that would be very nice
 
benlangdon said:
wait you can have the ssd in the expresscard?
i need more memory and cannot touch the insides as its under warranty
that would be very nice if it just totally fit in the expresscard and was flush

like a little thing you could clip out to use to remove it but that would be very nice
Click to expand...

Do you mean memory, or hard drive space? Because adding memory to your machine will not void your warranty...
 
bamf said:
Do you mean memory, or hard drive space? Because adding memory to your machine will not void your warranty...
Click to expand...

i mean hdd sorry.
like take the airs 80gb ssd and put that in my expresscard slot.
i am in dire need of hard drive space, the 160 on here is getting very very very cramped. with my 500 and 120 gb external drives taking the main load.
an extra 80 would be :)
now memory i could also use but ... ya know... money
even thought the ssd expresscard is prob more expensive than 4gb ram
 
It looks like Lexar has a 16GB ExpressCard SSD drive you can buy for $209 from their site. That's the biggest one I'm seeing though doing a quick Google search.

Not sure if it would be flush to the side of the MBP though.

I'm also not sure if the MPB would be able to boot to that, but if it could it might be faster than a standard 2.5" SATA HD as a "system" drive. I haven't found the specs for the read/write speeds of that drive yet though (it's late and I'm lazy I guess hehe).
 
bamf said:
It looks like Lexar has a 16GB ExpressCard SSD drive you can buy for $209 from their site. That's the biggest one I'm seeing though doing a quick Google search.

Not sure if it would be flush to the side of the MBP though.

I'm also not sure if the MPB would be able to boot to that, but if it could it might be faster than a standard 2.5" SATA HD as a "system" drive. I haven't found the specs for the read/write speeds of that drive yet though (it's late and I'm lazy I guess hehe).
Click to expand...

ya i found all that.
it is flush
its slow ass poopy thought
like 15 read and 5 wright.
thats really slow.

maybe i will just get the 320 scorpio from wd and just throw the old one back in for internal problems.
 
benlangdon said:
ya i found all that.
it is flush
its slow ass poopy thought
like 15 read and 5 wright.
thats really slow.

maybe i will just get the 320 scorpio from wd and just throw the old one back in for internal problems.
Click to expand...

I don't think you know about drive speeds. The average internal hard drive reads at about 30 MBps, 15 is hardly "ass poopy slow".

"i need more memory and cannot touch the insides as its under warranty"

You can touch the insides, if nothing is broken during the upgrade, the warranty is not affected. The drive is not covered by Apples warranty, but the computer is and the drive will have a warranty with Western Digital or whoever manufactured it.

Furthermore, the Macbook Pro uses a SATA drive, not a PATA (parallel ATA, better known as IDE), so don't mistakenly order the wrong drive.
 
In theory you could boot from the express card slot, but I have to ask why would you want to? Those express card SSDs are just repackaged USB flash drives with dismal transfer rates. Your internal hard drive would best any such device currently available.
 
taylorwilsdon said:
I don't think you know about drive speeds. The average internal hard drive reads at about 30 MBps, 15 is hardly "ass poopy slow".
Click to expand...

Actually the SATA drives in the MBP can get much higher than 30 more like the 50-60 range. This is a significant, perceivable notice in performance. Considering the hard drive is the slowest memory device in a computer by several orders of magnitude (10^3 or more) any boost in speed is a big deal. A express card SSD would be an unimaginable bottleneck compared to a SATA HD.
 
wk127001 said:
Actually the SATA drives in the MBP can get much higher than 30 more like the 50-60 range. This is a significant, perceivable notice in performance. Considering the hard drive is the slowest memory device in a computer by several orders of magnitude (10^3 or more) any boost in speed is a big deal. A express card SSD would be an unimaginable bottleneck compared to a SATA HD.
Click to expand...

An internal, SATA based SSD on the other hand... MMMM...

But the OP did say he was out of space though, so clearly that's not the way to go unless your last name is Jobs or Gates.
 
taylorwilsdon said:
I don't think you know about drive speeds. The average internal hard drive reads at about 30 MBps, 15 is hardly "ass poopy slow".

"i need more memory and cannot touch the insides as its under warranty"

You can touch the insides, if nothing is broken during the upgrade, the warranty is not affected. The drive is not covered by Apples warranty, but the computer is and the drive will have a warranty with Western Digital or whoever manufactured it.

Furthermore, the Macbook Pro uses a SATA drive, not a PATA (parallel ATA, better known as IDE), so don't mistakenly order the wrong drive.
Click to expand...

reallly??????
i went to the genius bar and asked them that.
they said it would void my warranty.
but how would they know really?
i really want to know because a 3gb per second is pretty fast.

anyone know the write speed of the 15k rpm drives in the mac pro?
 
benlangdon said:
reallly??????
i went to the genius bar and asked them that.
they said it would void my warranty.
but how would they know really?
i really want to know because a 3gb per second is pretty fast.

anyone know the write speed of the 15k rpm drives in the mac pro?
Click to expand...

The Mac Pro and the Macbook Pro take vastly different drives. The laptops take a 2.5" drive, whereas the Mac Pro uses a 3.5" drive. These drives will have rotational speeds up to 7,200 RPMs.

The Mac Pro can also take a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drive at 15,000 RPMs. Again, this is a different drive that you're not going to be able to put into the MBP.
 
bamf said:
The Mac Pro and the Macbook Pro take vastly different drives. The laptops take a 2.5" drive, whereas the Mac Pro uses a 3.5" drive. These drives will have rotational speeds up to 7,200 RPMs.

The Mac Pro can also take a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drive at 15,000 RPMs. Again, this is a different drive that you're not going to be able to put into the MBP.
Click to expand...

yes yes i know but was just comparing because ive been looking at the mac pro lately.
yes i know about the sizes and the connections to. i have 2 external 3.5 drives one ide and one sata, with the sata has an esata connection.

yea getting kinda off topic now.

but it would be amazing to have 4 of the sas drives with raid of course then the top graphic card and top processor. i could launch a space shuttle :rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back