Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

SSD for internal and fw 800 for external storage. Any good?

R

Ritte

macrumors regular
Original poster
I'm planning to give my mbp 2010 a facelift and changing the internal hdd to a 120gb ssd. And for storage I'll use 2Tb harddrive connected via fw800.

Will this give me a significant speed bost compared to today?
 
Ritte said:
I'm planning to give my mbp 2010 a facelift and changing the internal hdd to a 120gb ssd. And for storage I'll use 2Tb harddrive connected via fw800.

Will this give me a significant speed bost compared to today?
Click to expand...

It will be faster, but you will be limited by your SATA controller on your 2010 Mac. Have you upgraded to 8GB RAM?

What will you be using the external drive for? USB2.0 is fast enough for most things. You can get a USB3.0 drive (compatible with USB2), more compatible, and it'll work with all your future USB3 computers and devices (much more useful)
 
someguy50 said:
It will be faster, but you will be limited by your SATA controller on your 2010 Mac. Have you upgraded to 8GB RAM?

What will you be using the external drive for? USB2.0 is fast enough for most things. You can get a USB3.0 drive (compatible with USB2), more compatible, and it'll work with all your future USB3 computers and devices (much more useful)
Click to expand...

Yes I've 8gb ram. I was thinking of using the sdd for applications mainly and the external storage for documents (music/movies) and etc.
I thought of fw800 since it will faster for HD movies and overall writing/reading performance. I already have on usb3 hdd but I'm using it mainly for backups.

Edit: Even if my mbp mid-2010 will not take full advantage of the ssd, it will still be a significant increase in speed. Right?
 
When I upgraded mine to SSD it made a BIG difference. Well worth it. I have a mid-09 2.53 for reference. I was also coming from the Seagate Hybrid drives which aren't exactly slow with 7200rpm and partial ssd storage.

I also use FW800 for Time Machine and am always happy to have it over USB2. Makes things much quicker. In fact the one issue I'm having preparing for my new MBA to arrive is how to handle backups now that I'm without FW.
 
kap09 said:
When I upgraded mine to SSD it made a BIG difference. Well worth it. I have a mid-09 2.53 for reference. I was also coming from the Seagate Hybrid drives which aren't exactly slow with 7200rpm and partial ssd storage.

I also use FW800 for Time Machine and am always happy to have it over USB2. Makes things much quicker. In fact the one issue I'm having preparing for my new MBA to arrive is how to handle backups now that I'm without FW.
Click to expand...

Your new mba should have usb3 as mine doues, it's even faster than fw800.

Thank guys, I'll be using optibay to install a ~750gb internall hdd for storage and a 120gb ssd for OS + Apps.
 
Solid state will make a big difference in even a computer with sata1, as I know from experience. The perceived speed of SSD's is as much about low latency as it is about throughput. SSD throughput in a 2010 MBP is probably in the region of 250 MB/s both ways, which is over twice as fast as any mechanical laptop drive. So yeah, it'll be much faster.

I have one of them icybox fw800 enclosures, and it does about 70 MB/s, which in practice is three times as fast as USB 2.0. In my opinion USB 2.0 was once a great thing but nowadays using it for anything storage or backup related takes just too damn long.
 
Ritte said:
Your new mba should have usb3 as mine doues, it's even faster than fw800.

Thank guys, I'll be using optibay to install a ~750gb internall hdd for storage and a 120gb ssd for OS + Apps.
Click to expand...

Totally. I'm just not enjoying having to buy more hardware.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back