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SSD Questions and more.

Abyssgh0st

Abyssgh0st

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 12, 2009
1,888
9
Colorado
Hey all, just had a few questions.

1. First of all, I'm going to upgrade this winter to a SSD, and 4GB of RAM in my 13" MacBook Pro 2.26. (It's got stock HDD and RAM now.) I planned on getting a Intel X-25M 80GB G2, and a 500GB WD MyPassport external, and synching with a FW800 cable.

I starting thinking today, well the SSD will be around $280 (NewEgg) and the external will be $179 (From Apple store). After taxes, it's going to be a little over $500, which got me thinking I should just get the 160GB X-25M G2, because the only reason I planned on getting the external was to conserve space on the SSD. I know SSD's barely crash, and I've got an old 120GB Passport (USB 2.0... YUCK) that I can use for occasional backups. So what do you guys think, should I get the 80GB and the external? Or just got for the 160GB?

2. As far as installing the SSD and RAM, I know how to do that. Pretty simple. But how do I go about the whole process as for switching over OS X and my files? Obviously I'll be making a Time Machine backup first, but I don't know where to go from there really. I've got the original Leopard discs from this MBP and just got my Snow Leopard Up-To-Date discs today, so I'll obviously be installing 10.6.x on the SSD when I get it.

That's all for now... Sorry for the length.

Thanks guys :)
 
if you have the cash, then go for the 160GB one. If not then get an 80GB one and maybe even drop your OEM HDD in your superdrive area so that you can store your media there.
 
Well since it's the same money, I figured I might as well get the 160GB. Aren't the odds of SSDs crashing like hard drives very slim?
 
Maybe I am an optimist but I believe that in 4-5 months SSD's will be much cheaper. They're already cheaper than 4-5 months ago and new improved models are out almost daily. So wait till then to decide. I am in Greece so "winter" is starting a couple of weeks before xmas...
 
I only backup about once a month, (stupid I know, I just don't have time for it) so I don't really think it's an issue. Right now I'm leaning towards the 160GB X-25M. But what are the odds of a SSD crashing?
 
Abyssgh0st said:
I only backup about once a month, (stupid I know, I just don't have time for it) so I don't really think it's an issue. Right now I'm leaning towards the 160GB X-25M. But what are the odds of a SSD crashing?
Click to expand...

A backup isn't just a hardware failure (crash).

What if you lose or have your computer stolen?
What happens if something goes haywire and corrupts the HD?

Backups protect you from a lot!
 
Running Snow Leopard, how much will either size of the X-25M G2s slow down after 60GB+ is used? Especially on the 80GB, will I notice much slowdown after only about 10GB is left available.
 
Abyssgh0st said:
Running Snow Leopard, how much will either size of the X-25M G2s slow down after 60GB+ is used? Especially on the 80GB, will I notice much slowdown after only about 10GB is left available.
Click to expand...

The G2 should not slow down much - at least not that you will really notice it in everyday usage.
I think I read here in the forums that you should always leave around 15GB free for MacOS to do some background things and stuff.
 
n8kwx said:
A backup isn't just a hardware failure (crash).

What if you lose or have your computer stolen?
What happens if something goes haywire and corrupts the HD?

Backups protect you from a lot!
Click to expand...

Yeah... Dont trust any drive (whether it's an SSD or HDD). My 160GB G2 turned out to be defective from the get go. Couldn't install SL on it; there was an error and the drive size showed up as 8MB after that... Luckily, this happened immediately. Some people experienced this "8MB bug" few days after they installed the drive and lost data once the drive crashed. Again, back up as often as you can and dont put too much faith into any piece of technology. I am doing nightly backups to an external and will get the 2TB Time Capsule soon.
 
You need to check how much hard drive space you actually use. I got the 160 GB G2 for my MBP 13" 2.26 GHz, 4GB and to be honest the 80 GB model would probably be sufficient for me. I have all my music etc on my desktop PC so at the moment I only have about 30 GB used but of course that will go up as work stuff etc keeps piling up.

I bought a SATA->USB hard drive enclosure for the original HDD, installed SL on the SSD from the upgrade disc and copied all my documents, downloads etc from the external drive. I installed all programs because I've had problems when I've just copied library etc files over. The setup doesn't take much time anyway.
 
Here is an update and few questions regarding the Intel 160GB G2 SSD. The first one I received was defective (i.e., had the 8MB bug0, however, the replacement that came yesterday seems to be running fine -and really fast of course- so far. I just have few newbie questions regarding running this drive under OS X (snow leopard).

Someone mentioned in another thread that it is a good idea to turn off the "free-fall sensor", since it may be triggered and block read/write to the drive. Of course, this assumes that the sensor is not within the HDD that was removed and actually somewhere else. Is this true? If so, how can I disable it.

Under energy savings option, I unchecked the box that says "put HDs to sleep whenever possible". Does this still apply to SSDs?

Lastly, the Intel user's manual documents how to disable automated defragmentation for Windows, but there isn't anything for OS X. I've been told many times "you probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X", which indicates that there is a background defrag/optimization process. Does this require any input from me, or just "leave it alone" to the OS?

Thanks for any insights!
 
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