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MBP SSD advice?

S

scrambledwonder

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 4, 2006
314
18
Berkeley, CA
Yo!

I've been saving up. I'm replacing my first gen MBP with a new one. I want to run a 128GB SSD and replace the supa-dupa-drive with a 500GB+ HDD.

Question: Should I pay the premium for the SSD from Apple, then purchase the MCE Optibay and an HDD? Or order the MBP with a 500GB HDD and purchase the SSD from a third party?

Apple wants $200 extra for the 128GB SSD, $50 extra for the 7200rpm 500GB HDD.

Second question: If I get the SSD from a third party, which one? Any recommendations?
 
sn0warmy said:
I can only recommend my current setup as it's the only one I've experienced. But I couldn't be happier with it.:)

Intel X25-M SSD - $200

500GB 7200RPM Drive - $70

Optibay - $10
Click to expand...

Sweet.

Okay, but to review:

Cost of MBP with 128GB SSD: $2400

Cost of MBP with 500GB 7200 HDD: $2250

Cost of 120 OWC SSD: $315

Cost of third-party 500GB HDD: $70

Cost of OptiBay: $10

Cost of MBP with 500GB HDD and OWC SSD: $2645

Cost of MBP with Apple-selected 128GB SSD and third-party 500GB HDD: $2480

So is the OWC worth the extra $165?
 
scrambledwonder said:
Sweet.

Okay, but to review:

Cost of MBP with 128GB SSD: $2400

Cost of MBP with 500GB 7200 HDD: $2250

Cost of 120 OWC SSD: $315

Cost of third-party 500GB HDD: $70

Cost of OptiBay: $10

Cost of MBP with 500GB HDD and OWC SSD: $2645

Cost of MBP with Apple-selected 128GB SSD and third-party 500GB HDD: $2480

So is the OWC worth the extra $165?
Click to expand...

Yes the Apple SSD isn't very fast for the $$.
 
My two cents...

I have two Intel X-25M G2s...selling both of them.

Bought a OWC Extreme Pro 100GB...this is the only SSD I could recommend for a Mac right now.

I don't see Intel being able to improve SSDs over the OCZ Vertex 2/OWC Extreme Pro Sandforce-based SSDS unless it is higher IOPS (maybe, but doubtful) or SATA 3.0/6 Gbps transfer (likely, if Intel has put SATA 3.0 on the motherboard).
 
scrambledwonder said:
One more question: How do you divide up your data? I'd like to have the system and applications on the SSD and my user account on the HDD. Is that possible?
Click to expand...

I have all OS and intensive apps (Photoshop, Aperture, etc.) on the SSD and I store the actual data files on the HDD (Aperture library, etc.).
For me, and most likely you too, it is of little to no use to move your home folder. Practically nothing is stored in it and the amount of work that goes into moving it is not worth the outcome.
 
scrambledwonder said:
One more question: How do you divide up your data? I'd like to have the system and applications on the SSD and my user account on the HDD. Is that possible?
Click to expand...

My suggestion: don't move your home folder, move only big files.

iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie can all be configured to access media outside of your home folder.

The benefit is that caches, preferences and application support files stored in your library will load very fast. You want these files on the SSD because they are accessed during application launches, and frequently during application use.
 
scrambledwonder said:
Yo!

I've been saving up. I'm replacing my first gen MBP with a new one. I want to run a 128GB SSD and replace the supa-dupa-drive with a 500GB+ HDD.

Question: Should I pay the premium for the SSD from Apple, then purchase the MCE Optibay and an HDD? Or order the MBP with a 500GB HDD and purchase the SSD from a third party?

Apple wants $200 extra for the 128GB SSD, $50 extra for the 7200rpm 500GB HDD.

Second question: If I get the SSD from a third party, which one? Any recommendations?
Click to expand...
if youre going ssd, definitely get the intel. ive heard stories that the apple ssd is not even that much speedier then the 7200
 
The Crucial RealSSD is uber fast... 355 MB/s fast. They have 64GB, 128GB and 256GB sizes. 64GB should be plenty though if your running a second drive. This is the setup I plan on doing (64GB RealSSD and 1TB WD HD).
 
ljx718 said:
if youre going ssd, definitely get the intel. ive heard stories that the apple ssd is not even that much speedier then the 7200
Click to expand...

Stories are nice for bedtime, but for comparing electronics, I prefer hard data.

Apple 2010 SSD benchmarked (posted earlier btw):
http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-BeforeAfter-AppleToshiba512.html

Chase R said:
The Crucial RealSSD is uber fast... 355 MB/s fast. They have 64GB, 128GB and 256GB sizes. 64GB should be plenty though if your running a second drive. This is the setup I plan on doing (64GB RealSSD and 1TB WD HD).
Click to expand...

