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SSD or not?

J

JakeOfOz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 13, 2011
16
0
Enschede
Hey there,

I'm thinking of buying a new MBP soon (waiting for an update which I hope will come end of this month) and I was wondering: does the SSD have enough advantages to pay the extra €300?

\begin{discussion}
 
JakeOfOz said:
What's wrong with the Apple SSD's then?
Click to expand...

- double the price
- no modern SandForce controller; results in less speed and higher degradation rate

Another advantage of buying 3rd party, you get the build in HDD for free with it. Great if you are going Optibay or external storage.

Also, get additional RAM, if needed, from 3rd party once you at it.
 
Hmmm... I'll wait for the update anyhow, maybe it involves SandForce controllers then. Would be likely.

As for the overpricing: if you have to buy an aftermarket one, you'll have to install it yourself, taking a bit of a risk. And I don't really know how Apple sees that as a warranty void
 
No risk...

JakeOfOz said:
As for the overpricing: if you have to buy an aftermarket one, you'll have to install it yourself, taking a bit of a risk. And I don't really know how Apple sees that as a warranty void
Click to expand...

Risk? No, if you know a bit over the static electricity;) It is extremely easy to replace HDD in Macbook Pro, take a look at http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbookpro_15_unibody_mid10/

Also, it will not void your warranty. Download a macbook pro user guide from apple.com. There are instructions about how to upgrade HDD and RAM in your laptop there:)

Success!
 
I'd only say there's risk if you're the sort of individual that family and friends have banned from holding a screwdriver or touching anything electronic. As pointed out, Apple clearly documents that memory and hard drives are user replaceable items and you won't void any part of your warranty by doing so (unless you cause damage to the system in the process)

Swapping out a hard disk on a MBP13 is literally a five minute job; maybe say fifteen minutes for someone's first time. Tools needed are a #00 Phillips (cross-head) driver and a #6 Torx driver.

Its helpful to have an external drive enclosure for cloning your drive or file transfer; workable USB 2.5" SATA drive enclosures are literally under $10 from many sources.
 
Ok, didn't know the warranty part. As for the technical part, I think I can manage ;)

But I've checked some sites for SSD's as replacement, but it isn't that much cheaper (or you get the crappy B-rated brand ones).
The upgrade to a 128 Gb SSD costs ~€250 (I live in the Netherlands), and for that money I can't really find that much SSD's... (all the same storage size).
But then again, they will probably have SandForce technology.

My point is: I will buy a €1300 machine, and for that money, I want it to be finished. Not that I have to fiddle with it myself and putting other hardware in, that is what I have my PC for.
 
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Apple's SSDs are no slouch, but for the money you're spending you could get far better. It's convenience vs performance, unfortunately.
 
ZilogZ80 said:
What about the Crucial RealSSD drives? No Sandforce controller
Click to expand...

let me put it this way: on mac, if your SSD doesn't have a sandforce controller you will be reading/writing at speeds comparable to a normal harddrive after 2-3 months.
 
I don't know if I would call it that extreme; even the slowest solid state drives are far quicker than the fastest enterprise grade hard disk drives. We have the original 64GB and then the 128GB SSDs used in the first gen air and they have had almost no size shrinkage, but they certainly are not as fast as they originally were. Even their original speeds couldn't hold a flame to the SF driven SSDs and the new MBA has a SandForce upgrade option from OWC which we will probably purchase (almost 500GB SSD!). Indeed the SSD prices from Apple are not worth it, as you pay more for less. Also, I would agree that the SandForce 1200/1500 controlled systems have the best wear leveling software today, but the C400 uses an updated Micron design, and Samsung has also changed their controller design. The C300, which IIRC is Micron controlled, does have good wear leveling as well, although my personal preference is SandForce all the way. Without a doubt, the SandForce driven solid state storage systems are among the, or are the, fastest of all data storage systems.
 
If I wanted to perform an Optibay-style upgrade on my MBP, would this be the best way (assuming I do not want to re-install SL or apps, etc)?

