"Apple" SSD or Intel X-25 SSD?

[NightSailor]

Go Intel X-25

So, I've been doing a lot of reading for about a week or so, snd thought I'd see what you all have to say. I'm planning to buy a top of the line 15" MBP in a week or two (2.8cpu, SSD). The only thing is, I've noticed the Intel X-25 SSD is on Amazon for $499 and the SSD upgrade at Apple is $500. So I'm looking at the same price and wondering if anyone has seen a comparison or anything like that?

If I order the Intel SSD from amazon, do I pretty much just plug it in and install Leopard, or is there more to it than that?

The Intel is my recommendation. The only thing holding me back from buying one is it's small capacity. It is a break through product. The 128GB Samsung that Apple sells is not a good performer. You don't want it.

You should be able to plug it in easily on your own. Static electricity is your only real danger. You don't need an anti-static strap, but do be sure you have not built up any static charge. I ground myself by touching a lamp stand before installing anything.

I've replaced hundreds of drives it is fairly easy--just be sure you don't force anything, make sure the pins line up properly. Last you should be aware there are two common drive interfaces. SATA and PATA--also called IDE. You have to have a SATA drive if you want it to fit--which is what I assume the Intel SSD has. Go for it.

As for warrantee, I don't think Apple would care if you swapped another drive in. They won't warranty the new drive, but Intel will. Computer manufacturers typically don't void warranty's on people who upgrade memory or drives.

 

[bugout]

Its down to $729 now.. something is up..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167015

 

[Y2JDMBFAN]

One important thing to remember here is that you cannot bootcamp with the Intel drives...I've got one of the 256GB GSkill Titan drives in my 15"MBP...Pretty good performance...Applications open up very quickly...In Windows 7 64-Bit I get benchmarks equivalent to or better than those in the reviews and on the GSkill site...No noise from the hard drive at all either...I paid around $400 on EBay for mine...

Y2J

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I too will be getting the intel x25-m, 2 day air from newegg. Should be here on the 2nd. I did alot of research on the x25-m and the x25-e, which stands for either extreme or enterprise, but whatever the naming scheme is, the only thing the x25-e offers is an elevated increase in write speeds. At 32 gb, and since my drive will only contain OS and a few apps, there is no reason for me to pay the premium with less space since this won't be used in an extremely high I/O environment. The majority of operations will be read based with the exception of the actual os and app installation.

 

[bcaslis]

The Intel is my recommendation. The only thing holding me back from buying one is it's small capacity. It is a break through product. The 128GB Samsung that Apple sells is not a good performer. You don't want it.

You should be able to plug it in easily on your own. Static electricity is your only real danger. You don't need an anti-static strap, but do be sure you have not built up any static charge. I ground myself by touching a lamp stand before installing anything.

I've replaced hundreds of drives it is fairly easy--just be sure you don't force anything, make sure the pins line up properly. Last you should be aware there are two common drive interfaces. SATA and PATA--also called IDE. You have to have a SATA drive if you want it to fit--which is what I assume the Intel SSD has. Go for it.

As for warrantee, I don't think Apple would care if you swapped another drive in. They won't warranty the new drive, but Intel will. Computer manufacturers typically don't void warranty's on people who upgrade memory or drives.

While I agree that the X25 is an excellent performer, you are completely wrong on the Apple Samsung SSD. I've been using one for over two months now and it works great. The reads aren't quite as fast as the X25 but the writes are about the same and it smokes any hard drive. It doesn't have any of the stuttering performance problems noted on lower cost SSDs.

 

[TexasAg]

One important thing to remember here is that you cannot bootcamp with the Intel drives...I've got one of the 256GB GSkill Titan drives in my 15"MBP...Pretty good performance...Applications open up very quickly...In Windows 7 64-Bit I get benchmarks equivalent to or better than those in the reviews and on the GSkill site...No noise from the hard drive at all either...I paid around $400 on EBay for mine...

Y2J

Just to verify, is the only issue with Bootcamp (would using Parallels to run Windows XP be OK)? It appears that VMFusion with Windows works.

 

[Maven1975]

Just to verify, is the only issue with Bootcamp (would using Parallels to run Windows XP be OK)? It appears that VMFusion with Windows works.

Fusion/Parallels under OSX works fine.

 

[flanamac]

I think the perfect combination will be that as soon as my new 17inch MBP early '09 arrives and is out of warranty in a year, the 8GB upgrade will be below $300 and a 500 GB SSD intel less than $400. Then I will be set; bugs fixed and all.

I have the intel x25-m 80gb model and its hands down the fastest thing I've ever used on any type of harddrive.

And I came from a 2.8ghz 8 core mac pro, 16gb of ram and a 150gb raptor hdd as boot drive and hands down this 2.53ghz macbook pro with the intel x25-m SSD drive is faster!

All I can say is that those reviews are 100% accurate and just get it! You wont regret it.

 

[rhyx]

Anyone know why you can't bootcamp with the Intel drive but you can with the others?

 

[MikhailT]

Anyone know why you can't bootcamp with the Intel drive but you can with the others?

Seem to be EFI related, the way the Intel's controller report itself to EFI is different from others.

Unfortunately, Intel drives aren't flashable, so you can't fix it with a firmware update.

 

[ccie7599]

copy from another post of mine-

I've run with a 2.53GHZ MBP, and replaced the stock HD with a X25M 160GB HD, about 2 weeks ago. Since I've replaced my previous HD, my blazing speed has been interrupted by lockup fits- just total freezes, and the only way i can usually unfreeze is by rebooting off of a FW800 drive, then rebooting with the FW drive unplugged. Pretty ghetto for a $800 drive.

Anyway, I called Intel CS today, and according to them, they've seen multiple cases of this and, of course, it's the SATA controller's fault (never mind that it works fine with the OEM drive). They'll replace it for me, but I want to hold off to see if it does any better in my unibody 17" that will be on my doorstep next week.

Anyway, I wanted to share- if there are any similar problems out there, please post to the board (despite Intel's claims, I have found no one with the same freezing issue that I've seen). If you do experience it, get that external drive ready for some ghetto-licious workarounds to revive it.

 

[angelitos]

Thank you for all,
angelitos