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SSD from apple or do it myself?

Which way should I do it?

  • Total voters
    58
  • Poll closed .
M

MilkMan4

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 22, 2011
150
0
I want to get the 13'' macbook pro but i want an SSD inside of it. Now my question is, is should I order it like that from apple with the 128 gb SSD or just get the normal HDD and then buy my own SSD and put it in it??
Now i don't really care if i have an SSD and HDD, 128 gb is enough for me. The main reason i'm asking is for the reliability. Is getting it preinstalled from apple more reliable than getting one myself and installing it? I can install it fine, i just don't know if it will work as well with the MBP as one straight from apple.
 
that really is the question...i ordered from amazon so that wasnt a choice for me but knock on wood my owc extreme pro 6g has been great thus far.
 
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Sam2lucky13 said:
that really is the question...i ordered from amazon so that wasnt a choice for me but knock on wood my owc extreme pro 6g has been great thus far.
Click to expand...

I was looking into purchasing the same SSD. Have you encountered any issues with it? Any beach balls and such?

Also, do you run a trim enabler for the SSD? And if so, have you encountered anything problematic?

Thanks!
 
About 4 weeks ago I bought 13" MBP with 500GB HDD. I put an Intel 160GB SSD in place of the HDD, and put the HDD in an external enclosure. I can now boot from either drive if needed. Not only was the work easy, I end up with a handy backup drive and the MBP is really fast now. I wouldn't hesitate to do this again.

As far as how does this setup compare with OEM SSD, I don't know who to measure that.
 
duggram said:
Isn't trim control coming out in Lion real soon? Would you need an enabler now? Thanks
Click to expand...

TRIM is not supported for non-Apple SSDs, and enabling them for non-Apple SSDs can have some consequences, depending on the drive.

Some of the Intel drives, I think the 320s, suffer performance reductions under TRIM and the SandForce based drives beachball.
 
AJThomas said:
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I was looking into purchasing the same SSD. Have you encountered any issues with it? Any beach balls and such?

Also, do you run a trim enabler for the SSD? And if so, have you encountered anything problematic?

Thanks!
Click to expand...



Really early yet but no I havent had a single thing go south...its been great thus far. Very fast. I dont run trim enabler because OWC advised me to just throw it in and load up the operating system and nothing more so that's what i did.

and just an in case...I also like to wipe out my hard drives every six months or so and do a fresh install. was also advised never to write zeros to an ssd, just repartition and of course no defrag. Im sure most people know this but im still learning
 
Last edited:
I was just at the apples store and I noticed the MBA didn't have TRIM enabled. Shouldn't they be? I read an article stating TRIM wasn't needed in OS X as much as Windows. Is TRIM overratted?
 
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duggram said:
AJThomas said:
Also, do you run a trim enabler for the SSD? And if so, have you encountered anything problematic?
Click to expand...

Isn't trim control coming out in Lion real soon? Would you need an enabler now? Thanks
Click to expand...

I haven't found anything while browsing the Apple website claiming that there will be Trim support for non-apple SSD's. If you have found something I would love to know though!
 
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KJmoon117 said:
duggram said:
Isn't trim control coming out in Lion real soon? Would you need an enabler now? Thanks
Click to expand...

TRIM is not supported for non-Apple SSDs, and enabling them for non-Apple SSDs can have some consequences, depending on the drive.

Some of the Intel drives, I think the 320s, suffer performance reductions under TRIM and the SandForce based drives beachball.
Click to expand...

The OWC Mercury Pro 6G is SandForce based, correct? So I would probably encounter beachballs?

Would the Vertex 3 encounter any of the same problems?
 
well i have an intel 320 120GB SSD and i just used TRIM Support Enabler 1.1 to enable trim support. I used Xbench to test the drives read/write and they are the same as when TRIM was not enabled, I guess time will tell how the drive behaves.
 
what is TRIM and beachball??!!!
i may be getting myself into something that i do not know enough about...
 
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MilkMan4 said:
what is TRIM and beachball??!!!
i may be getting myself into something that i do not know enough about...
Click to expand...

Trim: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

Beachball: It is similar to a Windows "hourglass". It appears in Mac OS X when it is attempting to load something or is slow or stalling out.
 
More or less it erases blocks that aren't in use; so when you reuse those blocks, you just have to write to it, rater than delete what's there then write.
 
MilkMan4 said:
ok so then you want one with trim support
Click to expand...

Yes. But, this is impossible natively with any SSD besides the stock Apple SSD's.

You can accomplish it with something called Trim Enabler. I haven't tried it my self, but you will want to use MRoogle to see how it works for everyone else, depending on what drive you purchase. Or, wait, and hope that TRIM support is added with Lion, or in an update soon.
 
Ok so now after the 10.6.8 update my apple/toshiba 128gb ssd says trim enabled. Now what? Is there a procedure or a button to push to trim the ssd?
How do I trim the drive?
 
SSD from apple or do it myself?

It depends on the price. The SSD from Apple is a decent SSD.
 
marrzie said:
Ok so now after the 10.6.8 update my apple/toshiba 128gb ssd says trim enabled. Now what? Is there a procedure or a button to push to trim the ssd?
How do I trim the drive?
Click to expand...

i would like to know also
 
OK.

TRIM is a command that is passed down from an OS telling the SSD that "hey, that block is free, I just deleted it." And the SSD goes "ok" and just writes to the block. Without TRIM, the SSD goes "Ok let's see what this file is. Ok, let's delete it, and then let's write new data on it." This takes up write cycles and and degrades not only the longevity of the SSD but its performance as well.

However for operating systems without TRIM, there are good controllers out there that goes garbage collection. For example, SandForce controllers.

My recommendation is to not run TRIM on a SandForce drive (unless natively supported) because SandForce has it's own built in garbage collection.

It's also been reported that running TRIM using the hack slows down the drive, SF and Intel controllers alike.

So my recommendation is to go with an SSD that has a good controller and is backed by a company who stands behind their product. I.e. the Intel 320 or the OWC 6G. There are five year warranties on both drives.

(Btw I got this thread confused for another I posted in >< haha but overall, that's my recommendation to you if you decide to get your own SSD.)
 
I would go Apple installed. I have both an Intel and Apple's official.

For starters, for most people, the real performance difference is the jump from regular HDD to SSD. While 3rd-party SSDs are definitely rated at faster speeds than the Toshiba ones Apple uses, unless you're doing large video conversions and sequential writes right off of the SSD, you will not be able to tell the difference between a 15 second and 14 second boot up time.

For the first time, Apple's SSDs are actually reasonably priced. They're actually cheaper than most 3rd part SSDs, and if you're adding the SSD from one of the higher end MBPs, the SSD upgrade is only $100 (albeit due to replacing a more expensive hard drive, but this is negligible).

Apple's SSDs support TRIM in OS X. This is definitely a perk, though much overrated. My Intel drive never slowed down before, but I did take pretty good care of it. Overall, while the TRIM support is nice, most modern SSDs can handle cleaning themselves up on the fly at least somewhat decently, so the speed decrease isn't going to be that noticeable at all.

All in all, unless you're itching to see high speeds on some very specific tasks, go with the Apple upgrade. It also gets included in the machine's warranty, which is always great.
 
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