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SSD Debate/rant

Tyrion said:
Well, it's just my collection - partly from my many, many CDs, partly stuff I bought online. I obviously don't listen to all of that every single day, but I wouldn't want to delete any of it either. So that's kind of a dilemma, because I also have 20-30 gigabytes' worth of photographs. Even if I get an expensive 256 GB SSD, I'm already constricted (and one shouldn't fill SSDs up to the brim).
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It's a crying shame that the music industry, or one of the digital delivery providers (Apple) hasn't come up with a proper DRM solution that includes a central repository for your music licenses. Would be nice for you to be able to register your purchase (existing CDs) etc with one place, then be able to download the content on demand rather than being forced to keep it all stored on your machine.

Personally, I'll be keeping my music on a USB drive, or possibly on a HDD if I elect to remove the optical drive in order to attain more storage.
 
wct097 said:
It's a crying shame that the music industry, or one of the digital delivery providers (Apple) hasn't come up with a proper DRM solution that includes a central repository for your music licenses. Would be nice for you to be able to register your purchase (existing CDs) etc with one place, then be able to download the content on demand rather than being forced to keep it all stored on your machine.

Personally, I'll be keeping my music on a USB drive, or possibly on a HDD if I elect to remove the optical drive in order to attain more storage.
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Damn, that's a great idea. Hey, who knows what Apple's big cloud-related plans are - maybe something like this is in the works...
 
Tyrion said:
Well, it's just my collection - partly from my many, many CDs, partly stuff I bought online. I obviously don't listen to all of that every single day, but I wouldn't want to delete any of it either. So that's kind of a dilemma, because I also have 20-30 gigabytes' worth of photographs. Even if I get an expensive 256 GB SSD, I'm already constricted (and one shouldn't fill SSDs up to the brim).
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What I'm seeing is that most users with libraries of digital music as large as yours are not using available compression methods properly.

If your music is stored in an umcompressed format you are literally wasting 50-90% of the space. If you move to a lossless compression format like Apple's lossless version built into iTunes you'll see a substantial savings in space. Further, if you are willing to take a subtle loss in audio quality and go to, say, 256 kbs AAC you'll see 70% reduction from an uncompressed format.

I suggest you check into what I'm talking about if you haven't already. If you are concerned about maintaining 100% of the audio fidelity then you should use at least a lossless format. At a minimum you should convert a few songs to 256 kbps AAC and listen to them. If you can't tell the difference using the normal headphones you use than just compress your whole collection and save the space. You can always store an uncompressed set of your music on an external hard drive.

Just my two cents, but I bet you'll find you have some wasted space.
 
DustinT said:
What I'm seeing is that most users with libraries of digital music as large as yours are not using available compression methods properly.

If your music is stored in an umcompressed format you are literally wasting 50-90% of the space. If you move to a lossless compression format like Apple's lossless version built into iTunes you'll see a substantial savings in space. Further, if you are willing to take a subtle loss in audio quality and go to, say, 256 kbs AAC you'll see 70% reduction from an uncompressed format.

I suggest you check into what I'm talking about if you haven't already. If you are concerned about maintaining 100% of the audio fidelity then you should use at least a lossless format. At a minimum you should convert a few songs to 256 kbps AAC and listen to them. If you can't tell the difference using the normal headphones you use than just compress your whole collection and save the space. You can always store an uncompressed set of your music on an external hard drive.

Just my two cents, but I bet you'll find you have some wasted space.
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Thanks, but I have very few lossless files. Most of my stuff is 320kbps-MP3. Yes, probably not as efficiently compressed as AAC, but not a huge space-waster either.
 
The extra performance of the new SSDs -- like the Vertex 3 -- is mostly lost to us for now, since it requires hardware changes to take advantage of it, namely SATA III.

We only have SATA II on the Macs and the OWC SSDs nearly max that out already. Until the MacBook Pros change to SATA III you won't see anywhere near those those 500MB/s sequential read/writes performance the new models are theoretically capable of.
 
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RaceTripper said:
The extra performance of the new SSDs -- like the Vertex 3 -- is mostly lost to us for now, since it requires hardware changes to take advantage of it, namely SATA III.

