SSD: what tangible difference between 254mps and 520mps?

[MattOKC]

I'm considering upgrading to an internal SSD for my MBP and I'm intrigued by this whopping 960GB drive.

However, while it claims to offer the "highest levels of capacity and speed," the specs show it running at 254mps, which is hardly the "highest capacity for speed." 512GB drives like this one run at 520mps, and so do plenty of others.

But in terms of real-life use, what's the tangible difference? Are we talking an indiscernible fraction of a second, or are we talking about significant lag?

Like most MBP users, 90% of what I do is ordinary stuff--Firefox, iPhoto, Word. But I do use InDesign, Photoshop, and other processor-heavy apps sometimes. I'm just tired of my 5400-speed hard drive (which has been post-crash replaced once already) and that spinning ball of delay.

 

[jcpb]

That's because if you pay attention to its technical specifications...

Interface (blank space) SATA 3Gb/s

For $1130 I can buy a Samsung 830 512GB - much faster than this SATA2 SandForce - right now and still have more than half that amount left over for a multi-bay external HDD array/NAS.

- To say, there is no real difference, but the price for that 960GB is obscene.

 

[RedTomato]

Buy 2 x 512GBs, put one in your optical bay, and have more storage in total for around half the price.

 

[MattOKC]

Adding an optical bay drive would be a good idea, but I'm not sure I want one in lieu of the optical cd/dvd in its place (since I use those). I know you can buy an external replacement cd/dvd, but then I'm up to three new pieces of hardware instead of just one.

Jcbp, really, that price is obscene? Any SSD I've never seen comparable to that amount of storage has usually been around twice that price.

Thank you for the help! I'm still learning about all these specs, and I hadn't known enough when I posted to include that my MPB is a 6,1 which can only handle a 3G SSD, and not a 6G, so therefore the speedier ones wouldn't benefit me anyway. So the consideration ahead of me now is how much I want to spend for the most storage on a single SSD to replace my HD. If ~$1000 is really too much for a 960gb SSD, I'd love to find a comparable SSD for less but haven't had luck yet.

 

[RedTomato]

What work are you doing on a mobile device that requires a whole TB of space? If you tell us more, we can advise.

Use something like OmniDiskSweeper (free app) to find what folders are taking the most space on your hard drive. You may be suprised. You haven't mentioned any uses that take vast amounts of disk space so at a guess, most of your current disk space is taken by video files you don't use.

You should always have a full backup via Time Machine, plus three copies in two places of other archived material, so use your money to sort this out (e.g 1 copy on Time Capsule, 1 copy in cloud storage, and another copy on your laptop or other HDD).

I currently have 500GB of stuff on my laptop but with some housecleaning I can get it down to around 200GB if I go ahead with buying the Samsung 830 SSD (256GB) that I have my eye on. It's only £145 in the UK.