Choosing a SSD for boot drive

[musiclvr]

Currently I am booting from the standard HDD that came with my mid 2011 iMac. It's really slowing me down so I am planning to get an external SSD as my boot drive.

Trying to decide between:
-LaCie Rugged SSD (500GB)
-Samsung EVO SSD (500GB) [with an external enclosure/dock and ThunderBolt cable].

The drive will be staying next to my iMac (not worried about portability).The second option, "building" it myself, is cheaper (probably about $100). But I'll spend the extra $100 for premium performance. Performance wise, which option is best (faster speeds, no stalling, etc.) ?

If the second option has similar performance, can you recommend some external enclosure/docks?

 

[SaSaSushi]

Trying to decide between:
-LaCie Rugged SSD (500GB)
-Samsung EVO SSD (500GB) [with an external enclosure/dock and ThunderBolt cable].

I don't have a Lacie, but I do have the 500GB 840 EVO in a Delock Thunderbolt enclosure and I suspect you would see very similar performance from either. I've been using this setup for 2 months with no issues whatsoever.

Perhaps someone with the Lacie can post a BlackMagic Speed test. Here's mine:

The drive will be staying next to my iMac (not worried about portability).

In that case, another advantage of the Delock is that it runs on AC power, as opposed to the bus-powered Lacie.

If the second option has similar performance, can you recommend some external enclosure/docks?

Delock 42490. The only downside in the USA seems to be that it's very sparsely available and back-ordered where it is.

 

[hfg]

I have a retail LaCie "Rugged" 500GB SSD and it contains a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD. It has both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interfaces and comes with cables for both. It is bus powered and is running fine for me so far. You can easily slip off the orange bumper if you want to stick it on the iMac stand with velcro strips/dots.

It also will boot Windows externally on a Mac (not all enclosures do this).

The line powered Delock enclosure mentioned above also looks pretty good if you want to DIY.

As you might expect, the test results are similar.

-howard

 

[musiclvr]

Thanks for the feedback! Almost the same results from both drives...interesting.

Since I am going with the 500GB, do you think AC powered would have better performance? Will bus-powered affect performance at all?

Any other pros/cons you can think of for both options?

 

[SaSaSushi]

Since I am going with the 500GB, do you think AC powered would have better performance? Will bus-powered affect performance at all?

Howard mentions he's having no problems running the 500GB Samsung 840 EVO on the bus-powered Lacie. AC-power is unlikely to have any effect on performance. I just prefer the peace of mind of having it (also, I may upgrade to a larger SSD in the future) and have absolutely no need for portability. There was no reason for me not to go with the Delock and most importantly of all, it was the lowest priced alternative. Lacie is available, but prohibitively expensive here in Japan.

If you have no misgivings running your system off the bus-powered device and have no intentions of upgrading to a larger SSD in the future then it'd probably come down to a comparison of pricing and availability. I don't know how much the Lacie costs but it does come with the drive and cables included. It also looks like you might have to wait for a few weeks on delivery for the Delock, in case you're in a rush.

 

[hfg]

Thanks for the feedback! Almost the same results from both drives...interesting.

Since I am going with the 500GB, do you think AC powered would have better performance? Will bus-powered affect performance at all?

Any other pros/cons you can think of for both options?

If your installation is a desktop system, where you hook everything up once and forget about it ... I would probably be most comfortable with the AC powered solution for the long term. I am concerned about additional loading on the bus-power if another device were to be inadvertently connected which drew down the total power available.

I am using my 500GB rugged as a Aperture backup which I can easily move to other computers (desktop and laptop) to view or manage the photos. Thus, for my application I am relying on bus-powered devices, but making sure that it is the only device plugged into the bus.


-howard

 

[musiclvr]

Thanks for all your helpful advice!

I went ahead and ordered the Delock TB enclosure. It says usually ships within 3-4 weeks but hopefully it'll be sooner than that.

Before ordering the Delock, I looked around for other single TB enclosures and there aren't very many available. Seems strange to me? There's a SeaGate but it's not AC powered. Quite a limited selection of single TB enclosures out there.