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Personally I wouldn't go with anything other than an OWC drive. Their drives are made specifically for Macs and don't have many of the firmware, compatibility, and slowdown issues present in some of the other brands. I have an OWC 240gb 3G that has been running perfectly since day one (had for almost a year now). No slowdowns, no issues whatsoever. The new 6G versions also happen to be one of the fastest drives out there.

http://barefeats.com/ssd6g.html
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1635/7/
http://www.storagereview.com/owc_mercury_extreme_pro_6g_ssd_review_240gb
 
Personally I wouldn't go with anything other than an OWC drive. Their drives are made specifically for Macs and don't have many of the firmware, compatibility, and slowdown issues present in some of the other brands. I have an OWC 240gb 3G that has been running perfectly since day one (had for almost a year now). No slowdowns, no issues whatsoever. The new 6G versions also happen to be one of the fastest drives out there.

http://barefeats.com/ssd6g.html
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1635/7/
http://www.storagereview.com/owc_mercury_extreme_pro_6g_ssd_review_240gb

Um yes they do. Did you not follow the huge chain of Sleep/Hibernate problems on their SATA2 SSD?
 
Are these SandForce write speeds the peak speeds or average?

I've basically settled on a Crucial M4 that I can bet for $200. Hard time justifying $80 more for OWC writing speeds if they are just bursts and not noticeable.

OWC Average. Peak speed is like Read: 559MB/s
Write: 527MB/s (as advertised by them)
 
Personally I wouldn't go with anything other than an OWC drive. Their drives are made specifically for Macs and don't have many of the firmware, compatibility, and slowdown issues present in some of the other brands.

Their drives haven't been made specificially for Macs. It's mostly just another rebranded SandForce drive...for better or worse.
 
Personally I wouldn't go with anything other than an OWC drive ... No slowdowns, no issues whatsoever.
Um yes they do. Did you not follow the huge chain of Sleep/Hibernate problems on their SATA2 SSD?

I read something about this and remember it being about 10% of the disks at one point had the issue, it appears that firmware fixed the issue several months ago. So it would appear that they had problems in the past, just like every one of the suppliers of SSDs has at one point or another.

Personally I've been using their a couple of their SATA2 SSD's for over a year now and the their SATA3 for almost 3 months without any issues. Not married to OWC it appeared to be the best for my needs at the point of purchase. Going forward, as prices go down and technology gets better I think the choice will be harder to make as there will be more suppliers with high quality units.
 
The Crucial M4 is a good option also. Although their advertised speeds are lower when the drive is getting filled up the Sandforce Drive's performance will dip where as Crucials M4 will stay at their advertised speed no matter what. Also the Crucial M4 has lower power consumption.
 
As long as you are aware of the potential firmware problems. Read my long post earlier in this thread.

I'll take that chance, this is why there's warranty and backups.

But... since my MBP13" 2011 support SATA III, it's better to get a SATAIII right? Cause SATAII would be a waste on it, might as well spend an extra $20-30 for faster speed? yes no?
 
I use Samsung 470 and they are okay. Also use the TRIM enabler on lion… my macbook pro is mid 2010 model….

Boot Up from you press the button is about 17-19 secs… shut down 2-3 secs
 
The Crucial M4 is a good option also. Although their advertised speeds are lower when the drive is getting filled up the Sandforce Drive's performance will dip where as Crucials M4 will stay at their advertised speed no matter what. Also the Crucial M4 has lower power consumption.

Not according to Anandtech :

"Without TRIM the m4 can degrade to a very, very low performance state." - Anandtech

"Crucial appears to be putting off this garbage collection work a bit too late." - Anandtech

"If you're running an OS without TRIM support, then the m4 is a definite pass. Even with TRIM enabled and a sufficiently random workload, you'll want to skip the m4 as well." - Anandtech


You can look at the link for the full review. They are not saying its a bad drive at all. But it does rely on trim and becomes crippled without it. No trim for non apple installed drives on OSX yet (excluding the dodgy hack).


http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review/2
 
Their drives haven't been made specificially for Macs. It's mostly just another rebranded SandForce drive...for better or worse.

