Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

OCZ Vertex 250gb

MikhailT said:
this has nothing to do with MACs.


As for those who were asking, I had access to a PC which I used to flash the firmware on the pc. I took the jumper from the cd rom that was in my PC.

OCZ is working on a dos tool that'll work from a usb or cd. Will the tool work from mac, i doubt it but i can't be sure.

There are other methods such as live CDs like Ghost Recovery Disc, but i am not aware if it works on mac.
Click to expand...


what's the problem ?
find a pc and do the flash there ..

mostly you will find firmware updating ONLY for windows.
 
MikhailT said:
As far as I am aware, as long as you have a unibody, there's no problem. You proceed as you would if it was a regular HDD.

The non-unibody would not be able to use bootcamp. It does not seem to be compatible with vertex, just like the intel.
Click to expand...

Great,

So you didn't go the partition with GUID? Never setup a HDD/SSD in Mac OSX so just want to make sure this is clear prior to attempting.

Also, how do I tell which firmware the SSD has?

I appreicate it!
 
I installed mine as follows;

1. Took it out of the box,
2. put it in my MBPro (late 08),
3. booted off the install CD,
4. selected Disk Utility from the top menu,
5. deleted the current partition and created a GUID one,
6. did a fresh install of Mac OS
7. when it re-booted I selected restore from time machine.
8. run Software update to get the latest OS and updates.

Job done in under 2 hours.

I initially tried Carbon Copy via an eSATA enclosure but it crashed my MBP twice and I started to worry. The method above worked without incident.

I DO NOT have a bootcamp partition, I just use a VM Fusion machine within OSX.
 
Oh BTW, when I restored my files I was left with only 5gb free on the SSD. :eek:

I moved 120gb worth of movies and TV shows from iTunes to a 500gb WD Passport (FW). These live on at home on my MacPro so no need to carry them all around.

The best news is that even when the disk was almost full, the performance was the same. :D
 
Results From New Firmware Upgrade

OK, I just upgraded the firmware on my vortex ssd drive and here are the results

Results 241.66
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.6 (9G2141)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,2
Drive Type OCZ-VERTEX 1199
Disk Test 241.66
Sequential 200.51
Uncached Write 309.14 189.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 234.00 132.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 100.73 29.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 397.91 199.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 304.04
Uncached Write 113.39 12.00 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 388.80 124.47 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1842.85 13.06 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 818.13 151.81 MB/sec [256K blocks]
i see faster speeds than before.
 
Apart from the latest firmware (which is still 1199?) - how about partition alignment which the PC users with Vertex SSDs talk about?
 
Just installed my Vertex 250. Here are the XBench results. 560% increase over previous stock 320GB HDD:

Disk Test 51.02
Sequential 120.11
Uncached Write 125.70 77.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 121.19 68.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.94 28.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 145.24 72.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 32.39
Uncached Write 10.88 1.15 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 76.38 24.45 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 89.16 0.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 137.88 25.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 

Attachments

  • Picture 1.png
    Picture 1.png
    129.5 KB · Views: 121
sparkie7 said:
Just installed my Vertex 250. Here are the XBench results. 560% increase over previous stock 320GB HDD:

Disk Test 51.02
Sequential 120.11
Uncached Write 125.70 77.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 121.19 68.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.94 28.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 145.24 72.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 32.39
Uncached Write 10.88 1.15 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 76.38 24.45 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 89.16 0.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 137.88 25.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Click to expand...

Those numbers look great...I guess I was just expecting more from something advertised to reach 250MB/sec???

Most numbers I have seen have been around 130MB/sec
 
bbadalucco said:
Those numbers look great...I guess I was just expecting more from something advertised to reach 250MB/sec???

Most numbers I have seen have been around 130MB/sec
Click to expand...

The numbers in text in his post was for the hard drive. The uploaded screenshot was the SSD specs. They look good to me.
 
That looks like some crazy speed. Question is, zero out the entire drive, then run it again. Curious to see how that'd affect it. =)
 
I just installed my Vertex and noticed I have an older version of the firmware.

