Most suitable ssd for mbp

[Hobbes187]

Need some advise... What is the most suitable ssd for mbp 2010? I'm comparing between intel, ocz and owc.

Leaning towards the intel ones but wonder if there are any known compatibility e.g absence of trim support in snow leopard. Of cos it wont be an issue for long since lion is going to support trim.

The issues i have with ocz and owc ones are mostly due to the reliability issues of sandforce based ssd. And the owc ones are a bit expensive. However they seem to have better read- write speeds.

Hope to hear comments of those who have switched to ssd.

 

[johnnyturbouk]

Need some advise... What is the most suitable ssd for mbp 2010? I'm comparing between intel, ocz and ocw.

Leaning towards the intel ones but wonder if there are any known compatibility e.g absence of trim support in snow leopard. Of cos it wont be an issue for long since lion is going to support trim.

The issues i have with ocz and ocw ones are mostly due to the reliability issues of sandforce based ssd. And the ocw ones are a bit expensive. However they seem to have better read- write speeds.

Hope to hear comments of those who have switched to ssd.

It appears you are after reliability compared to speed - if this is correct then the intel 320 is an adequate and robust drive: NB same 2 yr old controller as the x-25, however 25nm NAND flash.

Firstly, I, have an owc (not ocw) sata-2 3gb/s 120gb and never had any issues: this IMO is the best choice for sata-2, altho others have claimed intermittent sleep issues. The so-called intel reliability is again from a single source which from memory was a french study that did not include OWC drives thus one can't statistically infer intel reliability being greater than OWC.
Secondly, the newer sata-2 ssds utilise 25nm NAND flash, which has a lower MTBF.

A final option would be a sata-3 drive (6gb/s) know, from u're OP - i am correct in stating that you have a 2010 MBP, thus you would not utilise the sata-3 interface, as the 2010 HDD/ODD is sata-2: However the sata-3 drives like the vertex 3 does have higher seq writes. Also, these drives will retain their value more so than older drives, and if you are planning an update in the near future, you would benefit from the faster sata-3 interface which will give you >500mb/s read/write.

I think the crucial c300 is another good choice, but was less than impressed than the M400. As anad said, in an OS without trim, the m4 would not be a good choice and you may get throttling and performance degradation on writes. (correct me if i am wrong) TRIM hack has not been successfully implemented with the M4 / or any of the newer sata-3 SSDs.

 

[dagamer34]

I can talk about Intel vs. OCZ. I'd avoid the word "reliability", since the flash all comes from the same place when you talk about an Intel drive and an OCZ Vertex drive (the Agility and Solid drives however do use lower grade flash that isn't as fast).

Intel - better warranty (5 years), no TRIM support.

OCZ - standard warranty (3 years), SandForce based so it does it's own garbage collection.

Since Apple doesn't enable TRIM on anything but it's own SSDs, you'll have to determine how much that's worth to you. I just went with an OCZ Vertex 3 240GB so I wouldn't have to deal with the issue.

 

[Hobbes187]

Thanks for all the replies. I know OCZ and OWC drives does their own garbage collection.

What about the intel drives under OSX? Will TRIM be supported for this drive in Lion or is it going to be for Apple drives only? If so then wont the performance of the intel drives inevitably degrade over time in mac?

I guess long term performance is also a factor for me... I wont want my drive to slow down over time with use

 

[jenzjen]

Since Apple doesn't enable TRIM on anything but it's own SSDs, you'll have to determine how much that's worth to you. I just went with an OCZ Vertex 3 240GB so I wouldn't have to deal with the issue.

While factually correct, this is misunderstood. Go into the Mac Pro forums and visit the TRIM support enabler thread. I now have TRIM support for both my Intel SSDs.