OWC and Apple's SSD in my mbp i7 testing

[milan03]

I just finally received 240GB OWC Mercury Pro SSD along with Apple's 512GB SSD (Toshiba), and after spending hours doing a clean install finally started benching.

The OWC is quite faster, and since it's my boot drive, it boots in less than 13secs from chime or about 17sec from the moment I press the power button on a cold boot. I'm extremely happy

The Apple's Hitachi drive is my storage drive it went in optical bay slot after I installed all necessary apps that needed a dvd drive.

I set it up this way ( no RAID) for several reasons... the most important is the fact that I perform live and need a dedicated drive for my samples, audio tracks etc while my firewire port is occupied with Apogee Duet Audio Interface. That eliminates external High Performance HDD right away. Another reason was battery life. Many have been struggling with their mbp's baterry life after they installed two SSD in RAID. So I'm a happy camper so far.

Let me know if you want more detailed tests, and which benchmark did you want me to use.

GeekBench 64-bit Results: http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/295162

 

[milan03]

Did some more testing and actually saw improvements over the initial testing.
Boot time 16sec from the moment I press the button. Amazing job OWC!

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Yeesh all that hardware brings the machine to what, $3500? Good stuff

 

[milan03]

Yeesh all that hardware brings the machine to what, $3500? Good stuff

Yeah it's up there. The performance benefits are not describable. You really have to see the performance to believe.

 

[sarah.kho]

Hi,

You said you have installed both hard disks into the laptop, is that possible?
I mean, can I put two hard disks, one SSD and one magnetic into a 15" macbook pro core i7?

Thanks.

 

[milan03]

Hi,

You said you have installed both hard disks into the laptop, is that possible?
I mean, can I put two hard disks, one SSD and one magnetic into a 15" macbook pro core i7?

Thanks.

You can put any two 2.5" storage devices of your choice by pulling out DVD Superdrive and getting a bracket that will allow you to install storage instead.
just make sure your boot drive stays in regular HDD slot since hibernate sometimes doesn't work.

 

[circularforward]

What is the stock Hitachi's boot time? Thanks.

 

[milan03]

What is the stock Hitachi's boot time? Thanks.

I don't boot to Hitachi. It's in my Optical Bay and it's solely for projects.
On the other hand, OWC boots in about 17sec from the moment I press the button, 12sec from chime. Scary fast.

 

[stylinexpat]

That must be nice Enjoy the new beast I like mine a low but am going to have to get rid of my 13" and get the 15" with the better/higher resolution to be able to make better use of my laptop. Would really be nice were Apple to offer a 13" MBP with a higher screen resolution like the one used in the 15" MBP's.

 

[milan03]

Thank you buddy! Well the amount of PPI on 15" Hi res is so high that it makes it more difficult to read small text on certain sites. Also, the new Microsoft Word 2011 print looks REALLY small in comparison to 2008 version. That being said, the real estate and the high quality panel that Apple use on the new mbp's is nothing but stunning.
People have been asking for 1920x1200 screen on a 15" panel, but that would make it really hard to read.
Currently 15" Hi res has about 128 PPI, 17" mbp 133 PPI.
15" 1920x1200 would be having 147 PPI !!!! That wouldn't be easy on your eyes when it comes to reading... anything!

Imho a nice external display of your choice is my recommendation.

 

[milan03]

For some reason doing tests (hd tune) in bootcamp partition have been giving me much lower results. Has anyone with SSD experienced similar issues?

 

[dtpearson]

Another reason was battery life. Many have been struggling with their mbp's baterry life after they installed two SSD in RAID.

I am running two of the Crucial C300 256GB SSDs in this here i7 17” Macbook Pro. I am not seeing any hit with battery life (but i have not done any serious testing) i have been getting 5-7 hours depending on use.

The speed is great but i am having issues waking from sleep (sometimes locks up), it seems to happen often if sleep is longer than an hour or so.

 

[milan03]

Do you do any serious work on it where you need a dedicated drive for your projects, files, samples, scratch disk etc? Are you running an external solution for that or are you putting it on the same RAID internal setup?

thanks.

 

[davidlv]

The speed is great but i am having issues waking from sleep (sometimes locks up), it seems to happen often if sleep is longer than an hour or so.

Try downloading and installing SmartSleep and setting it to Sleep only, that may cure the wake up issue, which it is often associated with hibernation and writing/reading to and from the HD. At least this procedure cured my MBP, I was constantly getting crashes after wake up. None since I started using SmartSleep.

 

[milan03]

Not only that, but it will give you back your SSD space by deleting SleepFile sleepimage. Nice little app.