I just ordered the OCZ so I'll let you know how it goes. I have now committed myself to keeping my current machine, which is fine, as much as I love the Retina system I would find it hard to stump up over 2 grand for it and I don't like the idea of the battery's being glued in. Plus my current machine works fine, the Retina Mac is more of a want then a need.
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SSD Buying Guide
- Thread starter Hellhammer
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I just ordered the OCZ so I'll let you know how it goes. I have now committed myself to keeping my current machine, which is fine, as much as I love the Retina system I would find it hard to stump up over 2 grand for it and I don't like the idea of the battery's being glued in. Plus my current machine works fine, the Retina Mac is more of a want then a need.
Has anyone installed a Samsung 830 into a 2008 imac? Will the existing sata cable plug straight in? Anything else i need to buy other then the drive itself?
I have already installed the crucial M4 512GB but after reading up it woud seem that the write speeds aren't quite what they could be. I compared them to the stock 256GB in the Macbook Air. So I looked around and it would seem that the Transcend SSD720 has some pretty top notch read and write speeds. So I called Newegg and long story short the Transcend should arrive tomorrow. It was only $50 more than the crucial. I feel its money well spent. Newegg doesn't have any reviews on the drive but it seems to spec out pretty good. Anyone have any experience with this drive? Here is the link..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208689
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208689
Cool. Did you pick the Agility 4?
I still can't decide between the Crucial M4 and the OCZ Agility 4. The m4 seems to have mixed reviews, but most problems are with older versions I believe?
If you go with crucial, just be sure to update to the latest firmware, but you should do this with all SSDs
http://www.crucial.com/help/ssd/index.aspx?source=web
http://www.crucial.com/help/ssd/index.aspx?source=web
Yes I got the Agility 4 version. Hopefully I should get around 250 to 280 speeds I guess on Sata 2?
If it gives me any trouble I may just return it for a M4, I would get a Samsung but they are a lot more money, same money as the Vertex 4 is, also with the 830 they do different speeds depending on the price for the same capacity!
I just ordered the M4, if it won't work out I can replace it so I'm fine..
Now I'm gonna find a guide online which shows what to do, with what tools etc
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Got a good deal for the 830 so I pick that one up. Either of those drives are good and reliable specially in these old machines.
The one thing the M4 has over the 830 is that it has a Mac tool for FW updates. The 830 needs a windows machine in case of a FW.
Installed this Transcend and my Late 2011 Macbook Pro would not see the drive in Disk Manager. Newegg seemed to think the drive was defective we shall see...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208689
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208689
Spot on for C4. You're about to join the ranks of people who would never go back after having SSD
Meh, mines on back order, and even worst so are the Crucial's haha. But I am going to stick with the OCZ, it's not a very popular drive, everyone seems to go for the Vertex? But at 512GB their is a pretty big price difference between the Agility and the Vertex plus I only have SATA 2.
Once I have it all up and running I'll post some stats.
Once I have it all up and running I'll post some stats.
Spot on for C4. You're about to join the ranks of people who would never go back after having SSD
So far I'm amazed with how fast everything works, really impressed
rMBP mSATA PCB Adaptor
Actually, I did some checks and there is enough room. Just barely. It is a undoubtedly a tight squeeze. And a challenge.
Why? To upgrade the 2.3 Base configuration affordably. Base model only comes with 256MB and there is no BTO option that is affordable. Look here. Micron announced the C400 at "about the same price" as the Crucial M4.
Theres not such a cost difference to the manufacturers for mSATA form factor as Apple mark it up by. Not by a long way. Without this adaptor, there will be too little 3rd party competition and only OCZ who are definately wanting to charge about the same as what the Apple part would cost anyway.
Actually, I did some checks and there is enough room. Just barely. It is a undoubtedly a tight squeeze. And a challenge.
Why? To upgrade the 2.3 Base configuration affordably. Base model only comes with 256MB and there is no BTO option that is affordable. Look here. Micron announced the C400 at "about the same price" as the Crucial M4.
Theres not such a cost difference to the manufacturers for mSATA form factor as Apple mark it up by. Not by a long way. Without this adaptor, there will be too little 3rd party competition and only OCZ who are definately wanting to charge about the same as what the Apple part would cost anyway.
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One thing I haven't really noticed anyone pointing out is the fact that there could be substantial differences in Write speeds. The Crucial only (I say only) Writes at about 220Mb/s were other drives like the OCZ/Trenscend/Samsung can Write up to 500Mb/s. This is a pretty substantial difference in speed. Both drives Read in the 500Mb/s area. So when your looking at the drives you might want to take a look at those numbers. Thats why I returned my Crucial M4 because I wanted faster Write speeds too. 200Mb/s is not a lot faster than a good 7200RPM HDD it will do about a 123Mb/s. I want faster Read AND Write not just Read.
Hey, I just recently bought and installed a Samsung 830 128gb SSD (6gbps) for my early 2010 MacBook Pro. The link speed on my MacBook is 3gbps so I know it only supports sata 2 speeds, however when I did a read and write test using black magic my write speed topped out at around 208 and my read speed at 252. I know it won't be as fast as sata 3 speeds but those speeds seem a little underwhelming. Does anyone know if these tests seem correct or should sata 2 speeds be higher than this? If anyone could let me know that would be great. Thanks!
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Hey guys, sort of new here. I just have a couple quick questions...
I bought a Late 2011 13" MacBook Pro i7, about a month ago. I ordered a Samsung 830 256GB SSD and I want to install it before OSX 10.8 is released.
What is the best way to transfer the OS/data from my current HDD to the new SSD? I do have a 1TB external drive I can use for any transfer/backup needed. What program did you guys use to clone your information and transfer it to the new drive?
I know these are questions covered before and I apologize for bringing them up again, however, I'm new to OSX.
Thanks!
I bought a Late 2011 13" MacBook Pro i7, about a month ago. I ordered a Samsung 830 256GB SSD and I want to install it before OSX 10.8 is released.
What is the best way to transfer the OS/data from my current HDD to the new SSD? I do have a 1TB external drive I can use for any transfer/backup needed. What program did you guys use to clone your information and transfer it to the new drive?
I know these are questions covered before and I apologize for bringing them up again, however, I'm new to OSX.
Thanks!
It has been pointed out, but the actual write speed is around 256 MB/sec, not 220. A 7200 RPM hard disk may do 123MB/sec in sustained write in some benchmark, but given it has huge seek time and latency compared to any SSD, it's performance is far lower than the M4 in normal workloads that don't involve writing gigabytes at a time. Typical best performance with 7200 RPM Hitachi and Seagate drives in MBP is more like 40-50 MB/sec according to iStat in my experience.
Also in typical use the split between read and write on a desktop or laptop is something like 95% read and 5% write. Since M4 and others have the same read speed, there's not going to be much difference. The only thing that would actually be any faster is sustained large volume writes, which is not something that most users do constantly.
Benchmarks are a good thing in many ways but they lead people to make massive assumptions based on headline speeds that don't correspond to real use. And the M4 is cheaper, which for some people will mean they can get a bigger one than they would have otherwise. Also you can update the firmware on a Mac.
I'm glad you are happy with your choice and knowing that you have the fastest is worth something, but for most people if you did a blind test in their own machine with their own normal use, they wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Right now I would probably go with the fastest too, but I'm not on a budget so the price isn't an issue. For a lot of people it is, though, especially as it's not much of a difference in real world performance.
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