MBA SSD Info + Resale

[JCL]

I need a portable machine. The GPU/CPU bottleneck for the retina display would annoy me. So MBA it is.

MBA 128 vs 256

From what I understand the 128 (toshiba) drive is a better long term ssd due to the sandforce controller but performance significantly degrades if I use filevault.

The 256 (samsung) drive will be better if I need to constantly move movie files around and perhaps installing programs because of its faster write speed but will slow down over time due to fragmentation.

Question: Do I need to use filevault? or will a simple login password be fine?


2nd Part:

Resale value of MBA, from ebay it looks like a 50% retention if I sell it in a year? (basically trying to decide if the extra 128gb + possible samsung is worth $300)

 

[wolfpuppies3]

I do not use this as I see no need for it but, to quote Wikipedia, "On most computers running version 2, the effect on performance is negligible."

I use a 512 GB SSD in my Air.

For what it is worth.

 

[Weaselboy]

Read this test from Anandtech for a comparison of the two drives.

Neither of those drives will deteriorate over time as they both have native TRIM support in OS X, so you don't need to worry about that.

That leaves Filevault performance and the only factor for you. With FV2 on the Toshaibe drive will drop from about 500 to 250 MB/s in write speeds. Remember this has nothing to do with read speeds, so unless you are doing some really heavy duty write activity to the drive this will not matter.

Even with FV2 on and write speeds at 250MB/s that is still pretty good and certainly usable.

If you are at all concerned about someone stealing your computer and accessing its data, yes FV2 is good to use. The login password alone is pretty easy to bypass.

 

[m.demian]

While I agree that 250 MB/s is still good performance, those benchmarks specifically show random write speeds deteriorating to ~42 MB/s.

To the OP, it's not really up to us to decide whether or not you need/want encryption.

 

[Weaselboy]

While I agree that 250 MB/s is still good performance, those benchmarks specifically show random write speeds deteriorating to ~42 MB/s.

To the OP, it's not really up to us to decide whether or not you need/want encryption.

The 42MB/s is at the end of writing data to the disk over and over and over to test TRIM/garbage collection performance. This is not normal usage and is only done to demonstrate TRIM performance. If you read the entire article the write speeds return to normal after TRIM is run. Nobody is ever going to see 42MB/s in normal usage.

I'm not trying to pimp for the Toshiba or Samsung either way, but to somehow imply the Toshiba will end up with 42MB/s write speeds is misleading and misstates the test results.

 

[MaxPower72]

Samsung 256