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SSD Buying Guide

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I am looking for a SSD with at least 250GB of storage for a MacBook Pro 13" mid-2012 which uses SATA III. The machine is for personal use which the most taxing deed I mostly do is virtualization and disc burning on it. Any suggestions ? Some of the brands that are throw around a lot on these forums are Samsung and Crucial ? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each ?
 
840 evo vs plextor m5p?

Hey all,

I recently saw the Plextor M5P 256gb for $190 on sale.

Given that the 840 evo will be about the same price, which would you go with?

It looks like the write speeds of the old M5P are actually better, but I'm not sure which would be the best overall drive for general usage. (web browsing, excel, development+compiling, photo editing).
 
comics addict said:
I am looking for a SSD with at least 250GB of storage for a MacBook Pro 13" mid-2012 which uses SATA III. The machine is for personal use which the most taxing deed I mostly do is virtualization and disc burning on it. Any suggestions ? Some of the brands that are throw around a lot on these forums are Samsung and Crucial ? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each ?
Click to expand...

I recommend the Samsung 840 which is a very good and stable drive. Many people here use it as well as myself. I have this model in one of my Mac's, several PC's and am considering getting another one for a different Mac of mine.

We have a big thread dedicated to the 840 here.

I'm not able to comment on the Crucial SSD, as I have no experience with it, but I've not heard anything bad about it.

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ls1dreams said:
Hey all,

I recently saw the Plextor M5P 256gb for $190 on sale.

Given that the 840 evo will be about the same price, which would you go with?

It looks like the write speeds of the old M5P are actually better, but I'm not sure which would be the best overall drive for general usage. (web browsing, excel, development+compiling, photo editing).
Click to expand...

With normal, general usage, you're not likely to see any performance difference in them unless you're doing benchmarking tests.

The Evo is new and I've not had a chance to read up on it yet, so you should take the time to read up on the two SSD's you've named and see which one you think is best for you.

I'm not familiar with Plextor's SSD line, but I can say that Samsung has a long solid history in the SSD market these days.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I recommend the Samsung 840 which is a very good and stable drive. Many people here use it as well as myself. I have this model in one of my Mac's, several PC's and am considering getting another one for a different Mac of mine.

We have a big thread dedicated to the 840 here.

I'm not able to comment on the Crucial SSD, as I have no experience with it, but I've not heard anything bad about it.
Click to expand...


Great and what is this Samsung 840 EVO SSDs that'll soon be released?
 
comics addict said:
Thanks, the review seem to give it high marks but is it worth to wait for a new drive that it comes in a couple of weeks? Choices...
Click to expand...

Only you can decide that. :p I will give the usual answer, if you need it now, get it. If you can wait, wait. haha
 
So it looks like these EVO drives are hitting a pretty sweet balance of price and performance. Are there any downsides I'm missing?
 
skiltrip said:
So it looks like these EVO drives are hitting a pretty sweet balance of price and performance. Are there any downsides I'm missing?
Click to expand...

1. Not available yet - with the Crucial M500 960GB it was months between announcement and general availability.
2. Like anything new, you get to be the beta tester, but Samsung are usually pretty good.
3. TLC not recommended for a server or anything else that gets a hammering. How long does that performance last under heavy use? Just like the original Samsung 840, most likely not a problem for 90% of the people here.
 
I like the Toshiba SSD's. Many do not know that Toshiba was the inventor of the flash memory and hence they have the longest track record. The new Q-series is attractively priced and I have one waiting to go into my new Mac mini.

I have had Intel 320, X25M-G2, Samsung 830, a couple pulled Toshiba's from MacBook's. I liked both Intel X25M-G2 and pulled Toshiba's above the Samsung and Intel 320. Two reasons: the two older SSD's did not need AHCI enabling to get best performance under Windows 7 and both the 320 and Samsung have had moments that the drive seems to hang for a few seconds.
 
Still trying to figure out why my CPU temp. is soooo much higher after my SSD install.

Any ideas?
 
Right now at anywhere from 155-160 and anywhere from 1.6 to 3% CPU usage from kernal_task
% idle is right around 95

Part of my confusion with all of this is that everything seems totally normal and there should be no reason for the increase in temp.
The fans are not working any harder and the computer does not physically feel hotter than it used to.
But i have used a couple different programs to run temps and all of them are consistent.
 
vbrad26 said:
Right now at anywhere from 155-160 and anywhere from 1.6 to 3% CPU usage from kernal_task
% idle is right around 95

Part of my confusion with all of this is that everything seems totally normal and there should be no reason for the increase in temp.
The fans are not working any harder and the computer does not physically feel hotter than it used to.
But i have used a couple different programs to run temps and all of them are consistent.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure either, but maybe, and I don't like recommending this due to the hassle, but maybe a fresh install of OS X would be in order.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I'm not sure either, but maybe, and I don't like recommending this due to the hassle, but maybe a fresh install of OS X would be in order.
Click to expand...

Perhaps.
Ill try to hold out till Mavericks hah!

I was originally thinking about waiting to do the whole HD swap once Mavericks came out so I could just do a fresh install then but with the old HD failing it just was not an option.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
When the temp is too high, what process is consuming the most CPU cycles?
Click to expand...

How long after booting with the new drive? When a new drive is installed then it gets indexed as soon as you boot and that can take a while and then it takes a while before temperature returns to "normal". (had the same "shock horror" temperature scare).
 
vbrad26 said:
Still trying to figure out why my CPU temp. is soooo much higher after my SSD install.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

MJL said:
How long after booting with the new drive? When a new drive is installed then it gets indexed as soon as you boot and that can take a while and then it takes a while before temperature returns to "normal". (had the same "shock horror" temperature scare).
Click to expand...

