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SSD Buying Guide

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Blackmel said:
I've decided on the M4. Is it advisable to enable TRIM for the M4?
Click to expand...

Well, yes and no. Personally I would enable it and then disable it down the road if it causes trouble.

louiebh said:
Right now im in possession of an m11x r3 and using it for day to day uses and looking to use it for video editing capture and the like, so im going to upgrade anything i can, the ram is pretty straightforward and i cant change the cpu all that is left is the HDD.

Right now i have a 500gb 7200rpm its hindered my system for video editing and capture as it seems i need read/write speeds far greater than 50mb/s as im trying to capture in 1080p mostly, my drive is far from enough.

Image

Going by this alone i can tell this will be the speeds ill want to be getting from the ssd i purchase,

Ive heard of the intel 520, ocz vertex 3, crucial m4 and the samsung 830
i assume these are the best

so guys which ssd should i buy if those arent fast enough what is my best bet?

All help and suggestions appreciated *price is not an issue atm
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It's very unlikely that you'll be capturing video that has higher bitrate than current SSDs can provide. Any SSD should be fine, personally I recommend either Crucial m4 or Samsung 830.

Platonist said:
Despite the best efforts of the folks like Hellhammer I am still a bit torn regarding the SSD market. (It looks as though a few others on this board are, as well.)

I get conflicting data regarding the use of TRIM, its importance, and how this should affect my purchasing an SSD for the Mac. I am looking at the Crucial M4 (for price and reliability considerations), which as we know doesn't support TRIM in a Mac environment. People at Anandtech have said that should be enough to disqualify it from the Mac market but folks here say not so fast. Others say if it had aggressive garbage collection like the Samsung 830 it would be fine, but it doesn't.

I am a scholar in the humanities and I won't be doing video editing on this thing -- it will largely be a writing, presentation, and light photo editing machine. Does TRIM matter in this case? If get the drive with sufficient overhead (say, 50-100GB more space than I will likely NEED) will that mitigate the negative effects of lacking TRIM and aggressive garbage collection?

In advance, I have read the great material provided thus far in this thread and the review Hellhammer posted on the Plextor. Still, these things are not entirely clear to me. Thanks for any and all clarification!
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Crucial m4 is fine even without TRIM. As Anand showed in the review, the performance does restore over time on its own, which is enough. I would like to emphasize that our tests are extreme cases, not what a user will face in everyday life. Since your workload will always have some sequential write in-between, the performance should stay high.

Also, you can always use TRIM to restore the performance if it becomes very bad.

njdevil said:
Few questions I'm hoping someone could enlighten me on:

I'm holding out for Mountain Lion to upgrade my HDD and add an SSD (1TB Samsung and 128GB Crucial M4 are what I'm looking at now, if it matters). For starters, I'm not sure what order I'm supposed to do these in- I'm running SL now, and it seems unlikely ML is going to come out on a disk, so how do I get ML on the SSD? Right now the only option I can think of is 1) install the two new drives, 2) use SL disk to install OSX and 3) Use SL to download and install ML. I'm sure that would work, but are there any ways I can do it so I don't have to install one OS just to download another?

I'm also going to be using Bootcamp for gaming pretty extensively, and I'm wondering how that works with dual drives. Should I partition the SSD into, say, 64GB for OSX and 64GB for Windows 7, and partition the HDD into 500GB/500GB, leaving me with 4 visible drives?
Or should I leave the SSD for OSX system files, and split the HDD between OSX storage and everything for Windows? (Is that even possible?)


Finally, while I'm updating I'd like to give my macbook as much security as possible, but I'm unsure of the best way to do that with multiple Windows and OSX drives. Can I encrypt everything with Filevault 2, or just the OSX drives? Does Filevault even encrypt partitioned drives or does it encrypt the entire physical disk?
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You can download ML on one OS and then burn the installer to a USB drive or DVD. That's what I did and it allowed for an easy clean install.

