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DomTom

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2012
5
0
Just upgraded my 5400rpm hard drive to a Corsair Force 3 120gb SDD.
I understand that the SATA III is useless in a macbook this old, but i wanted to get something like this for use in future machines.

anyway, i've installed lion on this machine, and it runs with some occasional problems (beach ball freezing), however my question is directed towards the read and write speeds.

I was fully aware when i bought the sdd that i would never achieve the 500mbs read and write speeds, but i expected something about half that.

using the "disk speed test" on the app store, i got averages of 100mb/s write and consistent 130mb/s read speeds. Is this normal? what kind of speeds do you get with the factory hard drive?




Machine:
MacBook 2007, Osx Lion, Core 2 duo 2.2ghz, 2gb ram, 120gb factory hdd replaced by 120gb sdd
 

charlieroberts

macrumors 6502a
Feb 5, 2007
595
111
Yes this is perfectly normal, as you only have SATA I which tops out at about 150... and as with all interfaces, overhead should prevent you from getting the full 150. So your performance sound about right.

I have a MBP, also 2007 and with samsung 830 I get similar results, although no beach ball. Im so happy with this SSD
 

ELMI0001

macrumors 6502
Jan 5, 2009
375
10
Olympic Hills GC
Yes this is perfectly normal, as you only have SATA I which tops out at about 150... and as with all interfaces, overhead should prevent you from getting the full 150. So your performance sound about right.

I have a MBP, also 2007 and with samsung 830 I get similar results, although no beach ball. Im so happy with this SSD

Would my late 08 Al-Book top out at 150 too? What SSD do you have? I was looking at Crucial because Amazon had the 256gb at a pretty good price recently.
 

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
While generally useless, XBench does happen to have a disk portion to it. Otherwise there are plenty of Windows tools to do so.
 

charlieroberts

macrumors 6502a
Feb 5, 2007
595
111
Would my late 08 Al-Book top out at 150 too? What SSD do you have? I was looking at Crucial because Amazon had the 256gb at a pretty good price recently.

Your albook would top out at close to 250 since it has sata II or 3gbps.

I have a Samsung 830 SSD 256 GB VERY nice SSD.
 

DomTom

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2012
5
0
thanks for the reply charlieroberts, puts me at ease. Occasionally my SDD bugs and I need to reboot the laptop, but this is getting less frequent. I wonder why still.



out of curiosity considering doing it for my iMac. seen a youtube video and it looks hard, and will probably void my warranty.

Can I get the apple shop to do it?
 

ELMI0001

macrumors 6502
Jan 5, 2009
375
10
Olympic Hills GC
thanks for the reply charlieroberts, puts me at ease. Occasionally my SDD bugs and I need to reboot the laptop, but this is getting less frequent. I wonder why still.



out of curiosity considering doing it for my iMac. seen a youtube video and it looks hard, and will probably void my warranty.

Can I get the apple shop to do it?

Apple Store offers it as a BTO option, but not sure about an upgrade. I'm sure an Apple Authorized Retailer would do it. Cheaper than an Apple Store too.
 

bdinger

macrumors member
Jan 22, 2012
48
0
Lincoln, NE
<snip>
using the "disk speed test" on the app store, i got averages of 100mb/s write and consistent 130mb/s read speeds. Is this normal? what kind of speeds do you get with the factory hard drive?
</snip>

That's not bad at all. For comparison my late 2009 white MacBook has a Intel X-25M Gen 2, and it gets ~100MB/s write and ~200-250MB/s Read pretty consistently. Which is at a 3GB/s SATA link speed, so having original SATA you're not doing too bad at all.

I've yet to test my new 2011 15in MBP's Crucial C300, which should be similar (probably within 10%) of the Force 3.

Speaking of, I just noticed my TRIM is disabled again. Whoops! Better get on that..
 
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