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new MBP SDD & HDD performance

M

MoonshineSG

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 26, 2011
33
0
so i got myself a new MBP... BTO, 2.3GHz i7, 8GB, 500GB @ 7200 rpm, 15-inch Hi-Res Antiglare Widescreen...

I bought a OCZ Vertex 3 IOPS Max 120Gb to replace the HDD, which went in the place of the optical drive via a OptiBay.

OS & apps reside on the SSD, user profile as well, with Documents, Photos, Music, Video linked to folders on the HDD. This way all the app settings can be on the fast drive, while the documents that take lots of space are on the HDD.

The mac boots in about 20-25 seconds (to the login screen) then another 10-15 seconds to load the apps from the last session...

The performance of the SSD is quite impressive, but the HDD is .... well.... disappointing... Or at least I think it is.... Can anyone tell me if there is smith wrong with it, or indeed it's supposed to be that slow ?

ssd.png

SSD performance

hdd.png

HDD performance (in the OptiBay)

On a second note, what are the benefits (if any) to enable TRIM for the SSD ?


Thank you.
 
Those speeds look about right for the HDD. Though I'm surprised your system is taking that long to get to the login screen - I'm on a 2.66C2D MBP 13 with an OWC Mercury (SATA 2), and it gets to login in 13 seconds from the power button. I suppose that might be due to you having the HDD included as well.

As your OCZ uses the Sandforce controller, there's no need to enable TRIM, the controller's Garbage Collection works perfectly well. Indeed the OWC support site (their drives also use Sandforce) says performance can be negatively impacted by using TRIM and the controller's GC together.
 
What apps do you load to wait 15 seconds.
Also 25 secs does indeed sound way to slow.
I have a Vertex 2 on a 2010 MBP and OSX starts in something like 15 secs including apps like mail which open pretty much instantly. I don't use no login screen though. It is hitting power key -> operational desktop in 15 secs for me.

Windows bootcamp is quite slow though and I don't really know why. The VM starts very fast but the native bootcamp boot takes almost a minute everything included (select drives with option startup).

The HDD is as fast as such an HDD is. What did you expect? Only the newest 500GB platter drives are a bit faster or 10k rpm stuff.
 
I purchased about two OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs, and I opened them up. What I found was something not to my liking: the chips were marked with the letter 'S' indicating quality problems. I pinged OCZ, and they said that they couldn't talk to me about it because I had voided my warranty.

This was found in both devices from different retailers.
 
I wasn't what the performance of a HDD should look like. Compared to the SSD it looks like crawling..

I created a new user, did auto login for it and it still takes about 25 seconds. I am not complaining... To have you machine ready to work in 25seconds, I would say it's still damn fast... I just wonder how others get it up in 10-15 seconds...
 
MoonshineSG said:
I wasn't what the performance of a HDD should look like. Compared to the SSD it looks like crawling..

I created a new user, did auto login for it and it still takes about 25 seconds. I am not complaining... To have you machine ready to work in 25seconds, I would say it's still damn fast... I just wonder how others get it up in 10-15 seconds...
Click to expand...

The MacBook Air completed boot in around 8 seconds.
 
Compare random read & write that is were the SSD really destroys an HDD.
My Vertex 2 is only half as fast in this sequential test but all I did is use CCC to move OSX to the new OS and after removing rEFIt which I used before it started this fast. I didn't do anything else. No idea why yours is slower.
Only difference is I still got all the folders on the SSD and only inside of movies I have -s links to my HDD and I use multiple picture libs with the big ones on the HDD. I just like my HDD to sleep as much as possible because the MBP is so quiet when it does.

I would guess that it doesn't find the boot drive instantly in the init phase but that wouldn't explain why you need 15 sec from login to desktop with all the apps (unless those are really a lot of apps and or big stuff like Adobe CS, Eclipse..)
You could try disabling the login for change. Delete the other user you made and start right through to desktop. Could be that OSX does stuff differently when it means to load the login screen. Maybe it thinks it shouldn't optimize for speed because people using it prefer security. Stupid idea though because a paranoid security freak wouldn't use OSX in the first place.
 