I think you meant to quote vbrad26, above, right?

If I'm not mistaken, he's had the SSD installed for some time now and it should have been indexed a while ago. Providing there isn't a problem with the indexing, that shouldn't be an issue.
 
SInce this is the sticky thread on SSD upgrades for MacBook Pro's I figured if I wanted to have knowledgeable people take a look at a problem that I am confronting with my recent purchase of a OWC SSD.

*Ended choosing it over the Samsung drive given that I couldn't find a place online that would charge a reasonable amount to ship the drive to where I live.*

I recently upgraded to a SSD on my 13" MacBook Pro mid-2012, 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 machine. I bought a OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD for the upgrade. Now everything works out great except when I leave my notebook in sleep mode running off of battery power for like 2 or more hours and it starts acting odd. The machine is supposed to keep flashing intermittently a white light besides the IR receiver but it doesn't after the specified time. Then when I open the lid to wake the machine from sleep I am greet with the boot up sound coming from the computer, for a instant the white light indicator shines fixed for like a split second but the screen still shows the lock screen and I have to wait a couple of seconds before I can type my password to resume my session. While this happens I notice that the mouse cursor as well as the Wi-Fi, time & battery icons don't appear on the screen. I contacted the manufacturer, in this case OWC, and they tell me that it's not a firmware feature on their drives. Heck no one has reported to them this issue. I sent in my original drive and got a replacement thinking that it might have been bad luck and got a defective drive but the second one is behaving in the same manner. For reference my notebook didn't acted like that with it's stock HDD which is why I am concerned about it. Does anyone have any idea as to why this is happening ?


Here is a short video showcasing my specific problem.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rghjwckw07m59ea/IMG_0866.MOV


I would really appreciate if one of you guys can look at the video that I took about said behavior in my 13" MBP.
 
comics addict said:
SInce this is the sticky thread on SSD upgrades for MacBook Pro's I figured if I wanted to have knowledgeable people take a look at a problem that I am confronting with my recent purchase of a OWC SSD.

*Ended choosing it over the Samsung drive given that I couldn't find a place online that would charge a reasonable amount to ship the drive to where I live.*

I recently upgraded to a SSD on my 13" MacBook Pro mid-2012, 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 machine. I bought a OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD for the upgrade. Now everything works out great except when I leave my notebook in sleep mode running off of battery power for like 2 or more hours and it starts acting odd. The machine is supposed to keep flashing intermittently a white light besides the IR receiver but it doesn't after the specified time. Then when I open the lid to wake the machine from sleep I am greet with the boot up sound coming from the computer, for a instant the white light indicator shines fixed for like a split second but the screen still shows the lock screen and I have to wait a couple of seconds before I can type my password to resume my session. While this happens I notice that the mouse cursor as well as the Wi-Fi, time & battery icons don't appear on the screen. I contacted the manufacturer, in this case OWC, and they tell me that it's not a firmware feature on their drives. Heck no one has reported to them this issue. I sent in my original drive and got a replacement thinking that it might have been bad luck and got a defective drive but the second one is behaving in the same manner. For reference my notebook didn't acted like that with it's stock HDD which is why I am concerned about it. Does anyone have any idea as to why this is happening ?


Here is a short video showcasing my specific problem.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rghjwckw07m59ea/IMG_0866.MOV


I would really appreciate if one of you guys can look at the video that I took about said behavior in my 13" MBP.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I've been following this thread for ages and eventually bought the Crucial 960 GB SSD. I have experienced the same sleep behaviour from time to time. The computer simply doesn't go to sleep properly if the power cable is connected.

I thought it might be something to do with the apps SmartSleep or Chameleon SSD Optimizer, or some conflict between the two. Do you use either of these apps?
 
I have the OWC extreme pro. I followed the SSD Tweaking Guide by Orlandoech.com and everything was fine. Then, i installed Trim Enabler and noticed that the drive was somewhat lazy when Trim was enabled. So i disabled Trim. Then I tried Chameleon and had lots of issues so I uninstalled Chameleon and Trim Enabler.

what i did after uninstalling the two apps was to follow the SSD Tweaking Guide by Orlandoech.com and it worked great again! no problems so far.
 
jacg said:
Interesting. I've been following this thread for ages and eventually bought the Crucial 960 GB SSD. I have experienced the same sleep behaviour from time to time. The computer simply doesn't go to sleep properly if the power cable is connected.

I thought it might be something to do with the apps SmartSleep or Chameleon SSD Optimizer, or some conflict between the two. Do you use either of these apps?
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with the OWC Mercury Electra SSD, but in the case of the Crucial M500, I believe there have been some posts in the Crucial forums, suggesting that you should uncheck the Energy Saver option: Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible.

I'm not sure why, but it seems that some have trouble waking from sleep and this option needs to be off.
You might also want to set hibernation off using the terminal as follows:

Code: 
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
sudo rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage
sudo touch /private/var/vm/sleepimage
sudo chflags uchg /private/var/vm/sleepimage

Details in this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1505922/
 
Trim and Garbage Collection on non-boot SSD?

Any expert advice on how Trim and firmware controlled GC work on a non-boot SSD connected by USB or Firewire? I am fairly sure Trim doesn't work at all except for SSDs connected to the internal SATA bus, but how about the GC? Does that work when an SSD drive is connected via USB or Firewire? How long does the drive need to be connected for the GC to work?
I use 2 SSDs as backup disks, one is in a USB (2) case, one with Firewire and USB II connections (usually use Firewire).
 
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