SSD for Bootcamp?

[tke627]

I am in the market for a new laptop and the Macbook pro is in my top 3 picks right now, but just had a small question (basically one that will decide if i get a Macbook pro or not lol)

I'm looking at the MacBook Pro 13-inch and would like it to run windows and OSX. I was thinking of going with a 128GB SSD to run both operating systems and using an external HD to store everything else. Is that a good idea or would I be better off getting the 750GB ram @5400?

I do not need both to run at the same time. I'm just trying to figure out what would give me the best performance. Also do any of you have any experience with bootcamp? is it JUST like windows or are there differences? Does having 2 OS on you laptop hinder the performance at all?
Thanks for you help!

 

[tke627]

Bump...anyone?

 

[adamj575]

Well, first off you cannot run both operating systems at the same time unless you use a virtual machine...128 GB SSD probably wont be enough space either, I might go with a 256 or above...as far as how windows runs on a mac...It runs just as you would expect it to...

 

[dusk007]

If it is enough space really depends on his use. I do fine with my 60GB Windows partition but I have an easy way out with my 1TB hdd that is always there to temporarily store stuff if it is too full.
My OSX has 110GB and that works sort of I really could use more but a really light weight user. Browsing, Office, and stuff can probably get by with running OSX on a 40GB partition.

2 different OS on the same harddrive have absolutely no impact on performance at all. The only problem is that it might not be enough space to store data. And if there is too much data external it just gets cumbersome.

bootcamp is just like Windows. UEFI post is really quite slow so the start up that should be 30 secs with an SSD is much longer. Drivers for touchpad suck, Intel GPUs don't work on 15/17". Battery life is therefore poor.
For gaming there is no downside. Everything works no performance problems just like a real Windows notebook. For work it sucks because of touchpad and battery life.

Many people do it like me and remove the optical drive for the sake of the ssd. With SSD+HDD you have data always there and it is much less trouble if the remaining stuff only just fits on the ssd.
It really depends on space use. Many people get by fine with 128GB.
OSX itself with some minimum apps is like 20GB, Windows can also be shrunk to work fine with just the basic apps (browser, office, vlc, ...) with 30GB. The problem on Windows comes in with games that often take 12+GB alone. On OSX there are some apps that are big, movies, music, downloads can really suck space like nothing, caches for some apps and working data too. If you always need to plug in the external drive for all the data it is annoying.

I would check how much I use now and run something like daisy disk to see what can be done away with and if the rest fits.

 

[strwrsfrk]

2 different OS on the same harddrive have absolutely no impact on performance at all. The only problem is that it might not be enough space to store data. And if there is too much data external it just gets cumbersome.

This is pretty much true if you are only booting into a single OS at a time (i.e. Bootcamp). However, if you have both OSes on the same drive and are accessing one via a virtual machine (i.e. Parallels or Fusion), you will see slowdowns in both as read-write operations are split between the two.

If you're getting 250+MB/s r/w on an SSD, this might not trouble you too much. But on a 5400rpm drive, things can slow to a crawl.

 

[shardey]

I use 30gb for Windows 7 and 90gb for OS X on my 120gb intel 520. I have a 750gb in my optical bay though, to store all my extra data, music, and games on.

I wish I could resize the Win 7 partition without formatting.

 

[jon08]

Can sb tell me how to install Bootcamp on my SSD (with HDD in the Optibay)? My Superdrive in the external caddy doesn't seem to work with Bootcamp assistant...

 

[dusk007]

Yes that is a know problem.
You will need to put the ssd into the mainbay and install the superdrive again if you want to install windows. Alternatively you can create a usb flash windows install stick. That will probably take you a lot longer than just switching the hardware again and using the DVD.

The MBP just doesn't look for an USB optical drive as it seems.

The easy way would have been to just clone the hdd to the ssd in which case no reinstall of anything would have been necessary.