Should I Raid 2 SSD on my mbp 2012?

[Lion114]

hey guys
I have MBP 2012 Mid 13 inch i5
lately I'm really thinking about upgrading my Mac and get a new one but its so expensive .
and to be honest the only thing I do Is literally internet and youtube and office work thats it.
right now I have 250GB samsung 850 eve SSD
Ive seen few people in youtube that RAID 2 SSD in the MacBook by taking out the CDROOM.
will it make my computer faster better then only one SSD?
in order to do it do I have to get the same SSD same company same size or I can just buy one 128 to my 250?
can I just buy 2 of 120GB and RAID them and I will still have better performance then 250? becuase it will be even cheaper and I can exchange mine for 2 of 120 if thats the case
I would like to hear your opinion guys.

 

[Freyqq]

For raid 0 you need 2 of the same drive. Same size and preferably same model. Upside is theoretically double the speed for writes. Downside is double the chance of failure, so definitely keep a backup.

If you already have an SSD, though, you might not see much benefit. More ram may be a better upgrade, depending on your use case.

 

[Lion114]

For raid 0 you need 2 of the same drive. Same size and preferably same model. Upside is theoretically double the speed for writes. Downside is double the chance of failure, so definitely keep a backup.

If you already have an SSD, though, you might not see much benefit. More ram may be a better upgrade, depending on your use case.

well I know the question is
if I will exchange my 250gb for 2 120GB and raid them
will it be better? so I can raid and get more speed? or RAID will work with 2 of 250G+

 

[treekram]

For RAID 0, it's best if the SSD's are the size and model but you don't have to do this. If the SSD's are different sizes, the total you'll get is twice the size of the smaller SSD.

If "the only thing I do Is literally internet and youtube and office work thats it", then you very likely will not notice any difference. I have a RAID 0 using 2 850 Evo's in my 2012 MBP. To notice a difference you need an application where you read and/or write large files such that the read/write operation is not slowed down by any processing of that file (so a file copy vs. transcoding a video file).

If you don't already have 16GB of memory, upgrading the memory may be the most cost-effective way to improve performance.

 

[Lion114]

For RAID 0, it's best if the SSD's are the size and model but you don't have to do this. If the SSD's are different sizes, the total you'll get is twice the size of the smaller SSD.

If "the only thing I do Is literally internet and youtube and office work thats it", then you very likely will not notice any difference. I have a RAID 0 using 2 850 Evo's in my 2012 MBP. To notice a difference you need an application where you read and/or write large files such that the read/write operation is not slowed down by any processing of that file (so a file copy vs. transcoding a video file).

If you don't already have 16GB of memory, upgrading the memory may be the most cost-effective way to improve performance.

yeah so i need to buy ram now i don't sure if to get 8 or just 16gb
with ram upgrade i will notice a different?
you don't think i should do raid? or maybe just even exchange mine for 2 120GB SSD then raid it will it give me better performance then 1 850 eve samsung 250gb?

 

[treekram]

I just realized that you're the same poster I responded to in:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-2012-mid-13-inch.2040139/#post-24459869

As for the RAM, you can really get good information by running the Activity Monitor as I suggested in the other post. To run Activity Monitor, you can do a Spotlight search and search for "activity monitor" and it should be the first result.

As I mentioned, based on your description of how you use your computer, I don't think you'll notice a difference in having a RAID 0 setup by having 2 SSD's in your computer. However, there's no harm in doing so. If you do RAID, I would suggest that you get a 2nd 850 Evo instead of having two 120GB SSD's. Here in the US at Amazon, for a while the 250GB Evo was actually going for less than the 120GB Evo. If you get 2 120GB SSD's that don't perform as well as the Evo you're replacing, you could actually experience worse performance than what you have now. If the Evo you have now is not new and if you put in a 2nd Evo, you have to realize that the older one is very likely to fail before the first one and as such you really need to be sure to do backups.

 

[Lion114]

I just realized that you're the same poster I responded to in:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-2012-mid-13-inch.2040139/#post-24459869

As for the RAM, you can really get good information by running the Activity Monitor as I suggested in the other post. To run Activity Monitor, you can do a Spotlight search and search for "activity monitor" and it should be the first result.

