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Questions about SSD!

Z

zachsternelson

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 13, 2010
24
0
First and foremost, I am using a stock MacbookPro 7,1 with 4GB RAM, 2.4Ghz Core2Duo Processor and 250GB 5200rpm hard drive. (if this matters at all!)

My first question, should I buy SSDs now or wait? And if wait, how long? I am set on getting a OWC SSDs by the way.

Moving on, what I want to do is this:

2 ~40GB Internal SSDs in RAID 0
(removing the Optical Drive and putting in Data Doubler or equivalent.)
Put my 250GB HDD in an external FW800 enclosure for Time Machine.
Put my optical drive in an external USB enclosure.

First, what kind of speeds can I see from the RAID 0 SSDs?
Second, if I need to boot from the installation disk, can I still press the "c" key or will I have to do a workaround because the optical drive is external?
Lastly, can anyone recommend an economically friendly FW800 enclosure for 2.5" hard drives and a USB enclosure for my optical drive? (I hope both of them can be run off the bus?)

Thanks!
 
One SSD should be enough and save you from the external HD hassle. Trust me, you don't want to keep the external plugged in all the time, that eats portability.
 
Hellhammer said:
One SSD should be enough and save you from the external HD hassle. Trust me, you don't want to keep the external plugged in all the time, that eats portability.
Click to expand...

Well if I only use 1 SSD, thats ~40GB of usable space, and the hard drive for backups? I think I may require more than 40GB of space.
 
SSDs are very nice to have, but I personally think now's not the time to get one. They are still a rather new technology, and the price per capacity isn't quite there. Give it 1-2 more years.
 
I just got and installed my OCZ Vertex 2 and after a few tweaks it's blazing fast. 15 second boots. I don't know what use you'd have with two ssds in raid, since one seems pleeenty fast. I recommenced getting an SSD around 60gb for the OS and applications, and maybe a 500gb or 650gb 5400 rpm drive for videos and large iphoto/aperture/itunes libraries.

And if you want to wait for the next gen SSDs, just remember that if you always wait for next gen technologies that supposedly are just around the corner, you'll never get anything. Tomorrow never comes - is what I've found.
 
I think RAID 0 is a little bit of overkill for anything but a workstation computer like a Mac Pro.
With a single SSD you have same or better latency and the sequential read write is already very high. Much higher really doesn't get you all that much considering their is no interface on you notebook than can handle those transfer speeds. All that is remaining is load and save times of bigger files. I doubt it is worth it.
 
Thomsen said:
May I ask what the tweak were?
I'm waiting for a Vertex 2 myself and would like to know before installing. thanks.
Click to expand...

I slimmed the OS and applications down by using CleanMyMac and Monolingual, which shaved a couple of gb's off the boot volume. Then I deleted a few unnecessary LaunchDaemons and LaunchAgents from the volume/library folder. Then I enabled something called Noatime, following this http://blogs.nullvision.com/?p=275 guide. Last I repaired permissions with disk utility, made sure the ssd was set as the boot drive in system preferences. The ssd had already shaved 30 seconds off the boot time, and the tweaking shaved a good 8 seconds more off. The tweaking process took maybe 45 minutes in total, but I think it's worth it.
 
seydurin said:
tweaking shaved a good 8 seconds more off. The tweaking process took maybe 45 minutes in total, but I think it's worth it.
Click to expand...

Good info, thanks, I'm also considering an SSD after I pick up a macbook pro.

I'm sure there are other benefits to the tweaking; but I can't help but think that your breakeven point is 337 reboots. On the 338th, the 8 seconds saved will exceed the 45 minutes invested. :D
 
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