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SSD advantage

T

tarsierspectral

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 13, 2010
170
0
I am waiting for my hex MP to arrive and was wondering if it would be wise to get something like 64GB SSD just for the OS. Currently, I have a WD 640GB Black Caviar that I am intending to put in my MP and the 1TB drive that comes standard with MP. So, should I get a 64GB SSD (something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148357?
Or do you think I should be OK with the standard configuration?
 
tarsierspectral said:
I am waiting for my hex MP to arrive and was wondering if it would be wise to get something like 64GB SSD just for the OS. Currently, I have a WD 640GB Black Caviar that I am intending to put in my MP and the 1TB drive that comes standard with MP. So, should I get a 64GB SSD (something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148357?
Or do you think I should be OK with the standard configuration?
Click to expand...

Yes, get an SSD for that bad-boy!

That said, I would recommend a slightly bigger and faster SSD than the small C300. JMO, but for a MP I'd recommend a SSD greater than 80 GB in size.

I'm partial to the C300 128GB drive as it has worked fabulously in my MBP. I'll be moving it over to my Hex when it gets here. Keep in mind that these crucial drives are size/speed dependent. i.e. they get faster as the size goes up. That 64GB C300 is probably a bit slow compared to its bigger brothers.

Another VERY good option is the OWC Extreme Pro 120 GB drive. It's slightly more expensive than the 128 C300 and arguably a bit faster.

cheers and congrats on the MP order
JohnG
 
johnnymg said:
Yes, get an SSD for that bad-boy!

That said, I would recommend a slightly bigger and faster SSD than the small C300. JMO, but for a MP I'd recommend a SSD greater than 80 GB in size.

I'm partial to the C300 128GB drive as it has worked fabulously in my MBP. I'll be moving it over to my Hex when it gets here. Keep in mind that these crucial drives are size/speed dependent. i.e. they get faster as the size goes up. That 64GB C300 is probably a bit slow compared to its bigger brothers.

Another VERY good option is the OWC Extreme Pro 120 GB drive. It's slightly more expensive than the 128 C300 and arguably a bit faster.

cheers and congrats on the MP order
JohnG
Click to expand...

What do I really gain though?? How much faster will my machine run?
 
Boot time, app speed launching and overall increase in os. I am running a Kingston 64gb, not the fastest but made big difference. Once you go ssd you will never go back.
 
Read some of the numerous posts on SSD, theres no need to add another thread for a subject so widely discussed throughout the forum.
 
donw35 said:
Boot time, app speed launching and overall increase in os. I am running a Kingston 64gb, not the fastest but made big difference. Once you go ssd you will never go back.
Click to expand...

This.

According to MacWorld's August 2010 issue, the Kingston performed at about 33% faster than conventional hard drives (in terms of read/write speed) and others including the OWC Mercury Extreme performed at about 45% faster.

I never get tired of watching of SSD boot-up videos because they show such a difference from regular hard drives.
 
Since this thread is pretty active...

Does anyone know if the new Mac Pro's have the cabling already available for the lower optical bay (as they did in the 2009's)?
 
I am considering an OWC 480GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD as my startup drive. How much better is this related to the default SSD option at Apple Store? What SSD brand does Apple use?
 
tarsierspectral said:
So, should I get a 64GB SSD (something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148357?
Or do you think I should be OK with the standard configuration?
Click to expand...

The problem with the Crucial SSD ( and probably any other SATA III (3.0) optimized drive) is that that its sweet spot is on a SATA III system.

http://www.storagereview.com/crucial_realssd_c300_review_256gb

The current Mac Pro is not one. So this specific drive is likely to lag behind the ones geared more specifically for SATA II .

If your current OS + Apps drive is 20-30GB big ( or can easily be pruned to that size ) then the SSD may work. So if you had 20-30GB on a 500-600GB drive it is a much better fit. If you have 55GB of data you want "SSD access time" to then it is not.
 
Garamond said:
I am considering an OWC 480GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD as my startup drive. How much better is this related to the default SSD option at Apple Store? What SSD brand does Apple use?
Click to expand...

