Okay I am debating whether adding an additional hard drive to macbook pro (late 2011) which would be a SSD (probably 128gb) plus the existing 500gb HDD or just replacing the hard drive to a 256gb SSD. Obviously the 256gb would be more expensive, but ignoring price. Would performance on my mac be affected if i went with the two hard drives? If no, How will the mac know if I want the SSD to be primary drive and the HDD as the backup?
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SSD + HDD vs only SSD, performance.
- Thread starter anewfoundsin
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Are you trying to RAID it?
Or are you putting the HDD as a data storage?
If so the performance of SSD wont change since the HDD would be recognized as "external"
Or are you putting the HDD as a data storage?
If so the performance of SSD wont change since the HDD would be recognized as "external"
Do the two drives if you need the space, that's up to you.
Put the SSD in the main bay, make it the boot drive. You'll need to install OSX to it, obviously. That's how the Mac will know it's the main drive.
Put the HDD in the optibay as a secondary and just drag files to and from it when you need to.
Put the SSD in the main bay, make it the boot drive. You'll need to install OSX to it, obviously. That's how the Mac will know it's the main drive.
Put the HDD in the optibay as a secondary and just drag files to and from it when you need to.
What do u mean RAID it?
Yes I want to use the SSD as the main unit where the mac can boot up and run applications. I also want to install windows and plan to add that on the SSD on there as well. The rest would be placed on the HHD (pictures, music, videos).
I wonder if the windows side would recognize both drives?? Anyone know?
Yes I want to use the SSD as the main unit where the mac can boot up and run applications. I also want to install windows and plan to add that on the SSD on there as well. The rest would be placed on the HHD (pictures, music, videos).
I wonder if the windows side would recognize both drives?? Anyone know?
RAID is where two drives are "linked" together as one (that's my understanding). I've heard of a person on YouTube who has two SSD's set up as a RAID, and he gets blazing fast speed. (I'm not recommending that you do that; one SSD is expensive enough; just for sake of an example.) I wouldn't recommend going RAID in your case, anyway; if there is a problem, both drives are affected.
I had a 2010 MacBook Pro with a 120GB SSD in the mainbay, and a 750GB HDD in the opti-bay; worked like a charm!
You would set up Windows on the SSD using Boot Camp, just like on a normal hard drive. What version of Windows are you planning on using? Windows XP won't recognize a Mac drive if it's formatted as Mac OS Extended; you would have to format it as NTFS/ExFAT.
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Instead of manually creating a fusion setup I'd suggest buying a "pre-made" fusion drive in the form of Seagate's "Solid State Hard Drive" lineup (formerly Momentus XT). I recently upgraded from a first-generation 500 GB Momentus XT to a 500 GB Samsung 840 and was pretty surprised (and disappointed) to find that for average, day-to-day use, the SSD really doesn't offer that much more over the Momentus XT.
The most impressive speed improvement is apparent when (re)booting: the time spent at the Apple screen is minimal with the SSD, whereas it still took a while with the Momentus XT. I don't reboot very often, though. The SSD will also be superior when it comes to reading and writing large files, thanks to its high maximum transfer speed. That doesn't matter much when opening things like a large email database though.
A SSD is still the fastest you can get, but in my experience and personal opinion I'm not convinced that it's worth the price premium. The Samsung 840 doesn't benchmark poorly at all, but it's also not the fastest SSD around. If you go with a SSD then perhaps consider a higher-end one. Otherwise, the best value for your money (speed and storage capacity) seems to be the SSHD line. Seagate now seems to have hybrid drives in 5400 RPM; make sure to get one in 7200 RPM if you go that route.
The most impressive speed improvement is apparent when (re)booting: the time spent at the Apple screen is minimal with the SSD, whereas it still took a while with the Momentus XT. I don't reboot very often, though. The SSD will also be superior when it comes to reading and writing large files, thanks to its high maximum transfer speed. That doesn't matter much when opening things like a large email database though.
A SSD is still the fastest you can get, but in my experience and personal opinion I'm not convinced that it's worth the price premium. The Samsung 840 doesn't benchmark poorly at all, but it's also not the fastest SSD around. If you go with a SSD then perhaps consider a higher-end one. Otherwise, the best value for your money (speed and storage capacity) seems to be the SSHD line. Seagate now seems to have hybrid drives in 5400 RPM; make sure to get one in 7200 RPM if you go that route.
If you're using VMware or Parallel, then I would suggest SSD+HDD.
But through Bootcamp, I would RAID the drives.
The performance does not matter with SSD+HDD.
The boot drive would be on the SSD so it would have that speed, obviously.
However, if you want windows to be on HDD, it wont be as fast.
And there are work arounds you have to do just to get it boot off of the optibay drive.
But through Bootcamp, I would RAID the drives.
The performance does not matter with SSD+HDD.
The boot drive would be on the SSD so it would have that speed, obviously.
However, if you want windows to be on HDD, it wont be as fast.
And there are work arounds you have to do just to get it boot off of the optibay drive.
im thinking of going windows 7. what suggestions do you guys have with SSD + HDD? For sure I want the HDD in the optical bay and the SSD in the main slot. Omg im so excited now but also nervous I dont mess up the installation/swap, etc.
You have to unless you have a earlier model than 2010, it only accepts Windows 7.
I personally use VMware since it just lets me select the drive to save all the data and dont have to restart every time.
It gets limited on power, however, 2 core i7 is pretty strong unless you intend to do anything CPU and graphic heavy.
I also suggest getting at least 8~16GB if you plan to do VM.
Ok then I dont recommend VMware.
Its both graphic and CPU intensive.
With 13in, all you get is a HD3000 and 2 core i7 so you really cant do much.
I have the 17in so I set mine up as 2 core OSX 2 core Win7, 8GB OSX 8GB Win7, 500GB/1TB HDD Win7.
With yours it can be 1 core OSX 1 core Win7, 4GB OSX 4GB Win7, and whatever space you want.
However, dont expect to do anything heavy at all with that spec.
It depends on what you're doing. I did plenty of photo editing on VMWare with a Core 2 Duo system that had 6 GB of RAM and a GeForce 8600m GT. The Core i5/i7 processors are far superior, and as of now virtualization is still very heavily processor-based with fairly minimal offload to the graphics chip.
Regarding Fusion (not VMware Fusion, but pairing a SSD and a HDD and having OS X view them as one) and Bootcamp, my understanding is that Fusion is an OS X-based thing, similar to a software-based RAID setup. Other versions of OS X would recognize the linkage between drives, but Windows would view the two as separate and unrelated.