As I mentioned, based on your description of how you use your computer, I don't think you'll notice a difference in having a RAID 0 setup by having 2 SSD's in your computer. However, there's no harm in doing so. If you do RAID, I would suggest that you get a 2nd 850 Evo instead of having two 120GB SSD's. Here in the US at Amazon, for a while the 250GB Evo was actually going for less than the 120GB Evo. If you get 2 120GB SSD's that don't perform as well as the Evo you're replacing, you could actually experience worse performance than what you have now. If the Evo you have now is not new and if you put in a 2nd Evo, you have to realize that the older one is very likely to fail before the first one and as such you really need to be sure to do backups.

my 850 evo 250gb is 1 month old.
i would like to get another but they sell them in amazon for almost 100$ with 16gb ram it will be 200$ already...
i wanted to save some money by maybe buying 2 of San disk plus 120GB.
hmm to do RAID 0 with SSD you have to be the same size? i can't just add another 120GB san disk plus?

 

[treekram]

If you get a 120GB drive, you can use 120GB of the Evo 850 for the RAID0 and you have 240GB total. There are posts on the Internet that say you can partition the larger SSD and use the remaining 130GB on the Evo 850 as a regular non-RAID partition. There seems to be a newer version of the SanDisk Plus, but the older one was slow (as compared to other SSD's) so if you used the older SanDisk Plus with the Evo 850, you would get worse performance than what you have now. I don't if and by how much performance has improved with the new SanDisk Plus.

I think you should get the memory, try that out and see if that improves things before getting another SSD. I'll say it again - for your situation, I don't think RAID 0 will help that much if at all.

 

[ZapNZs]

If you want optimal reliability, then no, because your chance of unrecoverable system failures increases inherently with how RAID 0 works. Further, for the work you have described, it seems unlikely this is going to make things much faster. However, there are reports of two SSDs in a RAID 0 sometimes making boot times longer.

For basic browser use, 1080p and lower YT vids (which is like 95% of YT!), and office work, I have not personally seen a big difference between my SSDs that max at around 300 MB/s and my SSDs that max around 3,000 MB/s.

You could go to a superior SSD in a larger size, such as the Samsung 850 PRO, but, the performance benefit would likely be moot (unless your current SSD is near full, because SSDs do lose speed as they approach filled capacity.)

edit - just to check, if your current SSD is running slow, have you enabled TRIM? I ask because my Samsung 850 PRO write speeds slow A LOT when used as a boot drive when TRIM is not enabled - but I'm not sure if the Evo suffers from this same issue given they may use different controllers.

 

[Lion114]

If you want optimal reliability, then no, because your chance of unrecoverable system failures increases inherently with how RAID 0 works. Further, for the work you have described, it seems unlikely this is going to make things much faster. However, there are reports of two SSDs in a RAID 0 sometimes making boot times longer.

For basic browser use, 1080p and lower YT vids (which is like 95% of YT!), and office work, I have not personally seen a big difference between my SSDs that max at around 300 MB/s and my SSDs that max around 3,000 MB/s.

You could go to a superior SSD in a larger size, such as the Samsung 850 PRO, but, the performance benefit would likely be moot (unless your current SSD is near full, because SSDs do lose speed as they approach filled capacity.)

edit - just to check, if your current SSD is running slow, have you enabled TRIM? I ask because my Samsung 850 PRO write speeds slow A LOT when used as a boot drive when TRIM is not enabled - but I'm not sure if the Evo suffers from this same issue given they may use different controllers.

yeah my trim is on.
you know lately even when i boot the mac he still boot fast but once i type my password and log in to my account takes him few seconds. which never happened..
my ssd not full I'm using 30-40GB of 250GB..
i will upgrade my ram first and then see if still things staying the same.

 

[treekram]

If you're having a slowdown immediately after login, it may be a software issue. Do you have apps that you have start automatically at login? Do you have startup items, kernel extensions or similar items? If you don't know or don't know what I'm talking about, I would suggest you download and run EtreCheck and you can either use the results to help identify possible issues or post it here.

https://etrecheck.com/

 

[robvas]

Not worth it. just buy one big SSD

 

[Lion114]

If you're having a slowdown immediately after login, it may be a software issue. Do you have apps that you have start automatically at login? Do you have startup items, kernel extensions or similar items? If you don't know or don't know what I'm talking about, I would suggest you download and run EtreCheck and you can either use the results to help identify possible issues or post it here.

https://etrecheck.com/

no i don't have..
I'm on el capitan should i upgrade to Seirra? i really afraid to slow down even more or the life battery there is not that good for MBP 2012 mid 13 inch
this is the results anyway all looks good no?
i did the check few days ago but nothing changed since then...