Toshiba for the 512 GB, and Samsung for the others (128 GB/256 GB) according to what I have read in other topics.

And the OWC is far better than the Apple Store ones according to what I have read as well. I am not sure what the read/write speeds are for the Toshiba though I don't think they are even close to read/write speeds of the OWC which are up to 285 MB per second and protection against degradation.
 
reel2reel said:
Since this thread is pretty active...

Does anyone know if the new Mac Pro's have the cabling already available for the lower optical bay (as they did in the 2009's)?
Click to expand...

The 2010 has the same case and cables as the 2009, only main differences are CPU and GPU. So yes, the 2010 already has the cables to put an SSD in the optical bay.
 
I'm thinking about getting a SSD for my forthcoming 6-core MacPro, and want to know if I understand your comment regarding SSD vs HDD size. If my OS + Apps (no home folder) requirements are 55GB, are you suggesting that a 500-600GB HDD offers better performance than the 64GB SSD mentioned by the OP?

My current OS, Apps and Home folder data is approximately 44GB, so I though the OWC 60GB SSD would be ample size. I can trim down this by putting the home folder and other non-system/non-app essential files on another drive. I'm just wondering how to calculate an adequately sized SSD for my needs, and try to avoid performance degradation over time. As this will be my OS and Apps disc, I don't want to start off on the wrong foot. (been there, done that...)


deconstruct60 said:
If your current OS + Apps drive is 20-30GB big ( or can easily be pruned to that size ) then the SSD may work. So if you had 20-30GB on a 500-600GB drive it is a much better fit. If you have 55GB of data you want "SSD access time" to then it is not.
Click to expand...
 
strausd said:
The 2010 has the same case and cables as the 2009, only main differences are CPU and GPU. So yes, the 2010 already has the cables to put an SSD in the optical bay.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's what I figured, but wanted to make sure.
 
davidp158 said:
I'm just wondering how to calculate an adequately sized SSD for my needs, and try to avoid performance degradation over time. As this will be my OS and Apps disc, I don't want to start off on the wrong foot. (been there, done that...)
Click to expand...

There are two issues you have to take into account with flash SSD drives. Performance over time. The second is just time that the device still works. Writing to the drive wears out the drive ( as in it will stop storing data correctly or at all.). Your capacity will shrink and/or the drive will report itself "dead".

The space buffer I'm pointing out is more so for the latter issue. You want to leave a reasonably significant of your SSD drive empty. The more higher than average writings you are going to do to the disk, the higher than average space you'd want to leave open.

Write performance over an extended period of time is a different issue. That gets settled more so on Mac OS X by getting a drive that has some sort of internally driven garbage collection built-in. There are variations in the implementation but they shouldn't matter for an " OS + Apps (binaries plus preferences) + Home " drive much. [ If performance stays up in the 80+% of empty/fresh drive range that is decent. ]

If some App puts some custom swap space in your Home directory perhaps, but that is usually a configuration option.


Hard drives slow down as fill them up because invariably start to fragment the free space available to write into. SSD are relatively immune to fragmentation. ( in fact they fragment on purpose to some extent to reduce wear. ) You don't want to run an OS drive at very high % occupied either. Just different underlying motivation.
 
davidp158 said:
My current OS, Apps and Home folder data is approximately 44GB, so I though the OWC 60GB SSD would be ample size. I can trim down this by putting the home folder and other non-system/non-app essential files on another drive. I'm just wondering how to calculate an adequately sized SSD for my needs, and try to avoid performance degradation over time. As this will be my OS and Apps disc, I don't want to start off on the wrong foot. (been there, done that...)
Click to expand...

44GB on a 60GB drive is plenty. I think 10-20% is considered a safe amount of free space to provision. You're at 25% so have plenty of room to spare if needed.
 
Thanks for the reply.

I've been reading about how SSD drives "wear" over time, but I am not clear on what is a practical size for just my OS and applications (home folder & working files NOT on the SSD drive). As I use a separate drive for my user-specified scratch disc (Photoshop, Illustrator), that wouldn't effect a SSD drive for the OS and apps. I don't want to paint myself into a corner with a small SSD that will cause problems, but I can't justify the expense of a really large SSD.

