Should I wait for Snow leopard to buy 2 Intel X-25M's?

[ildondeigiocchi]

I've recently been looking into buying SSD's for my Mac Pro. I currently have a stock 640GB Hitachi HDD and a Western Digital 150GB HDD. They both have clock speeds of 7200RPM but under intense tasks I can clearly hear them struggling under pressure. Plus on such a great system I feel as though my hard drives are bottlenecking the system. My entire primary HDD is full since I imported lots of HD video footage from my Sony HDR-XR520V camcorder. I know that Intel X-25M are great (if not the best) SSD's out on the market. So I would really like to get two of them and set them up in RAID. I'm wondering if I should buy the 1st gen. ones from newegg since they're on special or wait for the second gen. ones? What will be the advantages? Also what performance gain will I get if I wait to install snow leopard on them?

 

[nightfly13]

I've recently been looking into buying SSD's for my Mac Pro. I currently have a stock 640GB Hitachi HDD and a Western Digital 150GB HDD. They both have clock speeds of 7200RPM but under intense tasks I can clearly hear them struggling under pressure. Plus on such a great system I feel as though my hard drives are bottlenecking the system. My entire primary HDD is full since I imported lots of HD video footage from my Sony HDR-XR520V camcorder. I know that Intel X-25M are great (if not the best) SSD's out on the market. So I would really like to get two of them and set them up in RAID. I'm wondering if I should buy the 1st gen. ones from newegg since they're on special or wait for the second gen. ones? What will be the advantages? Also what performance gain will I get if I wait to install snow leopard on them?

I have a single X25-M and find it WAY faster than my stock 7200 HDD. I plan to buy a second and run RAID 0 as you propose - both for the size (had to put iPhoto and iTunes libraries on spinning disks) and for speed gains.

Interesting you should mention waiting for Snow Leopard. I have a pretty old installation of Leopard and I actually find my brand new MBP runs a little more smoothly (no jitters or hangups or beach balls) in day to day operations. Obv. the Mac Pro is faster in any and all intensive tasks. The MBP has a Vertex SSD. I blame my old, kinda patch-work updated Leopard installation for this. I thought of doing a clean installation, but then figured I'd just wait for Snow Leopard to go through that hassle. So no performance gains from waiting for Snow Leopard, but in the event you're not super-excited about how the machine is running - even on the SSD - then knowing a fresh installation of Snow Leopard is just around the corner should ease the purchasing.

As for first or second Gen X25-M I can't really speak into that - I haven't followed the controversy about the recall for the 2nd Gen units. I actually planned to join a 2nd Gen to my first gen for RAID 0 when it's time.

 

[gugucom]

I would go with 2nd gen because they are significantly faster in many cases of write perations if I remember correctly. Just wait some days until they have made the firmware upgrades.

I don't think that Leo vs SL really enters that question.

 

[ildondeigiocchi]

I think I might be leaning toward snow leopard also because the OS takes up less space on the hard drive. In terms of speed gain with the Gen 2. of the Intel X-25M, are there any ideas on the read and write performance? I haven't found any preliminary benchmarks so far. Thanks for the replies and feel free to continue posting.

 

[gugucom]

That is an interesting thought. Installing SL over Leo may not result to the same size of OS. Perhaps parts are retained that will not be present on a new install? I would not know.

 

[kntgsp]

As someone who has used the X-25M's, wait for the 2nd gen X-25M's. They dropped the fab process to 34nm, which will give you noticeable differences

1. They can cram twice the amount of flash on the same die, so you'll see larger drivers sooner.

2. Lower prices

3. Read/Write latency is improved

4. Random 4K writes are doubled on the 80GB and 2.5x better on the 160GB. The 320GB will undoubtedly have insanely fast random 4K writes.

5. Newer controller and built in TRIM support.

 

[2002cbr600f4i]

Personally, I'm going to wait... Probably wait until I get my hands on both Snow Leop AND Windows 7 (since I need it for boot camp) and then pick up 1-2 SSD drives to install the 2 OS'es onto. Figure if I'm going to have to reinstall everything, I'd rather do it once onto new drives (and that way I can always load up the old drive if there's a problem), rather than installing SL/W7, then have to port them over to new drive(s).

 

[ildondeigiocchi]

I think I'll be installing Windows on my 150GB HDD and use my 640GB HDD for all my big files.

 

[gugucom]

Personally, I'm going to wait... Probably wait until I get my hands on both Snow Leop AND Windows 7 (since I need it for boot camp) and then pick up 1-2 SSD drives to install the 2 OS'es onto. Figure if I'm going to have to reinstall everything, I'd rather do it once onto new drives (and that way I can always load up the old drive if there's a problem), rather than installing SL/W7, then have to port them over to new drive(s).

I think you do not need to wait for Windows7. I recently installed RC-1 64-Bit and it works bug free as far as I can see. They will charge you when the preview runs out in March to keep the system running and you will get all updates automatically. I just don't know how they will handle downgrades as the RC-1 is on Ultimate level.

 

[2002cbr600f4i]

I think you do not need to wait for Windows7. I recently installed RC-1 64-Bit and it works bug free as far as I can see. They will charge you when the preview runs out in March to keep the system running and you will get all updates automatically. I just don't know how they will handle downgrades as the RC-1 is on Ultimate level.

Well, that's the thing, what I have currently (RC) will run until June... but then I'll have to screw around installing the full version at that time...

If I'm going to do it, I'd rather just do both sides at once, to new drives, etc. Get it all done and over with in one swoop one weekend...

The biggest issue for me is that classes will have started back up for grad school by then, so unless the coursework is light (yeah, who am I kidding) I don't know that I'll have time to even think about installing EITHER until the end of the quarter sometime in Dec. That might work out well though since it'll give more time for SSD prices to drop.

 

[ildondeigiocchi]

Ok guys so Snow Leopard's been announced and I'll be picking up a copy of it this Friday but the Intel X-25M's are still not for sale here in Canada. Any ideas if Newegg will actually be selling them in Canada as they aren't even listed on their site and I don't want to buy the 1st generation ones as I would be paying for old tech.

 

[VirtualRain]

Ok guys so Snow Leopard's been announced and I'll be picking up a copy of it this Friday but the Intel X-25M's are still not for sale here in Canada. Any ideas if Newegg will actually be selling them in Canada as they aren't even listed on their site and I don't want to buy the 1st generation ones as I would be paying for old tech.

I think Intel and channel are taking advantage of this recall to clear out inventory of the G1's... it's hard to say how long it will take. Another week or two? EDIT: This week is what I'm hearing in other forums for US availability... perhaps add another week for Canada?