Ok yeah that seems a good option to have and I'm a photo and video enthusiast that would make sense to have the most amount of storage available and future proofing myself
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Solid State Drives. Is Apple's Crap?
- Thread starter johnsmith153
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Ok yeah that seems a good option to have and I'm a photo and video enthusiast that would make sense to have the most amount of storage available and future proofing myself
Right now a Thunderbolt SSD would not be bootable. And no one knows if it will be in the future.
Only you can decide if you want or need an SSD. What you do want is to get a reliable one even if it isn't the fastest SSD on the planet. Apple's is reliable. So are the ones made by some other companies.
Using SSD for your system disk and HD for your photo storage can speed up your system noticeably. You just need to decide if it's worth it base don your system usage.
Considering the amount of posts on this forum and literature on the internet on the subject, I am still amazed at the amount of ignorance and FUD that surrounds SSDs. First of all, why don't you read this page about "Real world performance" of SSDs
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4341/ocz-vertex-3-max-iops-patriot-wildfire-ssds-reviewed/3
Most of you don't seem to realise that the most important things about SSDs are reliability and the ability to recover from performance degradation via TRIM and garbage collection. The fact that one drive can do 3.25 gajillion operations per second and the other "slower, crap Apple" drive can only do 2.75 gajillion operations per second does not actually matter to a typical user and they will never see the difference. Is the SSD option too expensive? Yes, it is.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4341/ocz-vertex-3-max-iops-patriot-wildfire-ssds-reviewed/3
Most of you don't seem to realise that the most important things about SSDs are reliability and the ability to recover from performance degradation via TRIM and garbage collection. The fact that one drive can do 3.25 gajillion operations per second and the other "slower, crap Apple" drive can only do 2.75 gajillion operations per second does not actually matter to a typical user and they will never see the difference. Is the SSD option too expensive? Yes, it is.
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I don't recall reading anything about TB not being bootable. Then again, I haven't seen any confirmation about it being bootable, but technically I cannot see why it would not be bootable.
So your friend, Dave Brown, told you "SSD's arent very good with encrypting files / folders and aren't very secure."
He may be a great friend, but based on this assertion, you should seek out someone who actually knows something about SSDs.
Encrypted data is encrypted data whether it's on HDD, SSD or written in ochre on cave walls.
He may be a great friend, but based on this assertion, you should seek out someone who actually knows something about SSDs.
Encrypted data is encrypted data whether it's on HDD, SSD or written in ochre on cave walls.
Does the typical user you speak of even need an SSD in that case? You can apply your rational to any computer component, why bother having XXX running at XXX performance speed if you can't really notice it. The real fact of the matter is, Apple is selling an old slower generation SSD that the market has now moved on from as better versions are now out and they are selling them to you at the same price as the newest best of breed versions. But hey, they gotta make their billions somehow. Just look at their RAM prices. We are all well aware of this though, its the less clued up customer (possibly with more money than sense) who takes a real hammering.
(4) Are Apple likely to make a decent one available soon?
They have been available for some time on the Apple store. The Apple SSDs are reliable and fast, and backed by Apple.
They may not be the fastest in the world, but look at it this way. They are probably about ten times faster than an HDD. Approximately.
So if you have a performance problem with HDDs, then hitting it with a 10x solution basically makes the problem go away.
Let's look at an analogy. Say you find a way of reducing a 60 minute commute to 6 minutes, would you really care very much if you found a higher risk way of reducing it to 5 minutes?
They have been available for some time on the Apple store. The Apple SSDs are reliable and fast, and backed by Apple.
They may not be the fastest in the world, but look at it this way. They are probably about ten times faster than an HDD. Approximately.
So if you have a performance problem with HDDs, then hitting it with a 10x solution basically makes the problem go away.
Let's look at an analogy. Say you find a way of reducing a 60 minute commute to 6 minutes, would you really care very much if you found a higher risk way of reducing it to 5 minutes?
Yes, they do because the difference is huge between a mechanical HDD and a SDD. I think you missed the point.
6.6 seconds vs 7 seconds vs 31 seconds (a bloody fast mechanical HDD) Can I make it any clearer?
