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Are there comparisons of SSD vs HDD?

tymaster50

tymaster50

Suspended
Original poster
Oct 3, 2012
2,833
58
Oregon
I know all about the solid state drive, how its faster for reading and writing but I don't even notice the R/W times on my MBP, and the SSD costs more, I have like 500GB on my HD and it costs a lot to get the equivalent in the rMBP
 
SSD Read and Write times affect everything in the system's performance. You will get fast loading, some people have said from cold boot to usable in 15 seconds. Your applications will start faster, and you get better performance because your page in/out will be faster as well.

Its not just the speed of writing a file. I find that you don't think you need something, but once you have it, you don't want to go back.

So you are correct, you aren't going to be annoyed if you get a HDD, but just don't use a SSD. :eek:
 
Yes.

Yes there are.

In almost every metric measurable, SSDs are faster. In many of those metrics, SSDs are orders of magnitude faster.

You say you don't mind the responsiveness on your current machine. It's because you're accustomed to it, because you don't know how much better it can be.

Honestly, though, they do cost more and space may become a limited resource depending on your usage. If system responsiveness bothers you (trust me, once you go SSD, everything else feels slower) then you should upgrade. But if you're happy where you are, and it doesn't matter then I would let your eventual hardware upgrade be SSD equipped.
 
sammich said:
Yes.

Yes there are.

In almost every metric measurable, SSDs are faster. In many of those metrics, SSDs are orders of magnitude faster.

You say you don't mind the responsiveness on your current machine. It's because you're accustomed to it, because you don't know how much better it can be.

Honestly, though, they do cost more and space may become a limited resource depending on your usage. If system responsiveness bothers you (trust me, once you go SSD, everything else feels slower) then you should upgrade. But if you're happy where you are, and it doesn't matter then I would let your eventual hardware upgrade be SSD equipped.
Click to expand...

It would actually be dumb for me to upgrade seeing as how I still sometimes use CDs/DVDs. Granted I haven't used one recently but it is good to have a built in option instead of buying a DVD drive for the rmbp. I'm sure i can sell this and make a decent profit but in the long run it wouldn't be worth it. 2000 dollars, just about 700 more than I paid. That is a PS4 and some games if you go just off the difference in price lol
 
tymaster50 said:
I know all about the solid state drive, how its faster for reading and writing but I don't even notice the R/W times on my MBP, and the SSD costs more, I have like 500GB on my HD and it costs a lot to get the equivalent in the rMBP
Click to expand...

Once you go SSD you will never go back. You can't begin to imagine how much faster your system will become with an SSD.

Everything else in your system is measured in nanoseconds (CPU, RAM, BUS) but the HD is measured in milliseconds. 1 millisecond is equal to a million nanoseconds. That is how much slower your HD is. That is a huge bottleneck.

I promise you, you will think you bought a new computer when you add an SSD.

-P
 
Pentad said:
Once you go SSD you will never go back. You can't begin to imagine how much faster your system will become with an SSD.

Everything else in your system is measured in nanoseconds (CPU, RAM, BUS) but the HD is measured in milliseconds. 1 millisecond is equal to a million nanoseconds. That is how much slower your HD is. That is a huge bottleneck.

I promise you, you will think you bought a new computer when you add an SSD.

-P
Click to expand...

I'll pick up one when the price goes down. $2000 is too much to justify, you can get a car with that price lol
 
sammich said:
In almost every metric measurable, SSDs are faster. In many of those metrics, SSDs are orders of magnitude faster.
Click to expand...

100% accurate. I didn't quite understand how much quicker SSDs are over HDDs until I compared two identical machines side by side, except one of them had an SSD. And my face was like this at the speed boost: :eek:

tymaster50 said:
It would actually be dumb for me to upgrade seeing as how I still sometimes use CDs/DVDs. Granted I haven't used one recently but it is good to have a built in option instead of buying a DVD drive for the rmbp. I'm sure i can sell this and make a decent profit but in the long run it wouldn't be worth it. 2000 dollars, just about 700 more than I paid. That is a PS4 and some games if you go just off the difference in price lol
Click to expand...

