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OCZ Vertex 250gb

DaveOZ said:
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.
Click to expand...

Should have no problems with a clean install. I did a clean install and have no problems with mine. I have a 120gb Vertex.
 
Just installed OS X on a new 30GB Vertex. Repartitioned as GUID. Installed in 15 minutes and 30 seconds. :)

This is the most amazing upgrade ever. To anyone who is thinking about it: Do it! My computer is silent (I can hear the processor), cool, and fast. From a cold boot I am at the desktop ready to do whatever in under 20 seconds. Amazing. I'll never buy a hard drive again.
 
emt1 said:
Just installed OS X on a new 30GB Vertex. Repartitioned as GUID. Installed in 15 minutes and 30 seconds. :)

This is the most amazing upgrade ever. To anyone who is thinking about it: Do it! My computer is silent (I can hear the processor), cool, and fast. From a cold boot I am at the desktop ready to do whatever in under 20 seconds. Amazing. I'll never buy a hard drive again.
Click to expand...

When you say 20 seconds...does that mean from the time you press the power button or what?
 
bbadalucco said:
When you say 20 seconds...does that mean from the time you press the power button or what?
Click to expand...

From the time I press the power button to when the computer is completely finished booting and is sitting at the desktop waiting for me to do something.
 
emt1 said:
From the time I press the power button to when the computer is completely finished booting and is sitting at the desktop waiting for me to do something.
Click to expand...

I have the 250 version and it takes 27 seconds...while that still great, why do you think your is faster?

I partioned mine as GUID as well.
 
Ouch, lol. I'm not sure if this makes a difference, but when I installed OS X I went to customize and unchecked everything. No other languages, no printer drivers, no extra software, nothing. Just Mac OS X. I don't have any start up programs either.
 
emt1 said:
Ouch, lol. I'm not sure if this makes a difference, but when I installed OS X I went to customize and unchecked everything. No other languages, no printer drivers, no extra software, nothing. Just Mac OS X. I don't have any start up programs either.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you got to love that! Are you using firmware 1199?
 
emt1 said:
Yeah it came with 1199 preinstalled, but I'm limited by SATA 1.5 anyways, so I don't think it helped that much.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I just updated the firmware to 1199 tonight...I don't think that should make a difference though.
 
Well, I don't know how to post it, but my xbench results gave me the following:

Sequential
Uncached write: 184.06MB/sec
Uncached write: 167.82MB/sec
Uncached read: 30.36 MB/sec
Uncached read: 201.93 MB/sec

Random
Uncached write: 12.17MB/sec
Uncached write: 174.44MB/sec
Uncached read: 12.59MB/sec
Uncached read: 153.29MB/sec

Thoughts
 

Attachments

  • X Bench.txt
    631 bytes · Views: 92
bbadalucco said:
Well, I don't know how to post it, but my xbench results gave me the following:

Sequential
Uncached write: 184.06MB/sec
Uncached write: 167.82MB/sec
Uncached read: 30.36 MB/sec
Uncached read: 201.93 MB/sec

Random
Uncached write: 12.17MB/sec
Uncached write: 174.44MB/sec
Uncached read: 12.59MB/sec
Uncached read: 153.29MB/sec

Thoughts
Click to expand...

looks in spec
 
Do Unibody MBs and MBPs all have SATA II?

I just ordered this drive (OCZ Vertex 250) and am excited to put it in my Unibody MacBook.

Anything I should know about the formatting/installation of OS X process before I begin?

(Other than the whole needing a Windows PC to perform firmware upgrades thing :grumble: )
 
MBHockey said:
Do Unibody MBs and MBPs all have SATA II?

I just ordered this drive (OCZ Vertex 250) and am excited to put it in my Unibody MacBook.

Anything I should know about the formatting/installation of OS X process before I begin?
Click to expand...

Partition the drive as GUID, other than that though i didn't do anything special.
 
I see they released a new firmware, 1275, on the 23rd. I'm going to assume my drive from Newegg isn't going to ship with that firmware. So I have to find a PC to flash this thing? Or would it work in an enclosure hooked up to a Mac running in Windows via boot camp?
 
MBHockey said:
I see they released a new firmware, 1275, on the 23rd. I'm going to assume my drive from Newegg isn't going to ship with that firmware. So I have to find a PC to flash this thing? Or would it work in an enclosure hooked up to a Mac running in Windows via boot camp?
Click to expand...

There's information for Mac users on the OCZ Forums. If I were you, if your drive comes with 1199 on it, then I wouldn't bother with the firmware update. I have a Vertex and I'm leaving it at 1199.
 
emt1 said:
There's information for Mac users on the OCZ Forums. If I were you, if your drive comes with 1199 on it, then I wouldn't bother with the firmware update. I have a Vertex and I'm leaving it at 1199.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I found that forum and it's been great reading through stuff. I'm not trying to push an extra couple of percentage points out of it. I just want it to operate well in real world tasks. If it comes with 1199 I am not going to upgrade it until they make a Mac flasher, if at all.

A guy had flashed it with his MBP and Parallels but the flashing process looks very complicated, and it might not be the best idea to flash the drive from a mac booted to a "live cd" of windows xp.
 
I was able to flash to 1275 with a BartPE bootdisk and a USB drive. Not really a great solution though. I needed to wait until the XP splash screen appeared, wait a couple of seconds, then connect the Vertex. The USB drive needs to inserted during startup to be recognized and you'll need a half-height jumper because the MBP SATA cable fits flush over the pins. It only took me about 15 tries before it worked and now they tell me I need to flash back to 1199 and then to 1275 if I want to recover a reporting serial number.

If yours is working, I'd leave it alone. I doubt if they'll ever make a Mac flasher. I've heard the SuperTalent Ultradrive ME is the same drive; I wonder if its firmware would work.
 
Wow, that sounds awful. Sorry to hear, but thank you for the post. I'll definitely hold off on the flashing. Hopefully it'll come with the 1199.
 
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...

This may seem obnoxious, quoting again and bolding, but I REALLY want people to read this before they go spend money on an SSD. I read the whole thing last night, and it's very eye opening. Vertex all the way, until a new kid on the block shows up and goes through the ringer!
 
1275 may not be worth upgrading if you have no problems with 1199 but eventually you'll upgrade to a better firmware in upcoming months since there will be a newer firmware that'll fix some more issues for mac users.

1275 is recommended over 1199 because it has a better steady-state performance.
 
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