Yes I'm thinking we need more data points from more people who have installed SATA III SSDs in their 2011 15" MBPs. I'm hoping that there will be more comments here soon. I'm itching to have an SSD again.
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Crucial M4 SSD, is it a good match for the 2011 MBP 2.3 GHz i7?
- Thread starter Benito
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To answer the question directly
No.
I have spoken to a sales rep at Crucial and they have had problems across the board in every size of the new macbook pro's. Apparently Micron are working on a fix but as it stands at the moment they don't support them and they don't know how to support them.
No.
I have spoken to a sales rep at Crucial and they have had problems across the board in every size of the new macbook pro's. Apparently Micron are working on a fix but as it stands at the moment they don't support them and they don't know how to support them.
So I guess it's possible (but sad) that Apple deliberately crippled MBP '11 sata connections. I'm getting a bit tired about these catches in apple hardware.
I guess Crucial has to do what other vendors seem to be doing - negotiating link speed only up to 3 Gb/sec when on apple hardware...
Or maybe getting some third-party sata cables, as some point to those being the main issue.
As I said, I'm not expecting that many troubles with my '10 MBP, ports are 3 Gb/sec only.
If the hdd/sdd in MBP are indeed "user replaceable", they might as well implement the proper specs in hardware...
So I guess it's possible (but sad) that Apple deliberately crippled MBP '11 sata connections. I'm getting a bit tired about these catches in apple hardware.
I guess Crucial has to do what other vendors seem to be doing - negotiating link speed only up to 3 Gb/sec when on apple hardware...
Or maybe getting some third-party sata cables, as some point to those being the main issue.
As I said, I'm not expecting that many troubles with my '10 MBP, ports are 3 Gb/sec only.
If the hdd/sdd in MBP are indeed "user replaceable", they might as well implement the proper specs in hardware...
Well OWC and OCZ aren't negotiating a link speed of 3gb/s. They are going full speed as advertised.
You have to remember when the new Macbook Pro's were released this year there wasn't an abundance of SATA III drives on the market, it's only been in the last few weeks we've seen more come out. So they were kinda having to implement SATA II drives in the revision for the BTO SSD option.
Just curious, why are you installing a SATA III drive if your machine is SATA II?
Anyway, I've been using a 256GB M4 for about a week now in a '11 MBP 17" as the main drive and an OWC SSD in the optibay. I am getting the occasional hang-up and beach ball, but it isn't very often. Coincidentally, I booted from my clone (on original drive) on a Voyager Q and got the same thing.
I'm told the problem is related to the SATA III cable and I have a shielding kit on order from OWC. We'll see if that solves the problem.
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Why should I buy old tech, if the m4 costs the same as a V100+, for instance? When I upgrade my MBP I'm sure this m4 will make an excellent boot disk, and then I would regret getting old hardware.
m4 has more to it than 6 Gb/sec sata, it outperforms the older 3 Gb generation where it counts, in everyday tasks, and sata II is more than enough to handle ~100 Mb/sec
PS: posting this from my new m4, did a clean install and restored with timemachine. This thing is fast...
rev b., glad to see and hear that you're having great luck with your M4. I guess there aren't any problems with SATA II.
Has anyone with a 2011 MBP and the M4 updated the EFI yet? Any word on better performance and lack of beach balls yet?
I have the 128g M4 installed in the primary bay of my 2011 15" MBP now.
Installed fine, shows 6gigabit connection properly.
Runs mighty fast, but i'm not sure its fully up to speed. Here are the results from Xbench:
sequential:
4k write: 193 MB/s
256k write: 169 MB/s
4k read: 33.33 MB/s
256k read: 270 MB/s
random:
4k write: 150 MB/s
256k write: 180 MB/s
4k read: 16.82 MB/s
256k read: 248 MB/s
Does that seem normal or on the slow side? I'm going to go compare with benchmarks from other sites, etc later on. Is there a different/better HD bench tool for mac?
Oh and no hiccups or beach balls so far, but i've only had it running for about an hour.
Installed fine, shows 6gigabit connection properly.
Runs mighty fast, but i'm not sure its fully up to speed. Here are the results from Xbench:
sequential:
4k write: 193 MB/s
256k write: 169 MB/s
4k read: 33.33 MB/s
256k read: 270 MB/s
random:
4k write: 150 MB/s
256k write: 180 MB/s
4k read: 16.82 MB/s
256k read: 248 MB/s
Does that seem normal or on the slow side? I'm going to go compare with benchmarks from other sites, etc later on. Is there a different/better HD bench tool for mac?