1. Backup HDD then remove data files, etc. so it has less files on it than capacity of SSD
2. Install Optibay with SSD in place of superdrive.
3. Clone HDD onto SSD (using CCC)
4. Configure SSD as boot volume
5. Re-format HDD and re-copy data files from Step 1
 
yea that seems about right. good call to set the SSD as boot device, gains just that extra bit of speed while booting.

I read somewhere else on this forum that the best configuration is the SSD in Optibay, regular harddisks seem to be troublesome there.
 
intel ssd's are still the best, mainstream or enterprise series, you cant go wrong. all though vertex 3 pro looks awesome aswell.

Now the third gen intel ssds is right around the corner, and the spec sheet for those look pretty sick. same for vertex
 
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I don't think you can say any single SSD is 'the best'. There are certain models which seem to be more used and time-tested in Macs and the Intel X-25 is definitely one of the most tested. The Intel drives, current and future, run significantly slower than the SandForce driven systems (ex: Vertex Pro). While not the fastest, they are very reliable and rugged and you can't go wrong with an Intel SSD, but in many ways it depends on what the user is looking for and wants to spend.
 
i agree, didn't mean it was the best, just my opinion. although im much more excited about the ocz vertex 3 series

i cant find any spec sheet for the mainstream version, just the vertex 3 pro, hopefully the vertex will come in a mainstream version as well :)
 
mulo said:
let me put it this way: on mac, if your SSD doesn't have a sandforce controller you will be reading/writing at speeds comparable to a normal harddrive after 2-3 months.
Click to expand...

This is quite a bit over exaggerated. I have a 120 GB OCZ Summit that went 14 months before did the first secure wipe via a Linux boot disk. My read/write speeds were still significantly faster than some of the best speeds I've seen posted for even the fastest 7,200 rpm platter based drives.

Was their degredation? Yes, particularly for small writes. However, the machine still performed awesome, booted in under 15 seconds, and was not hesitating in daily tasks which included PS5 and FC Pro edits. My choice to secure wipe to restore back to optimal degradation had little to do with performance, and more to do with a restore of the OS after a quirky bout with an early 10.6.5 beta build.
 
mulo said:
perhaps you don't do half the moving/creating/deleting files others do.
I roughly create and delete 100GB data every month.



no their sht too, better then a normal hard drive no doubt, but sht compared to other ssds
Click to expand...

Seriously, are you 13? A whopping 100 gb a month? Whoa.... That really isn't all that much. When working with pre and post edit files, I, and most others I'm willing to bet that actually work with a lot of content, can exceed that in a week or over a few days.

My point is that you are misinforming other posters seeking advice on the various SSDs available. The stock apple SSD drives will be great for 99% of the use cases of users on this forum. Benchmark whores are another story. Your information about performance degradation after 2-3 months and being back to stock hard drive speeds was false.
 
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The new Vertex 3 Pro is RIDICULOUS. It's twice the speed of the fastest SSDs (which happens to be their own Vertex 2 and/or the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro). We are talking about up to 600MB/s, 100k+ IOPS, and over a terabyte in size.

Our new MBA's built in flash memory is nice, but we are going for the 500GB OWC SandForce upgrade. Our original MBA with the 64GB SSD really has not degraded in size, although it runs a bit slower and it can't hold a match to the speed of current SSDs. Our 128GB MBA also has very little size shrinkage. The current Apple SSDs are great (almost all SSDs compared to HDDs can be called great), but at the price Apple charges, you can get a faster, larger, and better made drive and still have some extra cash to spare. I imagine the updated Pro will have different SSDs and may even use SATA3 given the SandForce 2000 is already about twice the speed of SATA2's max.

mulo said:
perhaps you don't do half the moving/creating/deleting files others do.
I roughly create and delete 100GB data every month.
Click to expand...
How does that harm the SSD more than not moving 100GB a month?
 
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