Crucial's RealSSD degrades dramatically in use, much more than other SSDs. Forget about installing it on any OS X system, which doesn't support TRIM.

The Crucial 256GB RealSSD was “toast”. Writing at about 13MB/sec for most of its capacity, the Crucial RealSSD is on life support. While the RealSSD did maintain high read speed, so what? It became barely usable for any kind of activity involving writes; even just erasing it in Disk Utility took about 15 seconds, vs ~1 second when new. Worse, it stubbornly refused to respond to any kind of recondition treatment, so it was essentially a coaster.
Click to expand...

Source: http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-SevereDuty.html
 
I had my 15.4" i7 MBP shipped directly to OWC to have it souped up (it is the option offered by Macperformanceguide at diglloyd.com). I bought the bare minumum RAM and drive from Apple.

Over at OWC, I got the following:

- 8GB of RAM

- 1TB of hard disk drive for data

- 100GB SSD in place of optical bay for boot + applications

OWC shipped me a slim external drive.

It is now a fantastic machine!
 
agtoau said:
I had my 15.4" i7 MBP shipped directly to OWC to have it souped up (it is the option offered by Macperformanceguide at diglloyd.com). I bought the bare minumum RAM and drive from Apple.

Over at OWC, I got the following:

- 8GB of RAM

- 1TB of hard disk drive for data

- 100GB SSD in place of optical bay for boot + applications

OWC shipped me a slim external drive.

It is now a fantastic machine!
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I want to do. I already have a 1TB HDD so I think I'm going to get the 40GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD for boot/apps. Did you use the MCE OptiBay?
 
Chase R said:
That is exactly what I want to do. I already have a 1TB HDD so I think I'm going to get the 40GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD for boot/apps. Did you use the MCE OptiBay?
Click to expand...

OWC sell kits with their "Data Doubler" bracket + OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSDs.
Cheaper than buying them separately, and they come with a little kit with all the screwdrivers that you need :)
List of options is here.
 
MaxUpgrades Optical Bay Kit

Check this one too...seems to me MaxUpgrades Product.

http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=Product.display&product_id=186

macbookPro2.jpg
 
Hey everyone, reviving an old topic here.

this "optibays" on ebay are almost 80% of the price that mce and owc are selling them for. i'm a bit skeptical about how well they work, if they work at all. I'm really interested in doing this for my MBP but the price of the mce/owc bays were holding me back. now i discovered them on ebay and they are so cheap theres really no reason not to do it anymore.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives?

Thanks in advance


http://cgi.ebay.com/2nd-HDD-caddy-A...age_Internal&hash=item27b4b66d9e#ht_754wt_874
 
jhu2 said:
Hey everyone, reviving an old topic here.

this "optibays" on ebay are almost 80% of the price that mce and owc are selling them for. i'm a bit skeptical about how well they work, if they work at all. I'm really interested in doing this for my MBP but the price of the mce/owc bays were holding me back. now i discovered them on ebay and they are so cheap theres really no reason not to do it anymore.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives?

Thanks in advance


http://cgi.ebay.com/2nd-HDD-caddy-A...age_Internal&hash=item27b4b66d9e#ht_754wt_874
Click to expand...

You know eBay has a pretty bad track record with knock-off accessories, why not spend the extra 20% on a solution that you know works? You really get what you pay for with eBay, believe me.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

Slightly offtopic but do the OWC SSD have "Firmware Trim" I font really understand SSDs apart from which Is biggest and fastest tostart off with...
Does Sandforce mean as well as being the chip it does garbage collection aswell?
 
agtoau said:
I had my 15.4" i7 MBP shipped directly to OWC to have it souped up (it is the option offered by Macperformanceguide at diglloyd.com). I bought the bare minumum RAM and drive from Apple.

Over at OWC, I got the following:

- 8GB of RAM

- 1TB of hard disk drive for data

- 100GB SSD in place of optical bay for boot + applications

OWC shipped me a slim external drive.

It is now a fantastic machine!
Click to expand...

OWS is great, but you can easily do all of this on your own (if you want to, that is).

Also, to respond to OP's question, unless you're going to be standing by your MBP with your stopwatch and pride yourself by shaving a half-second here or there, I wouldn't worry terribly about the benchmarks. Yes, of course they're handy, but I really wouldn't spend any amount of time analyzing them. Any recent SSD will be pretty darn fast - just read the user reviews on Newegg or Amazon. Also, make sure that the one you get does a background garbage collection.
 
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