This one is even better since it has the "awesome new generation super fast gajillion iops" vertex 3. Let's forget about the number of issues these "awesome new generation super fast" drives have then. Those 2.5 seconds will make all the difference. You clearly have not been following the saga of the "super awesome new generation " SSD drives released this year and the amount of problems associated with them. I would prefer a drive that is 2 seconds slower and reliable, thanks.
What are these best-of-breed-new-generation versions? Care to name some? Considering the issues these "new generation" SSDs have I am glad that they aren't being used.
I agree on the price issue.
The SSD's bought elsewhere also come with warranties. Apple didn't invent this idea of "backing" products they sell. But hang on, Apple charge you extra for this privilege, known as "Apple care".
The notion of risk of failure you speak of is based on no real evidence.
The 6 min down to 5 min you speak of is actually a good performance increase percentage wise. In a few years when lots of computers come with SSD's almost as standard this will matter. Same as CPU speed, GPU speed, etc etc etc
Bottom line is you are paying top dollar for something which is old news and something better is out. But they have to make their money somehow and it shouldn't really stop you from buying an iMac on this stuff alone.
Where did you get this from? The risks of failure are documented. Sandforce drives (them super fast drives) are the worst culprits. Intel drives are the most reliable.
Thank you for digging this out. It was amusing to note the Vertex 3 is slightly slower than its predecessor. It shows that newer isn't always better. Well at least until the bugs are fixed.
That is true, but having reduced the commute time by 90%, the bottleneck has probably shifted to other consumers of time, such as how long it takes to park the car, get your stuff out of the trunk, walk to your office and get set up. The extra minute is not worth fighting for even though it is a significant percentage of the new commute time. The point is that it is an insignificant percentage of the old commute time.
Back to the real computer world again. The bottleneck shifts there as well. Since the CPU is no longer waiting for a slow HDD, the CPU utilization rises and can become the limiting factor. So even if you switch to an SSD which is faster than an Apple SSD, you may see no difference in overall performance, because now the bottleneck is the CPU. Or GPU. Or some other resource.
The risks of failure on HDDs are also present. You might be able to recover something from a dead hard drive, provided a head crash didn't occur then you're screwed.
Basically if something dies then don't expect to recover data from it.
also,
(1) SSD's arent very good with encrypting files / folders and aren't very secure. Is this true?
They're so much speedier than hard drives. The aren't very secure part is partially true. Data remains on the drive until the system garbage collects because the SSD tries to write to all the cells before erasing. It lasts longer that way. Also when the data is erased it could still be recovered.... but this is true for hard drives as well. With very sensitive software they can recover past bits for magnetic drives so no drive is truly ever secure unless if you throw a magnet at a hard drive or wipe it down 5-6 times with random bits.
(2) SSD's have a short life span. Does the one included with the new iMac last very long (roughly of course). Are we talking 1, 2, 5 or 50 years (daily usage)?
This is a tough thing to answer. SSDs have limited write states. With the switch to 34nm the P/E cycle count dropped to 5000 from 10,000. Newer 22nm drives have around 3,000-5,000. The life depends on a lot of factors: how many erases are you going to use, how good is the chipset in your SSD is managing data. SandForce chips conserve writes and erases and are the best at conserving life. So it's hard to say. I think that the more capacity you have, generally the longer it will last. So 128GB SSDs will most likely outlast 64GB or less drives. 256GB SSDs will last more than 128, etc.
I have 2 drives, an OCZ Agility and OCZ Vertex 2. Within 2 weeks I've already used 2% of my Agility life and currently it's sitting at 48%. This is less than 1 year of use. My Vertex 2 with the SandForce chip is doing a lot better and is still at 100%.
(3) Any other disadvantages with an SSD?
You won't notice the speed until you start using computers with hard drives. Then you will wonder what the hell is wrong with them
and realize SSDs are wicked fast.(4) Are Apple likely to make a decent one available soon?
Apple's SSDs are made by.... Toshiba? I heard the newer ones were Toshiba than Samsung or they use an updated Samsung. As far as I know Samsung and Toshiba uses their proprietary controllers so they can't compete with SandForce based drives in terms of speed, but don't let that get you down. They're still faster than a conventional hard drive.
HD Tach measured my SSD access time to be .1MS. My HDDs were at 10-15ms. That's a +100x faster access time.