Oh and no hiccups or beach balls so far, but i've only had it running for about an hour.
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Dan, thanks for the update on your installation. Please update again after you've had it running a while longer. By the way, did you update the EFI prior to installation?
Dan, thanks for the update on your installation. Please update again after you've had it running a while longer. By the way, did you update the EFI prior to installation?
They may both be pieces of crap actually. Numerous questions regarding both the technology behind and the quality of them remain unanswered.
It's a bit faster than mine, so I guess the difference is in the 6 Gbit/s link.
Remember that the 128 Gb is a bit slower than the 256 Gb, and that's the on you see benchmarked and reviewed online.
So its been three days with the 128gig M4 in the 2011 15" MBP.
Xbench is showing as i posted above. I've also since run AJA System Test. It shows things faster with reads in the 350MB/s and writes in the 181 MB/s which is in line with Crucial's datasheet on the drive. Also i'm seeing no dropouts during the read or writes in the text log that AJA System Test creates.
So far i have had about 3 beach ball hiccups. Each lasted maybe 5-10 seconds. Sort of annoying but basically fine. Worth the huge speed improvement. I played Starcraft off of it for hours without any trouble and have been running HD benchmarks over and over trying to stress it but its never hiccuped during those activities.
I also installed a Win7 bootcamp partition on the drive and everything works fine there. No hiccups yet, but i don't spend as much time there as in osx.
It also wakes up from sleep fine.
I do have the latest EFI installed.
So far so good i'd say. If i feel ambitious i might shield the SATA cable for fun, but its generally working fine and the speed is awesome
Xbench is showing as i posted above. I've also since run AJA System Test. It shows things faster with reads in the 350MB/s and writes in the 181 MB/s which is in line with Crucial's datasheet on the drive. Also i'm seeing no dropouts during the read or writes in the text log that AJA System Test creates.
So far i have had about 3 beach ball hiccups. Each lasted maybe 5-10 seconds. Sort of annoying but basically fine. Worth the huge speed improvement. I played Starcraft off of it for hours without any trouble and have been running HD benchmarks over and over trying to stress it but its never hiccuped during those activities.
I also installed a Win7 bootcamp partition on the drive and everything works fine there. No hiccups yet, but i don't spend as much time there as in osx.
It also wakes up from sleep fine.
I do have the latest EFI installed.
So far so good i'd say. If i feel ambitious i might shield the SATA cable for fun, but its generally working fine and the speed is awesome
Are you sure you're not refering to the EFI update from last week (5th or 7th?)?
I've got an M4 256 in my MBP 2011, 8GB. M4 is in the HD port and i've got an optibay for my 750GB HD. Having real nightmare getting OSX to run smoothly. Keeps beachballing. Last night it took 3 hours to restore 100Gb of bootcamp data to it as it kept pausing. I've tried TRIM, but that fails and i've read that the housekeeping on the disk is enough so i've disabled TRIM. I've done all the resets, erased free space (gave me an enormous boost but was short lived. I've got 30GB+ spare on my OSX partition
I've read on the crucial forums that some poeple have had success fixing these pausing issues under windows 7 by disabling LPM (intel's Link POwer Management). Speeds after diong so seem to reach what manufacturers are stating.... i'm going to see if I can implement the fix under Windows 7 bootcamp tonight, will let everyone know how this goes. If this works, it sorta implies there is a software issue which Intel/Apple need to sort out... I'm sure hardware revisions have also been made, so i'm keen to see how this fix works on my initial release (bought it on day of release - Doh!) hardware set
So it sounds like the recent updated EFI doesn't solve the beachballing problem. Hmmmmm I might be waiting until Lion comes out first and see if there is a fix by then.
Oh please...
Plenty of PC laptops have issues with various SSD's as well and plenty of SSD's work just fine with Macs so your conspiracy theory is silly.
On another subject, why people are installing this TRIM hack as if its seem kind of reliable standard solution is beyond me.
The factory SSD works like a charm and it is built off of some of the finest flash memory made. And if anything, it is a problem with the drives themselves. Many current SSDs seem to have questionable levels of quality and reliability, so it may not be the Mac...
And I do not understand why people get so excited over TRIM. I don't think there is a currently made SSD on the market that does not have its own wear-leveling and speed-preservation software on it. I've never used TRIM and never lost any noticeably amount of drive size or load speeds.