You do realise you can upgrade to an SSD in your current machine without buying a Retina Macbook Pro?
 
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dextr3k said:
SSD Read and Write times affect everything in the system's performance. You will get fast loading, some people have said from cold boot to usable in 15 seconds. Your applications will start faster, and you get better performance because your page in/out will be faster as well.

Its not just the speed of writing a file. I find that you don't think you need something, but once you have it, you don't want to go back.

So you are correct, you aren't going to be annoyed if you get a HDD, but just don't use a SSD. :eek:
Click to expand...

This is spot on. Now that I have an SSD, I can't/won't go back to an HDD.
 
tymaster50 said:
$2000 is too much to justify, you can get a car with that price lol
Click to expand...
A $2,000 car does nothing for the performance of my Macbook. Nor does a PS4 or games. You have to determine whether the boost from an SSD takes priority over all the other random comparisons you're mentioning or not.

sammich said:
You say you don't mind the responsiveness on your current machine. It's because you're accustomed to it, because you don't know how much better it can be.
Click to expand...
^ This. It's difficult to assess that which you haven't experienced.
 
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tymaster50 said:
I would say a car is more useful :p
Click to expand...

I'm not sure where the $2,000 price tag for a SSD came from. At that price you can buy a new laptop with an SSD built-in.

Andalusia already linked a highly rated 500GB SSD for $325, or a 250GB SSD for $170. Even the 750GB model is $450. There are probably cheaper alternatives too.

Regarding installation, you can either do it yourself following a guide such as this, or pay someone $40-$60 to do it for you.

Whether $250-450 is worth it for an SSD that's only up to you. Like others have said, SSDs beat HDs in every metric, including longevity.
 
amoda said:
I'm not sure where the $2,000 price tag for a SSD came from. At that price you can buy a new laptop with an SSD built-in.

Andalusia already linked a highly rated 500GB SSD for $325, or a 250GB SSD for $170. Even the 750GB model is $450. There are probably cheaper alternatives too.

Regarding installation, you can either do it yourself following a guide such as this, or pay someone $40-$60 to do it for you.

Whether $250-450 is worth it for an SSD that's only up to you. Like others have said, SSDs beat HDs in every metric, including longevity.
Click to expand...
the rMBP with 512GB is $2000, people keep saying to get it so i just associated them together, $325 is much more believable but I have nowhere to backup my stuff too unless I can somehow do a transfer to transfer. I will NOT start over again lol.
 
tymaster50 said:
the rMBP with 512GB is $2000, people keep saying to get it so i just associated them together, $325 is much more believable but I have nowhere to backup my stuff too unless I can somehow do a transfer to transfer. I will NOT start over again lol.
Click to expand...

If you have no backup disk, purchase a USB 3.0 external enclosure off Amazon. You can get one for $10-$20. Then, put the SSD into that, and use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to clone your hard drive onto the SSD. After that, you can open your laptop out and swap the SSD and HDD. The installation really is easy, even if you've never done it before. Even if you go slowly, it won't take more than 20 minutes, max. I can do it in 5, and I've only done a few of them.

The benefit of my approach is that when you're done, you WILL have a backup drive: your old hard drive!
 
I have been using SSD's for nearly 5 years now. I honestly can't stand to use a computer without one. Everything you think is slow about your current computer is almost certainly just that you have a very slow hard disk.
 
tymaster50, if you are happy with the performance of your machine, then I don't see a reason to change it.

Right now I have an iMac with regular HDD at work, while my MBP has a Samsung 830 SSD that I installed some time ago. At the end of the day, the difference is not so huge. Since I never turn off the iMac, and it has 16 GB of RAM, App loading times are never an issue, and neither are boot times.

Now for laptops I still think SSDs is the way to go for the future, and most vendors seem to agree. First, laptop HDDs tend to be slower than desktop HDDs due to the smaller form factor, so there is more of a speed gap. Then SSDs come in smaller form factors, are less sensitive to shocks and sudden acceleration, and speed up sleep/resume cycles.

Now since you don't feel comfortable upgrading the HDD yourself, I guess you can just wait with the switch to SSDs when you decide to buy a new laptop. Prices won't go up most likely ;)
 
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