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Ssd vs. Hdd

M

Mysterio116

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 21, 2011
19
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Why does everyone seem to favor ssd? I know they are faster but they much less storage. So what are other benefits of SSD?
 
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Is that it? I'd rather have more storage.
 
for OS and apps, you don't need a huge SSD. I got a 128 GB SSD, and only a little over half of it is used. the increase in performance is significant enough to justify the steep price. but if you want to keep all your mp3s and movies, then it's way too small. but that'd be totally overkill! just get an optibay and add a 500GB HDD.
 
leftyMac said:
for OS and apps, you don't need a huge SSD. I got a 128 GB SSD, and only a little over half of it is used. the increase in performance is significant enough to justify the steep price. but if you want to keep all your mp3s and movies, then it's way too small. but that'd be totally overkill! just get an optibay and add a 500GB HDD.
Click to expand...

An optibay would take over the superdrive space though? Doesn't seem worth it to me.
 
it's faster. MUCH faster. access times are about 90 times faster than on a regular hard drive. The transfer speeds are also about 2x - 3x faster than a 7200RPM HDD.

An SSD uses considerably less power than an HDD because there is no motor to spin the platters.

Also since there are no moving parts, its far less likely to break, especially if it will be used in a laptop where you'll be moving it around (the sudden motion sensor is NOT a 100% guarantee that your drive won't get damaged from sudden movements.

Also it's worth mentioning that an SSD does not make any noise or any vibrations (the vibration from the stock HDD under the palm rest really annoyed me)
 
The immediate speed improvement is evident as SOON as it's installed. Forget CPU, GPU, more RAM, RAID, etc....The SSD is easily the most incredible improvement you can make for 99% of most folks' activities on a workstation. For emails, surfing, word processing, FaceBook, Twitter, et al...the speed enhancement is unreal! Once you've used an SSD, you'll understand.

As far as more storage? It's down to 6-8 cents a gig! You can pick up 1.5TB mobile drives at Costco for a hundred bucks! If you've got a monster video/audio/still library, why not externally store them? Or better yet, as the previous poster mentioned, rid yourself of your HDD and install a second drive, up to a full TB in the ODD bay? Relatively cheap and easy to do if you've got any skills with screwdrivers:)

Seriously...I wasn't at all convinced until I picked my wife up a little 11.6" MBAir. Next to my 17", 2010 i7 with the 7200 RPM hard drive...my iTunes ball bounces about 4-5 times before opening....Her Air? The ball goes up...but never hits the bottom! It opens literally in a second or two...as do all of my programs. Instant wake, incredible boot times....and shut down is also only a second or two....for most other exercises on your computer for every day tasks, there is an immediate and apparent speed increase...easy to notice, unlike RAM bumps or CPU increase...where you have to run silly benchmarks to actually see the difference...an SSD requires no such testing...and also, as mentioned by the earlier poster...MOST Apps require very little space...Even the bigger Apps like FCP and Logic, which I use everyday....you can put the apps on the SSD and the Loops (>50gigs) on the secondary drive.

I'm not sure what the actual numbers are...but I would be MOST folks don't come anywhere near filling their 250gig HDDs these days. Most folks, not including those of us geeks that hang on these boards and boast 1TB music collections and 8TB Video collections:) Hell...if you have this much need for storage, there is NO way to put it in your laptop anyway...These days, with Cloud storage becoming more of a reality at a reasonable price and external storage costing pennies a Gig....IMHO, there is NO need for an internal monster HDD anymore! YMMV, as always

Peace

J
 
Notebooks are meant to be portable - Both in size and function.

One shouldnt really need to carry around their 120GB music collection, along with their 3TB Movie collection...
If your notebook is your primary PC (ie, no desktop) then you can just as easliy have storage and backup systems at home..

There is no need to view multiple gigabytes of Movies, photos and music when away from your desk (home)... Unless you are going on a 6 year round the world trip and want to watch some movies along the way.

So my point. It should be no hassle having 128GB (or 60GB for that matter) storage in a notebook.
 
it all comes down to what you use your macbook for. for listening to music, watching movies, occasional minor video editing and music production, nothing heavy duty professional stuff, and you want to keep your media stuff locally, just upgrade your HD to a larger 7200 RPM one. it's still faster than the stock 5400 RPM HD. I have all my music / movies on a NAS. no need to keep them locally. I can watch HD movies just fine over wifi.

but if you actually NEED more speed, SSD is worth every penny.

I'd dare to say, if you are a consumer, i.e., using your laptop primarily for entertainment, and not to earn the living with it, SSD can be just a luxury. but otherwise it's well worth it.
 
I mean thats mainly it. They're not just faster, they're a lot faster. They're less likely to fail because they don't have any moving parts inside.

Don't get turned off by the lack of decent capacity. SSD's are still fairly new technology in most peoples eyes. I'd say give or take 2 years and you'll start seeing 300-400GB SSD's that aren't as outrageously priced!
 
What about their life span? I've heard that you can only write/amend files on a SSD a number of times until it won't write to disk anymore, and then you need to buy a new disk. Is this true?
 
Lann said:
What about their life span? I've heard that you can only write/amend files on a SSD a number of times until it won't write to disk anymore, and then you need to buy a new disk. Is this true?
Click to expand...
Probably no less than the lifespan of a normal HDD..
Ive been through a few HDD's in my life..
 
Apple should just take out optical drive on both 13 inch and 15 inch. People don't buy music as CD anymore. They watch movies in their living room. If they want to watch movies on the computer, it can be watched thru netflix or amazon video on demand.

Optical drive should stay in 17 inch for a time being since 17 is obviously not very portable and considered as desktop replacement. They could include external DVD drive like super drive in the retail packaging, but optical drive needs to go. Instead, I would take bigger battery, fans, more room for powerful GPU or w/e.
 
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