You didn't really answer the question about encrypted data. If it's encrypted they still need to know the encryption key before they can make sense of the data. That makes it no different from a spinning HD. What matters is how good the encryption software is. And to make sure the key isn't easily guessable or crackable.
Also, if you set up encryption on an SSD before you put sensitive data on it, it doesn't matter what space on the SSD hasn't been fully erased yet.
I don't recall reading anything about TB not being bootable. Then again, I haven't seen any confirmation about it being bootable, but technically I cannot see why it would not be bootable.
agreed it is an unknown. one reason why I am waiting to buy an iMac is
t-bolt info or lack of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by timtom33
"Does the typical user you speak of even need an SSD in that case? You can apply your rational to any computer component, why bother having XXX running at XXX performance speed if you can't really notice it. The real fact of the matter is, Apple is selling an old slower generation SSD that the market has now moved on from as better versions are now out and they are selling them to you at the same price as the newest best of breed versions. But hey, they gotta make their billions somehow. Just look at their RAM prices. We are all well aware of this though, its the less clued up customer (possibly with more money than sense) who takes a real hammering."
The fact is the toshiba ssd is proven to be reliable and no stata III ssd has had a year in any iMac.
To anyone that can not take an iMac apart and drop in an ssd
(a high percentage of iMac owners IMO)
the toshiba is a safe choice and pretty efff'ing fast. it does cost a lot. come back to me in a year to 18 months and all the sandforce ssd's are still working.
I do agree that They overcharge on ram and the ssd could be less cash.
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Omicron, you're correct, of course. Mechanical HDDs are prone to failure too and I was not advocating or insinuating that they are not. I was merely referring to a comparison of which ssd drives are more or less reliable. Unfortunately the "fast" drives are more prone to failure in comparison to the "steady Eddie" ssd drives.
I've also realised that my post was incomplete. I wanted to mention that even if we leave complete failure out of the equation, the issues with controllers, firmware, incompatibility and so forth when it comes to the "fast" ssd drives are well documented. I am not sure if any of you have read about the Ocz vertex 3 fiasco of constant blue screens, even when drives are replaced. Other sf2000 drives have issues as well and corsair is busy with a recall.
There is a serious issue in the sf2000 drives and sf1200 drives weren't exactly trouble-free either. My point was that I would prefer a drive that is hassle-free and without sleep issues etc than a drive that is 2 seconds faster in general tasks.
To go back to the original question, "are Apple's SSDs crap?" - I suppose it depends on what your definition of crap is. For me a drive is not crap just because it is a bit slower and without intermittent issues. I would have to say that OCZ SSDs are crap.
I've also realised that my post was incomplete. I wanted to mention that even if we leave complete failure out of the equation, the issues with controllers, firmware, incompatibility and so forth when it comes to the "fast" ssd drives are well documented. I am not sure if any of you have read about the Ocz vertex 3 fiasco of constant blue screens, even when drives are replaced. Other sf2000 drives have issues as well and corsair is busy with a recall.
There is a serious issue in the sf2000 drives and sf1200 drives weren't exactly trouble-free either. My point was that I would prefer a drive that is hassle-free and without sleep issues etc than a drive that is 2 seconds faster in general tasks.
To go back to the original question, "are Apple's SSDs crap?" - I suppose it depends on what your definition of crap is. For me a drive is not crap just because it is a bit slower and without intermittent issues. I would have to say that OCZ SSDs are crap.
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I was never replying to you theSeb, just the OP.
And I've never experienced any problems with my OCZ drives or with the SF-1200. If what you are saying is a big issue, then I would have expected to hear it on tech blogs like Anandtech, but I have not. On Anandtech, OCZ has always tried to make things right when there's trouble.
And I've never experienced any problems with my OCZ drives or with the SF-1200. If what you are saying is a big issue, then I would have expected to hear it on tech blogs like Anandtech, but I have not. On Anandtech, OCZ has always tried to make things right when there's trouble.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/3
OCZ has made a few mistakes (e.g. the infamous switch from 34nm NAND to 25nm) but in general their products are good, although the failure rates are the highest according to that small study.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4341/ocz-vertex-3-max-iops-patriot-wildfire-ssds-reviewed
Then read the OCZ forums and the comments in the anandtech article above. Also read Hellhammer's link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4256/the-ocz-vertex-3-review-120gb/2
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