some q's about the SSD/HDD setup.

[suedehead]

i'm failing to see the trees through the wood, i've been browsing through a few topics about ssd vs hdd and still seem to have a few questions about the setup.

i've learned so far that the buying a third party ssd is the more economical thing to do. is it?
i've also gathered that there's two things that you can do: either you put the third party ssd in the optical bay and lose a bit of speed? or you can put the stock hdd in the optical bay and get the full speed of the ssd, but you lose the smc of the stock hdd?

* so what would be the best thing to do?
* how do people deal with the loss of the smc? how critical is the loss of the smsc?
* are there third party hdd that come with a 'smc'-like setup that would work in the opti-bay?
* if that's the case wouldn't it be the same (money wise) to get a stock ssd (apple) and buy a decent third party hdd for the opti-bay setup?


thanx.

 

[KwanMan]

I have not tried it myself but I read somewhere that putting the ssd in the optical drive bay will mes up the sleep function as the MBP only looks for the main drive in the orignal HDD port.

 

[altecXP]

i'm failing to see the trees through the wood, i've been browsing through a few topics about ssd vs hdd and still seem to have a few questions about the setup.

i've learned so far that the buying a third party ssd is the more economical thing to do. is it?
i've also gathered that there's two things that you can do: either you put the third party ssd in the optical bay and lose a bit of speed? or you can put the stock hdd in the optical bay and get the full speed of the ssd, but you lose the smc of the stock hdd?

* so what would be the best thing to do?
* how do people deal with the loss of the smc? how critical is the loss of the smsc?
* are there third party hdd that come with a 'smc'-like setup that would work in the opti-bay?
* if that's the case wouldn't it be the same (money wise) to get a stock ssd (apple) and buy a decent third party hdd for the opti-bay setup?


thanx.

1. 3rd party SATAII SSD is about 20% faster and cheaper. SATAIII is not cheaper, but about double as fast as the Apple SSD.
2. You only loose speed in the optical bay if you put a SATAIII SSD in an optical bay that uses a SATAII port, some MacBook Pros have SATAIII ports in the optical bay.
3. The SMS is only lost if the HDD does not have one built in. Most do. You can look up the model you have on the makers website to find out. The Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM HDD does have built in SMS.

As for the Sleep function, having the SSD in the optical bay added 20 seconds to the sleep time for me. Not a big deal for me, but it is for some.

 

[rebby]

I have both an SSD and a spindle HDD in my 2011 MBP. I have the SSD in the stock drive location and the HDD in the optibay. My SSD is my boot drive and I use the HDD for data storage (using symlinks to make this arrangement transparent). My HDD (a Seagate) has a built in SMC. Thus far, this has been a very good configuration for me and I have not experienced any problems.

 

[suedehead]

3. The SMS is only lost if the HDD does not have one built in. Most do. You can look up the model you have on the makers website to find out. The Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM HDD does have built in SMS.

but is the sms lost if you replace the stock apple hdd to the opti-bay?
if it is lost, how critical is that in a day to day situation?

i'm looking for a 13" mbp that's a bit built for speed. so i'm looking to see what my options are.

thanx for the replies.

 

[daneoni]

Like he said SMS is built into the drive so regardless of where you connect it...

 

[bozz2006]

But it's not built-in to all drives. Make sure it is built-in to your drive before you put it in the optical drive bay.

 

[altecXP]

but is the sms lost if you replace the stock apple hdd to the opti-bay?
if it is lost, how critical is that in a day to day situation?

i'm looking for a 13" mbp that's a bit built for speed. so i'm looking to see what my options are.

thanx for the replies.

Originally Posted by altecXP
3. The SMS is only lost if the HDD does not have one built in. Most do. You can look up the model you have on the makers website to find out. The Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM HDD does have built in SMS.

Pleas see above.

 

[suedehead]

i don't want to sound annoyed, but i actually read that and i understood what bold text means ... but, i figured, in that particular statement, you were refering to third party hdd and not apple hdd. hence the question.
just to make sure.

you can't look up the brand of the hdd on the apple site. so basicly i won't know until i bought one? although there's a good chance it will come with sms?

anyways, thank you for your time.

 

[basesloaded190]

i don't want to sound annoyed, but i actually read that and i understood what bold text means ... but, i figured, in that particular statement, you were refering to third party hdd and not apple hdd. hence the question.
just to make sure.

you can't look up the brand of the hdd on the apple site. so basicly i won't know until i bought one? although there's a good chance it will come with sms?

anyways, thank you for your time.

Take the HDD out if you want to see what it is. Otherwise you can go into utilities and it will show you exactly what brand and type of hard drive is in your machine

 

[NickZac]

If you are yet to order the computer, I would get the factory SSD given its reliability has thus far proven to be far superior than SATA3 6.0 GBPs SSDs...furthermore, the speed difference in real world use may be the same.