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NATO

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 14, 2005
1,704
43
Northern Ireland
I have been doing a lot of reading up on SSDs of late as I quite fancy putting one in my MacBook Pro to try to eliminate the traditional HDD bottleneck. However, I'm not quite ready to spend £400+ on a cutting edge 120GB model so I went looking for a smaller capacity model which was economical as I can get away with as little as 64GB for everything I need so long as I don't copy over my iTunes library.

I came across a Samsung 64GB MLC SSD for just £99.99 which I found tempting, it's model number is MMCRE64G5MPP-0VA00. It's spec sheet states a 90MB/s Max sequential Read speed, 70MB/s Max Sequential Write speed and with power consumption figures of 0.48W/0.46W (Read/Write), 0.2W (Idle).

While I obviously want much higher performance than a 7200RPM HDD, I also value power consumption and in the articles I read comparing various SSDs, it was only the Samsung that really seemed to have low power consumption figures, the vast majority were around the same or even more than a HDD.

So my question is basically if this is a good buy for £99?
 
It looks an excellent buy!

Much cheaper than the Intel X-25 and you're only losing 16Gb.

There's no reviews directly comparing it with the Intel X-25 but it will have all the usual access times of an SSD to speed things along.

Novatech review Samsung 64GB MLC Drive (Single Drive & RAID)

The 128Mb model is so expensive in comparison though at £264.49!!

If you upgraded your Mac Pro at a later date you could buy 2 of the 64Gb drives with 2 3.5" to 2.5" mounting brackets for £218.38 and RAID them together.

I'd need a PCI SATA Adapter myself but even that's only £272.52 all in.

If you're only thinking things through, these two tests on Barefeats show how similar SSDs compare to fast 7,200rpm notebook drives:-

Seagate Momentus 7200.4

This article shows a comparison of the X-25m an OCS SSD and 2 HDDs

HDD vs SSD
 
Thanks a lot, great links and advice there!

I've gone ahead and ordered one, along with a USB enclosure for the HDD I'll be taking out of the MBP, should be here tomorrow so I'll post back when I've had a chance to test it out a little.

For anyone who's interested, it's Novatech.co.uk which have them for sale, seemingly they're the only ones in the UK that I've found that sell these Samsung MLC drives. I couldn't justify the expense of the Intel X25-M, I'm hoping this drive will be a good substitute for a while until SSD prices fall to a more reasonable level.
 
Would like to get an SSD for my Gaming PC When i build it, as i'll just be installing games, and not THAT many, so an SSD does sound like a good idea.

Be Interesting to hear what you think.
 
is this the same SSD that is the first gen MacBook Airs?

I am not up on my SSD's :p

Sounds like a really good deal though, although I think I will go Seagate 72k 500GB for my MBP and keep the SSD for my Air.

Btw NATO, I have the same size in my Ar and plenty of room left :)

Please post back I am interested to see how this goes oh and any chance of some pics while your doing the change??

D:apple:
 
Thanks for the replies, much appreciated :)

The drive arrived today, got it installed very quickly (although the 4 little screws at each corner of the existing drive were a nightmare to get out as I didn't have a small enough torx driver). Installed OS X nice and easily, and I have to say I'm impressed. Boot time is a lot quicker, the system is responsive immediately after typing in my login password (compared to a HDD where there's a few seconds while it loads everything), and app startups are instantaneous. I'm very, very impressed! It's like having a much, much faster computer with such a small upgrade :)

Space isn't too bad, I have all the apps I need, OS X itself and all the data in my home folder minus my iTunes library, and I have 20GB left, which is plenty. I'm using the HDD I removed in an external enclosure which I'm going to put my iTunes library + Movies/TVShows on, so I've got the best of both worlds. In the next month or two I'm going to pick up an Optibay and put the HDD back in as a secondary drive.

Oddly, having a laptop with an SSD actually makes my Mac Pro feel really sluggish when its loading apps from the HDD etc, I might have to consider a SSD upgrade for it at some point for that once prices come down to a more reasonable level.

One thing I've definitely learnt is that what I would have traditionally considered to be a slow computer is really just a computer with a HDD bottleneck. It's amazing the perceived speed increase by removing that bottleneck.

I took a few pics while I was performing the upgrade (plus a few comparing the 17" Unibody with my old 15" Classic MBP. Have a look
 
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