^ This. The "Made for macs" rubbish is just a half-arsed excuse to jack up the price and scare people incapable of using google into buying their products. Its a great SSD, because all the SandForce current gen SSDs are great.
 
Not according to Anandtech :

"Without TRIM the m4 can degrade to a very, very low performance state." - Anandtech

"Crucial appears to be putting off this garbage collection work a bit too late." - Anandtech

"If you're running an OS without TRIM support, then the m4 is a definite pass. Even with TRIM enabled and a sufficiently random workload, you'll want to skip the m4 as well." - Anandtech


You can look at the link for the full review. They are not saying its a bad drive at all. But it does rely on trim and becomes crippled without it. No trim for non apple installed drives on OSX yet (excluding the dodgy hack).


http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review/2

I've seen that review and took that into consideration, but don't forget that is the opinion of 1 reviewer, and that seems to be specific to his review.

From what I've read from owners with the M4 and the older generation C300, there seems to be no performance degradation without trim. There were a couple of posts here that said people with the C300 state that they have been slaving their drives for 8+ months and have not noticed performance degradation. The fact is that 98% of the population won't work the SSD enough to notice performance degradation. Also, I remember seeing something about how Anand as a little bias to Crucial drives after receiving a bad sample form them.

Nothing dodgy about the TRIM Enabler almost every if not all users of the M4 here has reported they have no issue/performance change with TRIM Enabler.
 
I've seen that review and took that into consideration, but don't forget that is the opinion of 1 reviewer, and that seems to be specific to his review.

From what I've read from owners with the M4 and the older generation C300, there seems to be no performance degradation without trim. There were a couple of posts here that said people with the C300 state that they have been slaving their drives for 8+ months and have not noticed performance degradation. The fact is that 98% of the population won't work the SSD enough to notice performance degradation. Also, I remember seeing something about how Anand as a little bias to Crucial drives after receiving a bad sample form them.

Nothing dodgy about the TRIM Enabler almost every if not all users of the M4 here has reported they have no issue/performance change with TRIM Enabler.

Sorry, I'm reading your signature about your MBP having a optibay.
What is a optibay anyway? (I understand optibay in desktop, but not laptop)
Does the MBP 13" also have one? Is that like replacing the cd-drive for more storage? Is that easy to install? Will it void warranty? Thanks.
 
I've seen that review and took that into consideration, but don't forget that is the opinion of 1 reviewer, and that seems to be specific to his review.

From what I've read from owners with the M4 and the older generation C300, there seems to be no performance degradation without trim. There were a couple of posts here that said people with the C300 state that they have been slaving their drives for 8+ months and have not noticed performance degradation.


Its not an opinion. Its the result of testing. Anandtech is the most trusted technology reviewer going. Before SSD manufacturers release drives they send them to Anand La Shimpi for testing. Several including OCZ have even changed firmware settings on their drives before release because of Anand's recommendations.

I think some real world data could be interesting listing the workload, length of time owned and current mbps for sequential/random read/writes. I think, "I haven't noticed performance degradation," is a bit vague.


The fact is that 98% of the population won't work the SSD enough to notice performance degradation.

Thats probably true. Although I would have thought its mostly the heavy workload top 2% of users who are buying them.

Also, I remember seeing something about how Anand as a little bias to Crucial drives after receiving a bad sample form them.

I don't think they are biased, just so mind-bendingly thorough that no drive comes out with a perfect score. All the current crop OWC, OCZ and crucial come out with something that could be better.

The final words are very positive :

"Overall Crucial has a faster drive on its hands, one that's particularly well suited to most of our lighter workloads. It's only in our new 2011 heavy multitasking workload that the m4 really fell short. For your average desktop usage model, the m4 is either the best or second best you can get." - Anandtech
 
Sorry, I'm reading your signature about your MBP having a optibay.
What is a optibay anyway? (I understand optibay in desktop, but not laptop)
Does the MBP 13" also have one? Is that like replacing the cd-drive for more storage? Is that easy to install? Will it void warranty? Thanks.