We only have SATA II on the Macs and the OWC SSDs nearly max that out already. Until the MacBook Pros change to SATA III you won't see anywhere near those those 500MB/s sequential read/writes performance the new models are theoretically capable of.
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Uuuuh... The new MBPs have SATA-3, unless I'm terribly mistaken.
 
Tyrion said:
... But yeah, it's been confirmed: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1102430/
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I would like to see something for confirmation that's more reliable than a MR discussion thread, like maybe an Anantech test. There are even comments in that thread questioning what is really there in terms of support SATA III (above the hardware support), as well as mixed reports about using SATA III SSDs.

I'm calling this suspect for now.
 
Grouchy Bob said:
I sometimes edit up to 1500 RAW photos in a day. I couldn't do this without an SSD (and keep my sanity). Swapping between applications and loading 18 megapixel files in photoshop is too disk intensive.
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If you dont mind me asking, how do you store all of your photos? Do you initially load all of your newly taken pictures on your SSD, edit them, and then convert them over to an external harddrive? Is this an easy process? If I'm using Aperture 3, is it easy to export folders once they are edited to an external drive? I'm new to photography workflow and am configuring my new setup at the moment, and would love to hear how a seasoned vet. goes about this.
Thanks
 
RaceTripper said:
I would like to see something for confirmation that's more reliable than a MR discussion thread, like maybe an Anantech test. There are even comments in that thread questioning what is really there in terms of support SATA III (above the hardware support), as well as mixed reports about using SATA III SSDs.

I'm calling this suspect for now.
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Eh, I'm waiting for reviews too, but I assume it's SATA-III. Why would Apple be using an SATA-II port on a chipset which offers two SATA-III ports? I don't think it'd be beyond them to do just that, mind you, I just don't really know why they'd do it.
 
Tyrion said:
Eh, I'm waiting for reviews too, but I assume it's SATA-III. Why would Apple be using an SATA-II port on a chipset which offers two SATA-III ports? I don't think it'd be beyond them to do just that, mind you, I just don't really know why they'd do it.
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Maybe they aren't ready to support it officially yet because they aren't shipping any SATA III devices in the products yet.

It wouldn't be any stranger than when they only enabled SATA I on the 2009 MBPs and enabled SATA II with a firmware update later.
 
I use the cloud sparingly, due to security and accessibility issues. For my main storage I use NAS, a great way to keep your files secure & readily available.
 
Freyqq said:
ssd internal + fw/thunderbolt external TB+ hd for data = best of both worlds
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I'm actually hoping Apple does a Mac Mini with the SB quad core i7, 1 GB ATI graphics, and TB. I'd stick a 120GB SSD in it and attach my 4 TB RAID 0+1 and 4 TB RAID 0 to it. The RAIDs are Firewire 800 now, but I could see moving them to TB later.
 
Anandtech.com has confirmed that the HD is a SATA III port and the optical is only SATA II.
 
SSD for main drive (applications and some important files), and then external HD for all multimedia.

Problem solved.

I have the 128GB and have 80GB free. Yet my 2TB external is nearly 50% filled. Have the SSD for speed and durability and the external at home. Do you really need 750GB of internal memory? I know I dont
 
Neil1138 said:
SSD for main drive (applications and some important files), and then external HD for all multimedia.

Problem solved.

I have the 128GB and have 80GB free. Yet my 2TB external is nearly 50% filled. Have the SSD for speed and durability and the external at home. Do you really need 750GB of internal memory? I know I dont
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That's basically what I do except on a larger scale in terms of SSD and external storage. I think it's a good way to go for myself personally, but I could see how in other situations it would be better just to have slower by larger magnetic disks. Someone who's constantly on the road or a college student with very limited space would be another, I'd imagine.
 
Bossboss said:
Get SSD for operating system, 7200rpm for movies, tv-shows, etc..

problem solved.
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Not everyone wants to void their warranty & Not everyone doesn't need their dvd drive. I don't use the dvd drive often but i still need it once or twice a month.
 
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