Apple SSD in the 27in 2011 iMac

[cpalmer03]

Does anyone know the drive brand used in the default 256 SSD in the 2011 imac? I have tried to do research but am having some trouble... Is it THAT much faster than the 1TB SATA? From what i have researched, the speeds are not that significant?

 

[sth]

It's *much* faster in everyday use.

The bad thing is: You get used to it quite quickly, and from then on, every computer with a conventional hard drive feels slow and broken in comparison.

 

[cpalmer03]

It's *much* faster in everyday use.

The bad thing is: You get used to it quite quickly, and from then on, every computer with a conventional hard drive feels slow and broken in comparison.

Fine by me...but i was interested in the drive brand as well...to look up the read write speeds and compare to the 1TB SATA

 

[sth]

The read/write speeds quoted by the manufacturers only show the best-case scenario for the drive. For hard drives that means: Data read or written in one continuous chunk at the outer most part of the disk. That's a pretty rare scenario in practice.

SSDs are only "slightly" faster here (~2x for the Apple SSD), but their speed is also constant throughout the whole space.


Anyway, the more common scenario is that the data is scattered around in pieces, in which case hard drives quickly drop to a mere fraction of the speeds quoted by the manufacturers.

That's where SSDs outperform HDDs by a mile.

Have a look at the first chart on this page for a benchmark comparison: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/25
The bottom three drives are conventional HDDs, the rest are SSDs (including some pretty bad ones) and even the worst of the bunch outperforms the fastest HDD big time.

 

[Dresevski]

They're Toshibas...I think. That's what ships in the 128GB MBP. R/W might be in the 200's? Also not sure since I use a Vertex 3

 

[cpalmer03]

They're Toshibas...I think. That's what ships in the 128GB MBP. R/W might be in the 200's? Also not sure since I use a Vertex 3

Did you install yourself? iMac or mbp?

 

[Dresevski]

Installed V3 into my iMac, have many '11 MBP's at work with SSD option. They certainly feel nearly as fast as my V3 iMac turning on/off.