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SSD or 7200RPM drive on MPB?
- Thread starter AdamN
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How about this one?
Hybrid SSD - Seagate Momentus XT
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591&Tpk=hybrid ssd
Has pretty good reviews.
Hybrid SSD - Seagate Momentus XT
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591&Tpk=hybrid ssd
Has pretty good reviews.
If storage is irrelevant, get an SSD. I have two MBPs and both have 7200rpm HDDs, but both are 320GB. Now you can get a 60GB SSD for around $150-250.
You have to select carefully, though. There is a great difference between the performance of the cheapest and midrange ones, apparently. Life expectancy and reliability might differ too.
You have to select carefully, though. There is a great difference between the performance of the cheapest and midrange ones, apparently. Life expectancy and reliability might differ too.
It's not that I have big programs, but I stop and restart and reload things alot (web development - so things like restarting a development web server very frequently). Even shaving a second off of start time for any given program is worth it to me.
If that is the case, I'd say SSD without a doubt. 7200 will be louder and generate more heat. SSD should keep power consumption closer to what the 5400 stock drive uses.
There has been a lot of development in SSD tech in the past year or so. So the next question you'll need to figure out is how big of a drive you need, and which drive works best. I only have experience with SSD drives in windows boxes.
That is a hybrid SSD not a full SSD. It is still very fast. I hear it outperformed the Velociraptor drives (10,000 rpm). It uses 4GB solid state memory for your most used applications, startup, etc. and then uses the regular HDD for everything else. The Momentus XT is somewhere in the range of 80% faster than your normal 7200rpm drive while priced comparably.
Having just put a 128gb SSD in my MBP, my god there is no substitute. 15 second boot time and applications open very quickly. As an example on my 13" MBP (2010 model), from the time I click google earth or itunes is 2 seconds. Some apps load in under 1 second.
I use the old 320gig harddrive for storage of vids, pics, whatever now. If time is your achilles heal, no question, get the SSD.
I use the old 320gig harddrive for storage of vids, pics, whatever now. If time is your achilles heal, no question, get the SSD.
Yeah, I used to have a SSD, a Corsair Nova V128, in my old aluminum MacBook, and returned it to help fund buying my new MacBoo Pro, and I really miss having a SSD in my computer. There really is a night and day difference, even (especially) in day to day usage.
So much so that I decided to buy another SSD, the Intel X25-M 160GB, to replace the stock 500GB, which is snail-like. It really is worth the price.
Will the prices of SSD's be dropping anytime soon? I heard that there was going to be some advancement later this year that would make them even faster (hopefully cheaper?)
I wouldn't expect anything big to happen until late this year/early next year. Intel's "G3" drive are supposed to be released by then, and that is supposed to bring lots of upgrades, but no one really knows what it'll really do to prices now.
Watch out it is NOT a full SSD. It's an hybrid. It has 4gb of SSD and 500 GB of a normal 7200 rpm drive. It has some algorithms to determine which files are stored on the SSD and which are on the plate. It does increase perfomance a lot, but it does not come close to a full SSD.