Yes its replacing the Optical Drive with a hard drive it can be done on the 13" in fact the 13" is the best as it has no problems with Sata III drives. Its fairly easy but a bit more involved than just replacing your hard drive.
 
Its not an opinion. Its the result of testing. Anandtech is the most trusted technology reviewer going. Before SSD manufacturers release drives they send them to Anand La Shimpi for testing. Several including OCZ have even changed firmware settings on their drives before release because of Anand's recommendations.

I think some real world data could be interesting listing the workload, length of time owned and current mbps for sequential/random read/writes. I think, "I haven't noticed performance degradation," is a bit vague.

Thats probably true. Although I would have thought its mostly the heavy workload top 2% of users who are buying them.

But the fact still remains it is just one reviewer testing one drive, and the fact that torture tests don't really compare to having the hard drive being used for 1 - 2 years. I'm not saying he's wrong or right what I am saying is that just going off one person's recommendation is like putting all your eggs in one basket. OTher reviews of the Crucial M4 have no mention of this. If a majority of other reviews had this then it would have more impact but the fact that it only shows up on Anand's review leaves me a bit skeptical.

And like I said it was because of this that I went digging around on people who have had the C300 which has been out for a while and the M4 and the general consensus is that even under heavy workload there is no degradation.

Also I think more of your mainstream consumers are buying SSDs now I mean with the prices coming down and Apple showing off what SSDs can do. From what I've been seeing lately more and more people are buying SSDs for faster boot and application opening and the occasional large file transfers. SSDs are no longer a luxury item that professionals use.
 
Just so we're clear, that review is over 4 months old. That seems almost strange to say, but that's quite a while. The review was in SATA III's infancy. They haven't followed up since FW 002, nor have they mentioned any third party fixes which have worked for many people.
 
I've been really happy with my C300 128Gb (via Data Doubler + 750Gb original HD in its old place),unfortunately I finally ran out space on the boot drive, since many programs just do not want to install across multiple drives.

Based on my C300 experience, good reviews of M4 (besides Anan's as mentioned here), and the great price of $785 for 512Gb M4 on Amazon, I couldn't resist, so I ordered it today... This is turning out to be my most expensive laptop ever...

Anybody want to buy a 128Gb C300?
 
Its not an opinion. Its the result of testing. Anandtech is the most trusted technology reviewer going.

I partly disagree with your comment. This is the result of testing, but Anand is rendering an opinion on what the test means and that I think is a fair topic for discussion.

Read over the whole test. It looks like they hammered on the M4 doing continuous writes across the entire drive for twenty minutes straight and this caused write performance immediately afterwards to be temporarily degraded. This part one could argue is the "test" and is not in dispute. Anand notes once the drive was TRIM'd in Windows full performance was restored. The part I see left unanswered in the test is what happens if no TRIM is run after this test and the drive is just left to operate for say an hour, does the drives own garbage collection also restore performance in time? Where the opinion comes in is when Anand uses this test result run under Windows to unilaterally declare this drive is not a good choice for a OS without TRIM. I don't think this test provides enough information to support that declaration.

This happened with the C300 also and the Crucial and MR forums were full of people that said they had observed no write performance degradation after large write activities.

It would be nice to see a Mac web site take a bunch of these drives and do an unbiased test on this issue running the drives in OS X.

It is tests like this Anand test that scare everybody away from good drives (IMO) and into the open arms of Sandforce controller drive vendors who have built their business around convincing us Sandforce is the only drive that has adequate "garbage collection" in OS X.
 
Does anyone have the M4?

Could you complete the sentence :

I've had my drive for _________ months and been using it for _________ under a __heavy/medium/light___ workload. It gets _____MBPS sequential read, ____ MBPS sequential write, ____ MBPS Random Read , ____ MBPS random write.
 
Yes its replacing the Optical Drive with a hard drive it can be done on the 13" in fact the 13" is the best as it has no problems with Sata III drives. Its fairly easy but a bit more involved than just replacing your hard drive.

Is there instructions step by step? Thanks.
 
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