Just to make sure - you have specifically selected the SSD as your startup disk in System Preferences, right?
 
MoonshineSG said:
I wasn't what the performance of a HDD should look like. Compared to the SSD it looks like crawling..

I created a new user, did auto login for it and it still takes about 25 seconds. I am not complaining... To have you machine ready to work in 25seconds, I would say it's still damn fast... I just wonder how others get it up in 10-15 seconds...
Click to expand...

Your numbers are just right for the HD, maybe even on the fast side of things. SSD's really are that much faster mate.
 
I normally do not enable TRIM since garbage collection in most SSDs nowadays is good enough. When I ran the TRIM hack on my old Vertex 3 120 (Non-Max IOPS), I got beach balls all over. Horrible.

I just switched to a 64GB Samsung 470 for stability and reliability reasons. The Vertex was fast, however, the performance was not consistent at all. Fast sometimes, hanging/freezing other times, on all firmwares.

My new 470, hardly notice a speed difference. In fact, in places like boot/shut down/sleep, it's noticeability quicker.
 
@Modernape: valid questions, but yes, I have the boot set to SSD (HDD no longer has Lion on it)


I did another measurement with autologin:

sec 0 - [press power button]
sec 4 - chime
sec 7 - apple logo
sec 16 - spinning logo (not the beach ball)
sec 24 - spinning stops
sec 26 - different shade of gray
sec 29 - desktop with apps appear
 
Last edited:
dlimes13 said:
I normally do not enable TRIM since garbage collection in most SSDs nowadays is good enough. When I ran the TRIM hack on my old Vertex 3 120 (Non-Max IOPS), I got beach balls all over. Horrible.

I just switched to a 64GB Samsung 470 for stability and reliability reasons. The Vertex was fast, however, the performance was not consistent at all. Fast sometimes, hanging/freezing other times, on all firmwares.

My new 470, hardly notice a speed difference. In fact, in places like boot/shut down/sleep, it's noticeability quicker.
Click to expand...

Whats the deal with enabling TRIM with the Samsung 470? I just picked up a 256GB. Do I need to do anything or just leave it?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

@harryhood. I have the samsung 470 & have enabled TRIM, even though it has it's own GC. It's still really fast & gives me abit of peace of mind
 
Well, I'm not sure what's happening when the gear spins beneath the apple logo, but I don't even get that any more, just the apple logo on its own for about 2 seconds, then blue, then the login window.
 
ct2k7 said:
I purchased about two OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs, and I opened them up. What I found was something not to my liking: the chips were marked with the letter 'S' indicating quality problems. I pinged OCZ, and they said that they couldn't talk to me about it because I had voided my warranty.

This was found in both devices from different retailers.
Click to expand...

There is nothing wrong with the NAND chips in your drive. Do not listen to OWC's crap they put out to try and trash OCZ. This issue was debunked by Anandtech here. OWC should be ashamed of themselves. So you bought into OWC's FUD and voided the warranty on your SSD.

Here is OCZ's direct response to the issue.

Do you really want to listen to opinions about quality from a company that ships drives like this?

frArO.jpg
 
MoonshineSG said:
OS & apps reside on the SSD, user profile as well, with Documents, Photos, Music, Video linked to folders on the HDD. This way all the app settings can be on the fast drive, while the documents that take lots of space are on the HDD.
Click to expand...

How do you linked those folders? Please advise.
 
Weaselboy said:
There is nothing wrong with the NAND chips in your drive. Do not listen to OWC's crap they put out to try and trash OCZ. This issue was debunked by Anandtech here. OWC should be ashamed of themselves. So you bought into OWC's FUD and voided the warranty on your SSD.

Here is OCZ's direct response to the issue.

Do you really want to listen to opinions about quality from a company that ships drives like this?

frArO.jpg
Click to expand...

To be fair, when both OCZ drives failed within a month, I didn't know what to expect
 
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