Newegg now shipping 34nm Intel SSD!

[tenderidol]

Just received my 160GB G2R5 drive ($473). I'll back up the old drive, install the SSD and put SL on it -hopefully- some time tonight! I have to check the compatibility of few add-ons/hack that I've been using with Leopard to avoid any surprises first.

I'll report back in terms of speed improvements, etc once it is installed in my 2009 15" MBP.

Well, one strike already... Growl is not yet compatible with SL: "We are working on Growl 1.2 for 10.6 Snow Leopard"

 

[eMagine]

Just received my 160GB G2R5 drive ($473). I'll back up the old drive, install the SSD and put SL on it -hopefully- some time tonight! I have to check the compatibility of few add-ons/hack that I've been using with Leopard to avoid any surprises first.

I'll report back in terms of speed improvements, etc once it is installed in my 2009 15" MBP.

Well, one strike already... Growl is not yet compatible with SL: "We are working on Growl 1.2 for 10.6 Snow Leopard"

Growl IS working on Snow Leopard. At least on my machine, running as 64bit processes:
http://growl.info/beta.html

 

[tenderidol]

Growl IS working on Snow Leopard. At least on my machine, running as 64bit processes:
http://growl.info/beta.html

Thanks for the link. Once I have a chance to install the drive and SL, I'll start playing with the betas...

By the way, Newegg is still selling the 160GB with a good markup ($590) since these drives are still not that easy to find/get. With tax, that's almost $648

 

[poky]

I bought one from buy.com @ ebay, the 80gb one for $227 couple weeks ago, last week received a cancel email says that it's no longer available (but still shows in stock on buy.com) however they issue a $15 credit for the future purchase on buy.com to me.

Yesterday, I saw on 160gb G2R5 on buy.com for $452, ordered it with the $15 credit, so total is $437, just got my shipped email earlier today!

 

[tenderidol]

Growl IS working on Snow Leopard. At least on my machine, running as 64bit processes:
http://growl.info/beta.html

I actually only need the GrowlMail plug-in. Is that working fine with SL? I dont care much for other Growl dialogs. Thanks!

 

[tenderidol]

Received a defective one!

Darn it! I was so excited to have this drive. I opened up my 15" MBP, removed the 500GB 5400rpm and put in the 160GB Intel SSD. The SL installation started fine, I used the disk utility and formatted the drive (MacOS extended (journaled)) and the installation began...

When the bar was almost at the end (said 10 min remaining), a big yellow exclamation mark icon appeared on the screen and said "OS installation encountered an error, please contact the software manufacturer (something along these lines)". I was surprised of course...

I re-started the machine, initiated the SL installation again, started disk utility and it took about 10 minutes (spinning beach ball) to detect the Intel drive. Once it did, I formatted it again and initiated the installation. This time, the installer quit lot earlier (about 25% in) with the same message.

Thinking that this could be a SL related issue, I popped in the Leopard DVD and started Disk Utility. The drive was detected immediately, but it showed up as "8MB Intel SSD". I tried formatting, etc, but it never reverted back from that 8MB stage. It was detected as an 8MB drive with the SL installation DVD as well.

After a quick Google search, it appears that it is defective. Some people saw the size of the drive to go from 160GB to 8MB in few days, but for me it was during the installation.

I could probably try using some utility to reformat, flash, etc and/or update firmware and try to install SL again, but I just dont want to deal with it. What if everything is fine now and it goes crazy again down the road risking data loss.

I just requested a replacement. Hopefully it will arrive fast and without any defects.

 

[Harrelson]

Darn it! I was so excited to have this drive. I opened up my 15" MBP, removed the 500GB 5400rpm and put in the 160GB Intel SSD. The SL installation started fine, I used the disk utility and formatted the drive (MacOS extended (journaled)) and the installation began...

When the bar was almost at the end (said 10 min remaining), a big yellow exclamation mark icon appeared on the screen and said "OS installation encountered an error, please contact the software manufacturer (something along these lines)". I was surprised of course...

I re-started the machine, initiated the SL installation again, started disk utility and it took about 10 minutes (spinning beach ball) to detect the Intel drive. Once it did, I formatted it again and initiated the installation. This time, the installer quit lot earlier (about 25% in) with the same message.

Thinking that this could be a SL related issue, I popped in the Leopard DVD and started Disk Utility. The drive was detected immediately, but it showed up as "8MB Intel SSD". I tried formatting, etc, but it never reverted back from that 8MB stage. It was detected as an 8MB drive with the SL installation DVD as well.

After a quick Google search, it appears that it is defective. Some people saw the size of the drive to go from 160GB to 8MB in few days, but for me it was during the installation.

I could probably try using some utility to reformat, flash, etc and/or update firmware and try to install SL again, but I just dont want to deal with it. What if everything is fine now and it goes crazy again down the road risking data loss.

I just requested a replacement. Hopefully it will arrive fast and without any defects.

Did you buy a Chinese clone? They make quite legitimate looking knockoffs

 

[tenderidol]

Did you buy a Chinese clone? They make quite legitimate looking knockoffs

Not at all. This was not an eBay purchase; it was bought from a major US online reseller. If you are referring to drives with a casing of different label and having actually a different memory amount, that's not the case here. As I mentioned, the drive started as 160GB, gave an error and dropped to 8MB.

 

[yen10]

is there any US online merchant shipping internationally ?

thx

I couldn't find one, but I did a little research and found out about forwarding companies. You can make the purchase online, have it shipped to a forwarding service, and they will forward it to you anywhere in the world. I used Shipito becase their fee was the very lowest and international shipping was discounted.