As for Boot Camp, your best option in my opinion is to use the SSD just for OS X and then partition the HD for OS X storage and Boot Camp. The more disks/partitions you have, the more problems there may be.

sweetbrat said:
I'm really new to this whole SSD thing, and I've been wading through this thread but I'm still feeling a bit lost. Hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I see that Newegg has this Crucial M4 256GB SSD for $249.99 right now http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443, which seems like a really good deal. When reading through the reviews on the Newegg site, though, there seemed to be a lot of problems with it dying soon after installation, and people with 2011 MBPs seemed to have trouble with the firmware.

I have an early 2011 15" MBP. I've never swapped out a drive before, but my hubby has, though neither of us has any experience with an SSD. I do a lot of work in Photoshop and Illustrator, and I want an SSD mainly for faster boot/launch times. Will this Crucial M4 be a good choice? Will I need to update the firmware if I get it? Is there a good how-to out there for installing the new drive? I'm sure I'm asking questions that have already been covered, but I really want to make sure I purchase the right thing since Newegg's return policy is basically nonexistent. Any advice is appreciated.
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No matter what SSD you look at, there are owners with problems. These are still rather new technology and most OEMs don't have years to debug the drives. However, Crucial m4 is a fairly safe bet.

The drive should come with the latest firmware installed. OWC has fairly good installation videos: http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbookpro_15_unibody_early11_hd/
 
I just put the 256 GB Crucial M4 in my MacBook Pro 13 and the difference is like night and day. After seeing the performance improvement, I need one for my iMac!
 
Hellhammer said:
Well, yes and no. Personally I would enable it and then disable it down the road if it causes trouble.

Crucial m4 is fine even without TRIM. As Anand showed in the review, the performance does restore over time on its own, which is enough. I would like to emphasize that our tests are extreme cases, not what a user will face in everyday life. Since your workload will always have some sequential write in-between, the performance should stay high.

Also, you can always use TRIM to restore the performance if it becomes very bad.
Click to expand...
So which would be better? Enable first, disable if necessary OR watch first, enable if necessary?

Also, am I right to uncheck "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" in Sys Pref, Energy Saver?
 
Blackmel said:
So which would be better? Enable first, disable if necessary OR watch first, enable if necessary?

Also, am I right to uncheck "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" in Sys Pref, Energy Saver?
Click to expand...

Everything I have read says SSDs with Sandforce controllers (Intel, Crucial, OWC etc) don't need trim as they have their own "garbage collection" or something like that...and that enabling trim actually negatively effects performance. I am getting an M4 this week and plan to leave TRIM off based on these numerous recommendations.
 
Blackmel said:
So which would be better? Enable first, disable if necessary OR watch first, enable if necessary?

Also, am I right to uncheck "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" in Sys Pref, Energy Saver?
Click to expand...

I would enable first and then disable if issues arise. Disabling it is so easy anyway.

You can leave that on as it will put external HDs to sleep after a set amount of idle time (also a second HD if you have one).

heeby said:
Everything I have read says SSDs with Sandforce controllers (Intel, Crucial, OWC etc) don't need trim as they have their own "garbage collection" or something like that...and that enabling trim actually negatively effects performance. I am getting an M4 this week and plan to leave TRIM off based on these numerous recommendations.
Click to expand...

All SSDs have some form of garbage collection, though its aggressiveness varies. OWC is the only company you mentioned that uses solely SandForce controllers. Crucial uses only Marvell controllers while Intel uses a mix of SandForce, Marvell and in-house controllers.

A good garbage collection does not make TRIM irrelevant, though. Even SandForce can be pushed into a corner where it will suffer (hammer it with incompressible random writes and you can get to writes of below 50MB/s). However, such workloads are extreme and basically non-existant if you're a regular user (you will always have some compressible data on the drive, such as operating system).
 
I'm eagerly waiting as the Samsung 830 approaches the $1/GB (256GB SSD).

