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Hybrid 7200 SSD?
- Thread starter S7A2G6
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I have it in my MBP 2011 13'3. It's waaay faster than the normal 5400rpm, I tested at store. The downsides are that it makes a little more noise, and it can be annoying late at night when you're laying with it, but it's almost silent and I can easily live with it.
I saw some benchmarks between the XT and the WD Scorpio Black 750GB and they were pretty close, with the XT edging it on cached items, and the Scorpio edging it on non cached items. The Scorpio is also cheaper, so I picked one up and should have it in a few days.
A year ago the XT was the fastest solution for large storage, but the newer 750GB 7200RPM drives are getting close in speed for less money.
I read about firmware issues with the XT and that's why I decided against it among other things.
A year ago the XT was the fastest solution for large storage, but the newer 750GB 7200RPM drives are getting close in speed for less money.
I read about firmware issues with the XT and that's why I decided against it among other things.
the XT won't show it's true speed in benchmarks due to the way it uses the 4(or whatever it is)GB "SSD" for the most used files. while i still say if you want speed to go hard in the paint and get a real SSD, the XT is much faster than a scorpio black.
I know that the benchmarks won't show the SSD part of the XT well. But I think for the money, a Scorpio Black is going to give better all around performance boosts.
http://hothardware.com/cs/blogs/div...black-500gb-2-5-quot-notebook-hard-drive.aspx
The writer notes later in the article that conditioning the XT gave twice the performance for the cached material, but that's only what can be cached on the 4GB SSD.
The XT can be great, but it's small SSD holds it back. I use many programs on a daily basis that are large files, so the XT wouldn't help me much there. If the XT had a 16GB SSD (or even 32GB) it would be a fantastic drive, but IMO, the 4GB SSD portion isn't enough for users that use many programs on a daily basis. It just isn't large enough to cache enough information for a power user.
I haven't looked into the XT all that much so I'll take your word on it. I myself am going with a best of both worlds setup: 120GB Vertex 3 boot drive in the HD bay, and a 1TB(either Samsung or WD) 5400rpm media drive(with a 120GB mirror of the SSD) in a OWC DataDoubler.
My original plan was to go the route you're going right now. You'll love that setup, blazing fast with tons of storage to boot. If I didn't need my optical drive that's the direction I would have gone.
Going the Data Doubler route was what I had thought I had decided on. However, I found this drive and am having seconds thoughts. I too agree 4GB is a bit shallow... but for what little work I do on my MBP, it may be just my speed.
Yeah, I use my optical drive about never. Maybe 10 times, if that many, in the past year and a half I've had my laptop, and those times were burning CDs/DVDs while at home, so a nice external will be perfect for me; no need to have it taking up space in my MBP when that space could be better used by a HD.