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SSD vs HDD

S

Simon 5000

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 24, 2009
37
0
I don't know much at all about SSD's and HDD's, so I need a few things cleared up, between a 7200rpm HDD and a SSD:

~Which offers better battery life?
~Which is faster at booting up the mac and/or opening applications?
~Is it worth it?

Could someone also tell me some other drawbacks and advantages of SSD so I can make a good decision?

Thanks.
 
Take a look at the insanely fast boot speed and app startup speeds in forum member Abbas' video posted at the bottom of this page.
Or Bare Feats' benchmarks comparing the fastest 10K HD drive to SSD solutions.
SSD's are putting in very impressive performances to say the least. :)
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

1) SSD
2) SSD
3) It depends. If the cost is worth the extra write speed to you.

Advantages - SSDs are generally faster than HDDs and theoretically provide better battery life as you inquired above. They also are completely quiet since there are no moving parts.

Disadvantages - Cost is the big one right now.
 
kornyboy said:
Disadvantages - Cost is the big one right now.
Click to expand...

Cost VS Benefit ..... get the HDD

512 GB SSD = $1500.00
500 GB HDD = $100

The price delta is $1400.

A battery cost $129.00.

You could buy one 500 GB HDD and ten Batteries for the cost of one SSD.

Performace goes to SSD - but will the increased performance really be beneficial to you?

Is your computer slowing you down causing a marked drop in productivity???

They really need to get the cost of the SSD down - I fell the cost is artificially inflated for the " cool factor ". Manufacturers know they will sell SSD's at inflated prices to those people who feel the need to be " first kid on the block " to have one, you know .... people who need " bragging rights! " :D

Heck, for $1500 you could buy a second MBP and split the workload between them!!! ;)
 
living with macbook air with 128GB SSD for 6 months, i just realized that i don't really need that much of hard drive space. the 128GB capacity makes me picky for what i put into it.

now, with my 17" UMBP, i put the 128GB corsair SSD in it and i'm just totally fine with it.

movies files which require big spaces are on the macmini HD (320GB) which i can access through WiFi from this MBP.
 
having now experienced the MBA 2.13 with SSD. I am convinced I need SSD in all of my computers.

And to take that into account I have a RAID 0 Velociraptor setup for my PC.

This MBA has probably one of the slowest SSDs in the market of SSDs but its still BLAZING fast launching all applications
 
If you value every precious second of your life, then maybe SSD is for you. For the rest of us, we already have something that works reliably, has more space and is a lot cheaper. You can afford to wait an extra 15 seconds for OSX to load up, or you probably have it in sleep mode, then you won't even notice the difference. Apps load up 2 seconds quicker. All those two seconds add up right? You might of saved yourself 1 minute during the day and hour over two months. You saved up to 6 hours over the course of the year. You used that time wisely watching commercials on your 50" plasma. Those hard drive using plebs... suckers. We know better :D

500gb WDC Blue user.
 
I have tried out both a 7200rpm HDD and a SSD on my new notebook. An SSD is indeed a quantum leap. From a relatively quiet, quick computer it is now a silent, almost instantaneous one. An SSD uses less power and creates far less heat, reducing the need for system fans to cool, reducing overall system noise. It is itself silent. No whirring of a hard drive, less fan noise, incredible speed. It's like having a huge ram-drive. The only downsize is that those who want lots of storage (more than 250GB) need to stay with a HDD. For those who find 120GB sufficient, a SSD is only about three times the cost of a HDD. For the considerable benefits, I for one found the extra cost OK for the single best upgrade to a computer I have ever done.:)
 
SSDs are faster, more reliable, use less power and are silent with no vibration.

The only reason to buy a spinning hard drive right now is massive media storage or price. And you are using a Mac, if you wanted the cheapest solution you would have a Dell hackintosh. :) SSD all the way.
 
ThomasJL said:
Are you sure SSDs are "more reliable"?
Click to expand...

In the sense that they are more durable and resistant to shock/failure due to shock.

They have no moving parts, whereas HDDs have platters.

At least to my understanding.

However, SSDs are a new technology and lots of kinks are being worked out now. One issue is that performance degrades over time, and many manufacturers and OS makers have begun to address this by implementing solutions such as TRIM.

I also read that many owners of the Intel X-25M 160 Gb SSD had failures.
 
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