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on the fence about buying 160gb ssd

jetjaguar

jetjaguar

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 6, 2009
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im seriously considering replacing my 320gb 7200rpm drive in my 17 mbp .. i dont really need alot of space .. i have maybe 30gb filled up on my current hd .. the speed difference would be nice as well as no vibrations and better battery life ..

but what about flashing firmware .. cant it not be done with a mbp ? u need to connect it to something else ?? what about TRIM ? this isnt a problem with win7 i hear but it is with osx ?
 
TRIM is not supported in OSX

If you really don't need the space, why not go with a 120gb or smaller SSD. I would recommend the OCZ 120gb or Intel 80gb for speed and reliability. The 160gb is just too expensive if you won't use it.
 
the intel g2 160gb

i mean im not going to use up 160gb .. but it might be up to maybe 80gb .. not sure .. dont you need to leave about 25% of the drive unused ?
 
and what about the reliability of an SSD drive ?
There are people speaking about wearing over a few years ... :confused:
 
You should try searching. All of your questions are answered many times before.

You ask opinionated questions like 'Is it a huge performance boost?' but then you fail to realize that people are willing to pay hundreds for a drive that only holds 80GB. It seems common sense to assume that this would probably equate to a huge performance boost if people are willing to pay so much.
 
Does anyone know if the Apple supplied SSD's are still PATA or if they are now SATA? I really want to order a 13" MBP with their 256GB SSD, but I can't find any reviews on the Apple supplied drive. :confused:
 
Im a huge advocate of the Duel HDD mod. A few months ago I was ready to pull the trigger on the G2. When it comes to programs I have about 34Gigs installed at any given moment. Then I looked at all my media. I have over 200Gigs of music, 100Gigs of movies and a couple gigs of pictures and documents. I DEFIANTLY did not want to put out the money to hold all this stuff on an SSD. Then I started looking at how often I use my DVD Drive. to make a long story short, not often.

I ended up going with the 80Gig intel G2, Then did the HDD mod to the DVD drive and swapped out the DVD drive for a Hitachi travelstar 500Gig 7200RPM drive. then when you are JUST tuning programs you can unmount the HDD to save battery. this takes all of 5 seconds to mount and unmount so its easy to do.

This was the best upgrade I have ever done. you can see my MBPs specs in my sig, when im running a few programs with the internet ON via WiFi and the Hitachi unmounted my battery lasts 6.5 hours. With the same programs running Plus itunes playing music, hitachi mounted (thats where my MP3s are) internet on, yada yada yada, My battery lasts 6 hours. With Hitachi unmounted and WiFi turned off, running the same programs the battery lasts almost 7.5 hours.

the Hitachi drive is VERY VERY quiet, VERY low heat and the 7200RPM drive is very fast. I couldn't recommended this setup enough.

BTW, You can buy an external enclosure for the DVD drive you take out for around 30 bucks. This way you DO have a way to run CDs on your MB...

Hopefully I could be of some help by sharing my experience. Good luck with the purchase.
 
thatguysmells said:
Does anyone know if the Apple supplied SSD's are still PATA or if they are now SATA? I really want to order a 13" MBP with their 256GB SSD, but I can't find any reviews on the Apple supplied drive. :confused:
Click to expand...

Apple's Macbook Pro only use SATA connectors, so their SSD must be SATA
 
if i swap out the stock hdd for the ssd .. and i need to bring in my mbp for applecare .. do i need to swap drives back to stock before i bring it in ... or it doesnt matter
 
Pretty much the same setup, but mine is the 160 Intel SSD, 320 7200 rpm and 8 GB of ram. It really works well, being able to unmount the HDD and going totally silent is a really trick. I went with the MCE Optibay and really like how small the DVD enslosure is, that works well too..


MikeSantor said:
Im a huge advocate of the Duel HDD mod. A few months ago I was ready to pull the trigger on the G2. When it comes to programs I have about 34Gigs installed at any given moment. Then I looked at all my media. I have over 200Gigs of music, 100Gigs of movies and a couple gigs of pictures and documents. I DEFIANTLY did not want to put out the money to hold all this stuff on an SSD. Then I started looking at how often I use my DVD Drive. to make a long story short, not often.

I ended up going with the 80Gig intel G2, Then did the HDD mod to the DVD drive and swapped out the DVD drive for a Hitachi travelstar 500Gig 7200RPM drive. then when you are JUST tuning programs you can unmount the HDD to save battery. this takes all of 5 seconds to mount and unmount so its easy to do.

This was the best upgrade I have ever done. you can see my MBPs specs in my sig, when im running a few programs with the internet ON via WiFi and the Hitachi unmounted my battery lasts 6.5 hours. With the same programs running Plus itunes playing music, hitachi mounted (thats where my MP3s are) internet on, yada yada yada, My battery lasts 6 hours. With Hitachi unmounted and WiFi turned off, running the same programs the battery lasts almost 7.5 hours.

the Hitachi drive is VERY VERY quiet, VERY low heat and the 7200RPM drive is very fast. I couldn't recommended this setup enough.

BTW, You can buy an external enclosure for the DVD drive you take out for around 30 bucks. This way you DO have a way to run CDs on your MB...

Hopefully I could be of some help by sharing my experience. Good luck with the purchase.
Click to expand...
 
i want to speed up my mbp .. 8gb is an option and cheaper but the ssd will be so much more noticable
 
...I'm really resisting getting an SSD, I'd like the trim support to become part of OS X before I spend a bunch of $$ on the drive... in a year they will be larger/faster and hopefully more reliable...
 
J&JPolangin said:
...I'm really resisting getting an SSD, I'd like the trim support to become part of OS X before I spend a bunch of $$ on the drive... in a year they will be larger/faster and hopefully more reliable...
Click to expand...

yeap i know but i dont think i can put off getting one
 
Are you swimming in money? If money is not an issue at all then yes, it is a massive improvement in speed (so i'm told).

But if you're like me (graduate student without a ton of money) it is too expensive and there is not enough space. I'm waiting until they are about 1$/gig so I can get a 200-300 gig intel drive for around $300. In the mean time I got a 320 gig 7200.4 seagate drive for $55 and it is great. Doesn't really feel much faster than the old drive (maybe a tiny bit) but it has lots of space and will tide me over another year or so until the intel drives are affordable.
 
Question for the optibay people:

My machine is only 5-6 months old and I bought 3 years of apple care, and I know that doing the optibay mod will VOID your warranty IF apple finds out.

If your computer were to crap out would it be easy to drop the optical drive back in without apple noticing? It wouldn't cause any scratching or damage that they could see?

Also could I put the SSD in the regular hard drive space, and the bigger regular hard disc in the optibay?

Does the optibay have a rubber thing like the regular drive area so that it will dampen vibrations?
 
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