Should I get a SSD to use as my systems drive?

[SnapperUK]

I have a 2 x 3.2 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro with 32 Gb of Ram. I currently use one Hard Drive (7200rpm) exclusively for the system and applications. Would I see a performance boost by using a SSD as my systems drive?
Is it just a question of sliding a SATA SSD into an empty Hard Drive slot?
Any thoughts on pros & cons would be appreciated.

 

[MKSinSA]

One user's opinion

Yeah I'm pleased to say that it looks like you can boot from the Sandisk Expresscard adapter. I restored my DiskWarrior DVD image to my SanDisk Extreme III SDHC 4GB card and it booted fine and it was significantly faster booting than my DVD. If only I could easily put both DiskWarrior and DiskUtility on my SD I'd be happy. But I think you need a 16 GB drive in order to restore your OSX image onto. I guess that will be SL when it's released.

Cheers!

 

[gugucom]

I have a 2 x 3.2 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro with 32 Gb of Ram. I currently use one Hard Drive (7200rpm) exclusively for the system and applications. Would I see a performance boost by using a SSD as my systems drive?
Is it just a question of sliding a SATA SSD into an empty Hard Drive slot?
Any thoughts on pros & cons would be appreciated.

1. SSD or Raid0 SSDs would certainly give you a performance boost loading apps and booting the OS. All copying to drive or reading from drive would be speeded up considerably. Read/Write bottlenecked programs would execute faster.

2. Yep, you just stick the drive in with a suitable adapter which are 15$ from Kingston, inialize it or them, partition, format, RAID0 and clone the OS X disk. It is all done easily with disk utility in a short period of time.


2. SSDs are not cheap. So you want to run them for system and apps only. Put data like music or video on another conventional drive. Perhaps leave the stock drive in it for the purpose.

3. If several smaller drives are cheaper than one bigger for your requirements you will see speed improvements by putting them in a RAID0 array to build the total capacity. You are only limited by the number of drive bays.

 

[DoFoT9]

+1 for 2x/3x SSDs in RAID0.

what applications do you run?

 

[Transporteur]

You spend thousands of Dollars for your Mac Pro, so go the other 300$ for a SSD!
Your system will definitely get much more snappy.

But mind, that SSDs get slower while using them. There are some of them (Corsair's P series) that have an implementet garbage collection which restores their speed to the original value.
I also heard about tools, but I'm not sure if they work under OS X (to be honest I highly doubt it).

 

[parapup]

But mind, that SSDs get slower while using them. There are some of them (Corsair's P series) that have an implementet garbage collection which restores their speed to the original value.

I just started using the Corsair P256 - can you point me to your source regarding it having garbage collection implemented? It's the CMFSSD-256GBG2D that I have and I recall reading somewhere that it did not have the GC implemented and was not firmware upgradeable.

 

[Transporteur]

The P128 with firmware VBM18C1Q already have the garbage collection enabled (it's called the TRIM command).

I've been reading through the Corsair forums today and from what Corsair support members say, there is no upgrade tool out yet, but it will be released in october.
I don't see why your P256 should not be upgradeable.

But what is still unclear to me, how does the garbage collection work?
Quotation wiki:
"The TRIM command allows an operating system to tell a solid-state drive (or "SSD") which data blocks are no longer in use."
As far as I know Apple, OS X is not capable of that (yet).
So even the new firmware would be useless for OS X users.
Can anyone confirm that?

 

[VirtualRain]

I have a 2 x 3.2 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro with 32 Gb of Ram. I currently use one Hard Drive (7200rpm) exclusively for the system and applications. Would I see a performance boost by using a SSD as my systems drive?
Is it just a question of sliding a SATA SSD into an empty Hard Drive slot?
Any thoughts on pros & cons would be appreciated.

Sorry for the side-bar but 32GB of RAM? What on earth do you do with this rig?

My OS and APPS only consume 40GB on my system drive. With 32GB of RAM, nearly every stitch of code on my system could sit in RAM.

Let's face it, you only need a HD for starting up your system. I'm sure if you don't shut this thing off very often, after awhile, everything you might possibly run is already in RAM!!!

At any rate, you seem to have no shortage of cash, so why not get a pair of SSD's and run them in RAID0 for the rare occasion that your system might need to access the drives.

My only question is... what took you so long to consider adopting SSD's?

 

[parapup]

But what is still unclear to me, how does the garbage collection work?
Quotation wiki:
"The TRIM command allows an operating system to tell a solid-state drive (or "SSD") which data blocks are no longer in use."
As far as I know Apple, OS X is not capable of that (yet).
So even the new firmware would be useless for OS X users.
Can anyone confirm that?

Right - the TRIM command requires underlying OS support. Windows 7 will support it when released but as Apple has proven it has no love for anything they don't sell I suppose OSX users will have to wait indefinitely.

Anyway the P256 went into my 8530p HP laptop after hearing a lot of scary stories of mid 09 MBPs with 1.7 EFI having trouble with faster drives. So once Win7 is out and like you said if Corsair releases an update for TRIM support on the P256 - I will be all set.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

First, I really doubt that you could think of 32GB of memory and not having SSDs in your Mac Pro. SSDs aren't cost effective right now and HDs are the way to go unless you have cash (and lots of it) to burn.

SSDs will boost drive read times, write times, and load times. Launching apps will be faster, data transfer too.

 

[Transporteur]

Right - the TRIM command requires underlying OS support. Windows 7 will support it when released but as Apple has proven it has no love for anything they don't sell I suppose OSX users will have to wait indefinitely.

Apple sells SSDs for quite a while now, so it should be coming up if it is not implementet yet.

I found a very interesting post in the OCZ forum. -> hit me

A clear statement of Apple would be nice.

 

[parapup]

I found a very interesting post in the OCZ forum. -> hit me

A clear statement of Apple would be nice.

Hmm. Interesting that they already have bits and pieces needed but I some how doubt they will implement TRIM support up until they actually ship a TRIM capable SSD. Given their choices for current SSD models they ship are conservative - they shipping TRIM supported SSDs may not happen that quick.

 

[Transporteur]

From what I've read, their current SSDs will support TRIM after updating the firmware, which should be offered after the release of Windows 7 in october.