"Originally Posted by deconstruct60
If your current OS + Apps drive is 20-30GB big ( or can easily be pruned to that size ) then the SSD may work. So if you had 20-30GB on a 500-600GB drive it is a much better fit. If you have 55GB of data you want "SSD access time" to then it is not."

Regarding your post #11 (above), you were referring to a mechanical 500-600GB HDD, correct?

To a techno-challenged buyer like myself, reading the OWC marketing info suggests that their SSD drives suffer little performance degradation or loss of storage space over time. Thus, I thought a 60GB SSD drive would have ample free space to do its garbage management, and whatever else it needs to perform well over time. If a larger SSD drive is the only way to go, I will likely wait until the SSD prices come down some more.




deconstruct60 said:
There are two issues you have to take into account with flash SSD drives. Performance over time. The second is just time that the device still works. Writing to the drive wears out the drive ( as in it will stop storing data correctly or at all.). Your capacity will shrink and/or the drive will report itself "dead".

The space buffer I'm pointing out is more so for the latter issue. You want to leave a reasonably significant of your SSD drive empty. The more higher than average writings you are going to do to the disk, the higher than average space you'd want to leave open.

Write performance over an extended period of time is a different issue. That gets settled more so on Mac OS X by getting a drive that has some sort of internally driven garbage collection built-in. There are variations in the implementation but they shouldn't matter for an " OS + Apps (binaries plus preferences) + Home " drive much. [ If performance stays up in the 80+% of empty/fresh drive range that is decent. ]

If some App puts some custom swap space in your Home directory perhaps, but that is usually a configuration option.


Hard drives slow down as fill them up because invariably start to fragment the free space available to write into. SSD are relatively immune to fragmentation. ( in fact they fragment on purpose to some extent to reduce wear. ) You don't want to run an OS drive at very high % occupied either. Just different underlying motivation.
Click to expand...
 
SSD - Must Have

See my sig for my machine... I purchased the Intel 160GB SSD... The best purchase I've ever made! The following comment is what got me to purchase an SSD...

The Mac Pro is the fastest Mac you can purchase! The Mac Pro is so fast that is outperforms the conventional HDD. "The only holdup on a Mac Pro is the HD"... When I got the SSD, it felt like a whole new machine! Finally, my Mac Pro could breathe and there were no more bottlenecks! The only time I see a beach ball spinning now is when my conventional HDD startups during iTunes, because I have all my media on there... I've had it for about a year now... Still screams! Blazing fast!

I have my OS, Apps, and documents all on my SSD, because I only have about 80-100GBs of stuff, so I keep it all on the SSD for overall performance!

SSD, the ONLY way to go on a Mac Pro!
 
tarsierspectral said:
What do I really gain though?? How much faster will my machine run?
Click to expand...

This totally depends! If you turn off your machine every day you will gain lots since you will be loading stuff to the RAM faster.
If on the other hand you like I hardly ever turn it off there isn't much to gain. The initial load will be slower then with an SSD, but from that point on you will have the data in the RAM, which will stay there for a long time unless reboot or have little RAM.

just for comparison I have 8GB ram in this 17" i7 MBP, now I can write and read from the RAM at 12GByte/s, so until someone makes an SSD that outperforms that, I'll stick to what I have.
 
If you have the money and are really serious about purchasing one... What's not to say that you can't purchase it, install it, run it for a few days, then return it if it isn't everything that everyone is saying it is?

I basically use my Mac Pro for email, Internet, papers, websites, iTunes, etc. Nothing big, but I tell you what... That SSD is incredible! It shaves time off of everything I do! It is so fast, I think the applications open even before my double-click is done. Saving, loading, opening, moving, deleting, starting, shutting down... It's all FAST!

It may only be seconds faster, but when you are actually using your Mac, you can SEE and FEEL the difference.
 
I am still trying to get a grasp on SSD. Is this something that is going to replace internal and external drives in the somewhat near future? I would add one to a new iMac should I need one (hoping I won't for several more years), but I am always keeping an eye on what I might want in the future.
 
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