Quick Q - is the "Notebook Upgrade Kit" needed? Apparently it comes iwth some sort of bracket/spacer to secure the fit - is this needed in a 2011 MBP? The "Notebook Upgrade Kit" is currently $35 more >_< - would hate to pay $35 for a bracket, but if its needed, then so be it.
 
Hellhammer said:
I would enable first and then disable if issues arise. Disabling it is so easy anyway.

You can leave that on as it will put external HDs to sleep after a set amount of idle time (also a second HD if you have one).
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Alrighty! So apart from TRIM & erasing free space, what else is essential - since putting hard disk(s) to sleep when possible is redundant?
 
enklined said:
I'm eagerly waiting as the Samsung 830 approaches the $1/GB (256GB SSD).

Quick Q - is the "Notebook Upgrade Kit" needed? Apparently it comes iwth some sort of bracket/spacer to secure the fit - is this needed in a 2011 MBP? The "Notebook Upgrade Kit" is currently $35 more >_< - would hate to pay $35 for a bracket, but if its needed, then so be it.
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You don't really need that bracket. Any 2.5" SATA enclosure will work.

http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexSta...NXZC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336067757&sr=8-1
 
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strausd said:
You don't really need that bracket. Any 2.5" SATA enclosure will work.

http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexSta...NXZC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336067757&sr=8-1
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The spacer I was referring to goes inside the laptop, with the SSD. I was not referring to an external enclosure.

I'm just wondering if its NECESSARY. As in, if I purchase just the bare Samsung 830 will it flop around loosely inside the MBP? A review on Newegg I just read from a MBP sounds like its needed...
 
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enklined said:
The spacer I was referring to goes inside the laptop, with the SSD. I was not referring to an external enclosure.

I'm just wondering if its NECESSARY. As in, if I purchase just the bare Samsung 830 will it flop around loosely inside the MBP? A review on Newegg I just read from a MBP sounds like its needed...
Click to expand...

Ok. My bad.

You shouldn't. Any 2.5" drive should fit fine since the MBP holds a normal 2.5" drive, no matter if it is a mechanical drive or SSD. Also, the MBP does have retention bars that keep the drive in place.
 
Wow, what a difference in performance the SSD makes, even on my late 09 MacBook Pro 13". Well worth the money so far. :D
 
Not wanting to read 37 pages ;) what is the trim you guys talk off and are the benefits in having a SSD just performance increase?

Yes, I'm a noob at this :)


edit* just read the very first post which answered those questions
 
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enklined said:
The spacer I was referring to goes inside the laptop, with the SSD. I was not referring to an external enclosure.

I'm just wondering if its NECESSARY. As in, if I purchase just the bare Samsung 830 will it flop around loosely inside the MBP? A review on Newegg I just read from a MBP sounds like its needed...
Click to expand...

7mm fits in MBP nicely as the drive is mounted from sides to prevent moving.
 
I'd like to know if anyone here dealt with buying a SSD for a Mid 2009 MacBook. Here's the issue: The laptop comes with a SATA2 controller. When checking system settings, it says that the negotiated link is at 1.5 (SATA1), while the controller can do 3 (SATA2). Searching through Google, I was only able to find one link which mentions Apple putting a cap on the controller to SATA1 because it had issues with Nvidia's hardware. Then I found a few other links mentioning that certain SSD drives could run at full SATA2 on this laptop. Some people mention their drives running as SATA2, while others were getting SATA1 connections.

The two drives I'm interested are M4 and 830, but I don't know for sure which would (and if) work with SATA2.
 
definitive said:
I'd like to know if anyone here dealt with buying a SSD for a Mid 2009 MacBook. Here's the issue: The laptop comes with a SATA2 controller. When checking system settings, it says that the negotiated link is at 1.5 (SATA1), while the controller can do 3 (SATA2). Searching through Google, I was only able to find one link which mentions Apple putting a cap on the controller to SATA1 because it had issues with Nvidia's hardware. Then I found a few other links mentioning that certain SSD drives could run at full SATA2 on this laptop. Some people mention their drives running as SATA2, while others were getting SATA1 connections.