EtreCheck version: 3.1.5 (343)

Report generated 2017-04-03 16:58:40

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime 1:33

Performance: Excellent



Click the [Support] links for help with non-Apple products.

Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.



Problem: No problem - just checking



Hardware Information: ⓘ

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)

[Technical Specifications] - [User Guide] - [Warranty & Service]

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro9,2

1 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-3210M) CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM Upgradeable - [Instructions]

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Good - Handoff/Airdrop2 supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 445



Video Information: ⓘ

Intel HD Graphics 4000

Color LCD 1280 x 800



System Software: ⓘ

OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G1217) - Time since boot: about 4 days



Disk Information: ⓘ

Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB disk0 : (250.06 GB) (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

[Show SMART report]

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB

[redacted] SSD (disk1) / [Startup]: 248.83 GB (198.89 GB free)

Core Storage: disk0s2 249.20 GB Online



HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS41N ()



USB Information: ⓘ

Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller



Thunderbolt Information: ⓘ

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus



Gatekeeper: ⓘ

Mac App Store and identified developers



Kernel Extensions: ⓘ

/Applications/Parallels Desktop.app

[not loaded] com.parallels.kext.hypervisor (10.1.4 28883 - SDK 10.7 - 2017-03-02) [Support]

[not loaded] com.parallels.kext.netbridge (10.1.4 28883 - SDK 10.7 - 2017-03-02) [Support]

[not loaded] com.parallels.kext.usbconnect (10.1.4 28883 - SDK 10.7 - 2017-03-02) [Support]

[not loaded] com.parallels.kext.vnic (10.1.4 28883 - SDK 10.7 - 2017-03-02) [Support]



System Launch Agents: ⓘ

[not loaded] 7 Apple tasks

[loaded] 163 Apple tasks

[running] 69 Apple tasks



System Launch Daemons: ⓘ

[not loaded] 47 Apple tasks

[loaded] 158 Apple tasks

[running] 85 Apple tasks



Launch Daemons: ⓘ

[loaded] com.malwarebytes.HelperTool.plist (2017-02-28) [Support]



User Launch Agents: ⓘ

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (2017-03-02) [Support]



User Login Items: ⓘ

iTunesHelper Application (2017-03-02)

(/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)



Internet Plug-ins: ⓘ

Default Browser: 601 - SDK 10.11 (2017-03-02)

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (2017-01-19)



Safari Extensions: ⓘ

Adblock Plus - Eyeo GmbH - https://adblockplus.org/ (2017-02-02)

Open in Internet Explorer - Parallels - http://www.parallels.com (2017-03-02)



3rd Party Preference Panes: ⓘ

None



Time Machine: ⓘ

Time Machine not configured!



Top Processes by CPU: ⓘ

5% WindowServer

2% fontd

2% kernel_task

0% cloudpaird



Top Processes by Memory: ⓘ

582 MB kernel_task

74 MB cfprefsd(2)

53 MB mds_stores

41 MB softwareupdated

41 MB mdworker(5)



Virtual Memory Information: ⓘ

2.46 GB Available RAM

1.57 GB Free RAM

1.54 GB Used RAM

920 MB Cached files

90 MB Swap Used



Diagnostics Information: ⓘ

Apr 3, 2017, 04:36:31 PM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent_2017-04-03-163631_[ redacted].cpu_resource.diag [Details]

/System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices /com.apple.WebKit.WebContent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

 

[treekram]

The items that I see that could cause issues would be Parallels, the Google updater (keystone) and Malwarebytes. A look on the Internet shows that at least some people have had performance issues with each of these software programs. I don't use any of these apps so I can't give specific advice on them.

You might want to try going into safe mode and see if there is a noticeable difference. If there is, you should probably not load each item individually to see which one(s) makes the difference.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

 

[Lion114]

The items that I see that could cause issues would be Parallels, the Google updater (keystone) and Malwarebytes. A look on the Internet shows that at least some people have had performance issues with each of these software programs. I don't use any of these apps so I can't give specific advice on them.

You might want to try going into safe mode and see if there is a noticeable difference. If there is, you should probably not load each item individually to see which one(s) makes the difference.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

non of them are working i mean non of them boot with the mac...

 

[treekram]

I don't understand - are you saying you can't boot into safe mode or are you saying that you haven't started the listed programs? On second look, the listing shows the Parallels kernel extensions are not loaded but malwarebytes.HelperTool and google.keystone are - these will start running processes in the background even if you don't start the programs themselves.