SSD Install complete!

[C. Alan]

Last night, I finally got my OWC 40gig SSD dispite UPS's valiant attempt to loose it. It only arrived 3 days late. Ill never pay for 2nd day shipping again .

Anyway. I purchased it with a 3.5" case so I could use it in one of my empty drive bays on my 2009 Mac Pro. The phisical installation took me less than 3 minutes.

My Mac pro only has two other internal HDDs. One is the 640gig system drive that came with it, and a 250gig drive I use for a Final Cut Express Scratch drive. I also have a 1t external drive I use for Time Machine backups. In preparation for the installation, I removed a bunch of old applications I was not using very often. I then had to clear off my Final Cut Express scratch drive to make room for my user folder. It took nearly an hour to copy my 200gig user folder over to the scratch drive. I then pointed the system to the new user folder.

I then used the restore disk that came with my Mac Pro to do a clean install of OSX on my SSD. In about a half hours time, I had a fresh install of OSX, along with my applications on the new SSD. The new system also picked up all my user settings from the user folder on the scratch drive, but didn't try to move the folder. In the end, my system install with applications came to 17gigs.

After I got the new system setup, I reset the user folder desination back to the orignal user folder on my 640g hdd. I then restored my Final Cut drive using my time machine back up.

So far, I have been impressed with the performance of the ssd. The boot time is alot faster, and applications launches are almost instant. It was a very good upgrade for $140.

 

[bluesteel]

great to know your happy with the upgrade. i'm debating on buying an OWC 120GB SSD, would really like a 240GB, but thats pushing it in terms of $$$ for my Mac Pro. i've got about 100GB worth of system/apps. not sure what to do. thing is, if i'm going to spend $175 for a 2TB WD Black or $275 on a WD Velociraptor, why not just buy an SSD, right?

i do want speed and better performance, but at the same time, i have never really thought my mac pro's were slow or sluggish. i'm thinking my macbook pro might benefit more from an SSD. its just not that snappy, and its a 2010 i7.

 

[C. Alan]

great to know your happy with the upgrade. i'm debating on buying an OWC 120GB SSD, would really like a 240GB, but thats pushing it in terms of $$$ for my Mac Pro. i've got about 100GB worth of system/apps. not sure what to do. thing is, if i'm going to spend $175 for a 2TB WD Black or $275 on a WD Velociraptor, why not just buy an SSD, right?

My machine is not so heavy on the app side. I mainly use it for Final Cut Express. Also, anything new I am going to try to install on my second drive if possible.
--C. Alan

 

[Ryan P]

i do want speed and better performance, but at the same time, i have never really thought my mac pro's were slow or sluggish. i'm thinking my macbook pro might benefit more from an SSD. its just not that snappy, and its a 2010 i7.

I did that with my 2010 i7 MacBook Pro and the difference was huge! The difference with my Mac Pro not so much... It's cause the difference between a Western Digital 7200rpm Black and a SSD is not nearly so large as a SSD and a stock laptop hard drive...even the 7200rpm ones.

With the SSD in both I can't really tell a huge performance difference between my MacBook i7 and my Mac Pro hexcore unless I am doing something CPU intensive like After Effects, watching some 1080p movies (can go more into this but it is a whole thread!), or playing a Game.

Ryan

 

[bluesteel]

I did that with my 2010 i7 MacBook Pro and the difference was huge! The difference with my Mac Pro not so much... It's cause the difference between a Western Digital 7200rpm Black and a SSD is not nearly so large as a SSD and a stock laptop hard drive...even the 7200rpm ones.

With the SSD in both I can't really tell I performance difference between my MacBook i7 and my Mac Pro hexcore unless I am doing something like After Effects, watching a 1080p movie (can go more into this but it is a whole thread!), or playing a Game.

I honestly probably couldn't tell the two apart in a blind test in Lightroom or Photoshop, they are both just really damn fast. At least for how I use them, which is working for a couple hours on one photo at a time, not doing batch processing of hundreds of photos. I'm sure the Mac Pro would be much faster for that.

Ryan

thanks for the info. i think my money is better spent on an SSD for my macbook pro i7 then.

are you using a 2TB black or 1TB black for your hexcore boot drive? 32mb cache or 64mb cache?

 

[Ryan P]

are you using a 2TB black or 1TB black for your hexcore boot drive? 32mb cache or 64mb cache?

I'm using the 1TB, I'm not sure if it is the 32mb or 64mb without pulling the drive out which isn't convenient right now.

I had sort of a comparison test when I got it as I had two Windows 7 installs for awhile one on a OWC SSD and one on the WD Black. Don't get me wrong it was much faster on the SSD....it just wasn't blow me out of the water faster. Which really isn't possible...you can't get faster than instant...and it was already damn fast on the WD Black. My expectations just were not realistic.

On suggestion on the Macbook Pro. OWC and some others sell a kit to let you replace your optical drive with a 2nd hard drive. I put my SSD there and put a 1TB 5400rpm drive to replace my normal hard drive. Then I added a Firewire powered 1TB GTech Mini-Raid. So that lets me have a really fast 120GB main drive, but also 2TB's of very mobile storage!

 

[bluesteel]

On suggestion on the Macbook Pro. OWC and some others sell a kit to let you replace your optical drive with a 2nd hard drive. I put my SSD there and put a 1TB 5400rpm drive to replace my normal hard drive. Then I added a Firewire powered 1TB GTech Mini-Raid. So that lets me have a really fast 120GB main drive, but also 2TB's of very mobile storage!

i actually got the MaxConnect kit about a month ago. it also came with an external enclosure for my superdrive. i left the 500GB 7200RPM for the system/apps/user, and used a 500GB 5400RPM solely for iTunes in the optical bay. I have about a 400GB music collection, and really wanted it all on this macbook pro. the 5400RPM is quiet and cool, i like it very much. the MaxConnect kit has worked out great.

if i get a small SSD for system/apps, i think i'm gonna need a larger 2.5 incher for my big user folder in the optical bay, 640GB or 750GB. i guess seagate has a Momentus 750GB 7200RPM 2.5 incher coming out at the end of this year for about $100 (http://www.macconnection.com/IPA/Sh...6-_-New-_-GY8&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=11621056). i'd prefer a 7200RPM drive.