The two drives I'm interested are M4 and 830, but I don't know for sure which would (and if) work with SATA2.
Click to expand...

I just put a 256GB M4 in my mid 2009 MacBook Pro 13" and it shows the link as using SATA2 (3Gb/sec). It's nice and speedy compared to the old HD. I'm getting about 190MB/sec write and 240MB/sec read with the Blackmagic disk speed test program.

When these laptops came out originally Apple limited the SATA connector to SATA1. People complained that the chipset was capable of SATA2. Apple eventually released a firmware update that enabled SATA2 -- and now I'm glad they did!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/729610/
 
definitive said:
I'd like to know if anyone here dealt with buying a SSD for a Mid 2009 MacBook. Here's the issue: The laptop comes with a SATA2 controller. When checking system settings, it says that the negotiated link is at 1.5 (SATA1), while the controller can do 3 (SATA2). Searching through Google, I was only able to find one link which mentions Apple putting a cap on the controller to SATA1 because it had issues with Nvidia's hardware. Then I found a few other links mentioning that certain SSD drives could run at full SATA2 on this laptop. Some people mention their drives running as SATA2, while others were getting SATA1 connections.

The two drives I'm interested are M4 and 830, but I don't know for sure which would (and if) work with SATA2.
Click to expand...

Try reading some of the posts......
 
mbh said:
I just put a 256GB M4 in my mid 2009 MacBook Pro 13" and it shows the link as using SATA2 (3Gb/sec). It's nice and speedy compared to the old HD. I'm getting about 190MB/sec write and 240MB/sec read with the Blackmagic disk speed test program.

When these laptops came out originally Apple limited the SATA connector to SATA1. People complained that the chipset was capable of SATA2. Apple eventually released a firmware update that enabled SATA2 -- and now I'm glad they did!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/729610/
Click to expand...

See that's the difference. You're on MBP. I'm asking about MB, which to my knowledge never got the SATA2 controller fully unlocked from 1. Browsing around, it was unlocked in EFI 1.7, but MB doesn't allow anything above 1.4.
 
Appreciate this is a Macbook pro thread.. but no one ever seems to reply on the Macbook thread.

Looking at a crucial M4 for my macbook core 2 duo 2006 version.

Will this be worth the upgrade from a HDD to SSD, its only SATA 1 i believe?

Much appreciated!
 
definitive said:
See that's the difference. You're on MBP. I'm asking about MB, which to my knowledge never got the SATA2 controller fully unlocked from 1. Browsing around, it was unlocked in EFI 1.7, but MB doesn't allow anything above 1.4.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I spaced on the MB v. MBP. I have vague memories that the MB wasn't going to get the SATA2 upgrade like the MBP, but I can't swear to it.

I did upgrade an old 2007 MBP with SATA1 to a cheap Kingston V100 SSD and it made a world of difference. It's like a new machine, good for another few years. So, you may still get enough of a boost to make it worthwhile, and you could save some money by finding a bargain on an older SATA2 drive.
 
Flunkyturtle said:
Appreciate this is a Macbook pro thread.. but no one ever seems to reply on the Macbook thread.

Looking at a crucial M4 for my macbook core 2 duo 2006 version.

Will this be worth the upgrade from a HDD to SSD, its only SATA 1 i believe?

Much appreciated!
Click to expand...

Yes, but you will not be able to take advantage of what SSDs have to offer at SATAIII.

You can keep your SSD and use it in a new computer, in the future.
 
SDAVE said:
Yes, but you will not be able to take advantage of what SSDs have to offer at SATAIII.

You can keep your SSD and use it in a new computer, in the future.
Click to expand...

Hi thanks for that, it will just get pulled out in the future so its not going to be wasted :)
 
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