I don't have a PC at home is there anyway I can update the firmware with my MBP???

What kind of speed increases have people been seeing with the updated firmware?
 
bbadalucco said:
I just installed my Vertex and noticed I have an older version of the firmware.

I don't have a PC at home is there anyway I can update the firmware with my MBP???

What kind of speed increases have people been seeing with the updated firmware?
Click to expand...

Like 10-20% increase in seq read/write.

I suggest waiting as the 1275 firmware will be released this friday which will bring another round of speed increase.

single drive 1199 150 writes 225 reads
single drive 1275 200 writes 250 reads
Click to expand...
This was posted by an OCZ guy at OCZ forums. As for your firmware, 0012, it would be like 90 writes 200 reads. So yea a bit of an increase from your version.

As for flashing, the only way is to take the drive out and flash it in a PC, there's no method that a MAC user can take.
 
Tubbymac posted a great link on another thread here that is wroth a good read if your in the market for a SSD. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

This explains all the differences and the fact all the marketing BS is only focused on Read/Write speeds. If you want to see real world results and understand how SSD's work this article is very useful and informative.

The basics of this article is that the companies focus on the 250read/170write etc.. but never bother letting you know the latency or seek times for real world usage is sometimes worse than standard HDD's. It's a very interesting read to see the cheaper SSD's get their ass kicked by a normal HDD and over time as the SSD's become slower, some have huge drops in performance.

I have to admit prior to reading this article I was looking at the read/write speeds and now thinking about things much differently.
 
Have any of you tried running vmware fusion with a vista VM? Do you get the constant system lockups every 5 seconds like I saw with the last OCZ ssd I tried?
 
bossxii said:
Tubbymac posted a great link on another thread here that is wroth a good read if your in the market for a SSD. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

This explains all the differences and the fact all the marketing BS is only focused on Read/Write speeds. If you want to see real world results and understand how SSD's work this article is very useful and informative.

The basics of this article is that the companies focus on the 250read/170write etc.. but never bother letting you know the latency or seek times for real world usage is sometimes worse than standard HDD's. It's a very interesting read to see the cheaper SSD's get their ass kicked by a normal HDD and over time as the SSD's become slower, some have huge drops in performance.

I have to admit prior to reading this article I was looking at the read/write speeds and now thinking about things much differently.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that article, it really cleared up why ssd drives slows down over time in the write cycles.

I think I will wait longer to adopt SSD drives, for now my 320GB 7200rpm hdd works just fine.
 
just ordered a 30GB (yes 30GB hah) Vertex today to replace my stuttering CoreV1. I've been looking for a more affordable alternative to Intel's SSD offerings for quite some time now. After reading that article, it looks like my search has ended. I know a lot of people are concerned about space, but the article mentioned something very important that I completely agree with: SSDs are great for boot partitions and loading apps, but in terms of long-time data storage, a traditional HDD is probably more reliable. I use my MBP as a secondary computer, so 30GB is fine for me.
 
fuzzielitlpanda said:
just ordered a 30GB (yes 30GB hah) Vertex today to replace my stuttering CoreV1. I've been looking for a more affordable alternative to Intel's SSD offerings for quite some time now. After reading that article, it looks like my search has ended. I know a lot of people are concerned about space, but the article mentioned something very important that I completely agree with: SSDs are great for boot partitions and loading apps, but in terms of long-time data storage, a traditional HDD is probably more reliable. I use my MBP as a secondary computer, so 30GB is fine for me.
Click to expand...

I ordered my 30GB Vertex and am expecting it tomorrow!! :cool:

Can't wait
 
^^Fantastic! I was just looking at your chart earlier today before I made my purchase. It pains me to know I spent $3/GB hah, but I don't mind spending ~$100 to try out this new offering from OCZ.
 
On 30GB Vertex. Early 2008 MBP.

Start up time went from 30 seconds to 20 seconds. OS X installed in 15.5 minutes.
 

Attachments

  • Picture 1.png
    Picture 1.png
    51.4 KB · Views: 131
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back