Benefits of an SSD boot drive?

[macuser154]

If I replaced the optical drive in a MBP with an SSD and used that as the boot drive, and used the HDD to keep data on would there be a noticeable speed boost.

I'm just confused cause if the data is on the HDD, then it wouldn't really matter if I had an SSD cause the machine would still be constantly reading from the slow drive. Am I right?

 

[Hellhammer]

If you put OS X and apps to the SSD, all apps will open faster. Basically, it's make the system feel more responsive because beachballing usually happens when the CPU has to wait for the hard drive to spin up.

 

[macuser154]

Thanks, but I'm not talking about just using an SSD. I was talking about using a small SSD as a boot drive, and keeping Apps, data etc. on a second HDD.

 

[midgetsanchez]

I recently just bought a 13" MBP and the first thing I did was replace the Optical drive with an OWC 60GB SSD ($150, I think). My boot partition is on this drive, and the difference is phenomenal. Applications (office 2011, photoshop cs5, etc) all load in under a second. Most apps are instant. Boot time is under 15 seconds. I LOVE it.

My current setup on my 13" is the 60GB OWC ssd in the optibay and a 500gb wd scorpio hdd in the primary bay for storage/backups and whatnot.

Honestly totally worth it. Haven't seen a spinning beach ball even ONCE yet.

 

[tflournoy95]

Thanks, but I'm not talking about just using an SSD. I was talking about using a small SSD as a boot drive, and keeping Apps, data etc. on a second HDD.

if you dont have your apps and stuff on it, all you will get is a fster boot time. not worth the money.

plus you would have to carry around an external or lose your optical drive.

 

[Killerbob]

It's a question of what you want; if you want a superfast MBP, go full monty, get yourself a 2-300GB SSD, and use it for OSX, Apps, and Data.

If you just want faster booting, you can go smaller, and only use it for OSX, but then you need an additional drive.

And then how I have it setup; I use the 250GB SSD for OSX, Apps, and some Data. And then I have all my Data on my NAS (which can be accessed on my network, and from the web.)

KB