Please explain 1.5Gb/s, and make a HD upgrade recommendation

[Paul B]

With a 13" MBP on the way, I've caught myself up on the EFI Firmware Update 1.7 issue and decided that instead of risking the bad performance (beachballs) or incompatibility with non-Apple drives, I'm going to stick to the 1.6 firmware and deal with 1.5Gb/s transfer rates.

Question 1: Is 1.5Gb/s limitation enough of a reason to not get an SSD?
Take the Intel X25-M for example. In benchmark tests its read speed is 254MB/s and its write speed is 101MB/s. The way I understand it, the read speed would be limited by 26% on a 1.5Gb/s (187MB/s) but the write speed would be unaffected, and random read/write speeds also unaffected. Is this correct? It's still significantly faster than a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB for example, which has 84MB/s transfer rates.

Question 2: Should I buy a second-hand Intel X25-M 80GB G1 ($170, used for 6 months)?
Considering 80GB G2s are going for $289 right now, I'm quite tempted, but I have some concerns:
1) It's been used for 6 months already. But since it "can support 100GB of new data every day for 5 years at a bare minimum" this isn't a big deal, right?
2) its ability/inability to run Boot Camp. Some people here had issues with installing Boot Camp on G1 models. Has anyone with a G1 been able to install Windows? This is critical because I need to use Windows for work.
3) No TRIM. I know OS X doesn't support TRIM yet but I would be doing some work in Windows 7 (involves PostgreSQL databases). Some people say there will be a decrease in performance when the drive fills up, and others say it will "level out" - which is true?

If I shouldn't buy this particular SSD, what alternative SSDs would you recommend me looking into?

Question 3: If I shouldn't get an SSD at all due to the 1.5Gb/s limitation, would my best option be running two internal 500GB Scorpio Blue in a RAID-0 setup?

 

[OldMike]

We just got our MBP 13" last week and I love it. It is actually for my wife, but I think I see another MBP in our near future!

We did get hit by the EFI 1.7 issue (the machine came with EFI 1.7, I believe), since I upgraded the 160 GB internal drive to 320 GB. I read through the EFI 1.7 thread here on MacRumors and downloaded the EFI 1.6 Firmware version found in the thread. Worked like a charm.

I was also thinking about getting an SSD. Sometimes, its easy to get caught up in the fervor of cool tech. I started looking through some old orders and gasped when I saw what I was paying for drives years ago - which made me think I should wait a while longer for prices to come down more.

With 4 GB of RAM installed, I am truly impressed by the performance of the little MBP 13". Booting after a shutdown takes less than 30 seconds. Usually shutting down the system is very quick, and sometimes even instantaneous. I can say that for me, I can hold off on the SSD for a little while longer.

I would wait to get your MBP, and play with it for a while, and see what you think. 4 GB, IMO is a must. With 4 GB, there is very little paging to the disk and performance is very nice.

Enjoy your new MBP!!

 

[Davidkoh]

With a 13" MBP on the way, I've caught myself up on the EFI Firmware Update 1.7 issue and decided that instead of risking the bad performance (beachballs) or incompatibility with non-Apple drives, I'm going to stick to the 1.6 firmware and deal with 1.5Gb/s transfer rates.

Question 1: Is 1.5Gb/s limitation enough of a reason to not get an SSD?
Take the Intel X25-M for example. In benchmark tests its read speed is 254MB/s and its write speed is 101MB/s. The way I understand it, the read speed would be limited by 26% on a 1.5Gb/s (187MB/s) but the write speed would be unaffected, and random read/write speeds also unaffected. Is this correct? It's still significantly faster than a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB for example, which has 84MB/s transfer rates.

Question 2: Should I buy a second-hand Intel X25-M 80GB G1 ($170, used for 6 months)?
Considering 80GB G2s are going for $289 right now, I'm quite tempted, but I have some concerns:
1) It's been used for 6 months already. But since it "can support 100GB of new data every day for 5 years at a bare minimum" this isn't a big deal, right?
2) its ability/inability to run Boot Camp. Some people here had issues with installing Boot Camp on G1 models. Has anyone with a G1 been able to install Windows? This is critical because I need to use Windows for work.
3) No TRIM. I know OS X doesn't support TRIM yet but I would be doing some work in Windows 7 (involves PostgreSQL databases). Some people say there will be a decrease in performance when the drive fills up, and others say it will "level out" - which is true?

If I shouldn't buy this particular SSD, what alternative SSDs would you recommend me looking into?

Question 3: If I shouldn't get an SSD at all due to the 1.5Gb/s limitation, would my best option be running two internal 500GB Scorpio Blue in a RAID-0 setup?

1. You will still see an increase in speed.

2. I would advise you to get the G2 due to the TRIM support.

 

[cluthz]

The biggest increase on SSD speeds are on small reads, not the big sequential ones which gives you the highest throughtput.

The 26% physical limit on throughtput is in real life usage less than a few % difference, perhaps even less, unless you only read really big files all the time.

 

[gnasher729]

1.5 GBit/sec = 150 MByte/sec.

10 bits = 8 data bits and 2 control bits

And of course Giga = billion, Mega = million (shouldn't need to be mentioned, because for transfer rates, nobody ever used that power-of-two nonsense).