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SSD woes....a ~250gb SSD that actually works

G

gothamm

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 18, 2007
844
3
Christ,

Did not realize that purchasing an SSD would be so complicated. Every SATA III SSD seems to have compatibility problems with the 2011 13" mbp's. These include:

Crucial C300 256gb
Crucial M4 256gb
OCZ Vertex 3 240gb



Is there a 250 gb SATA 3 SSD that actually works like its supposed to :confused:
 
I installed a 240g Vertex 3 and it works fine out of the box. I choose to upgrade the firmware for the benefits but it wasn't required. Terrific SSD.

Also, the older Intel's are really well sorted out. You might look there.
 
I am reading reports of power management issues, as well as constant beachballing from the vertex 3. But I am glad it worked out for you.
 
I have a Vertex 3 and its been two days now with zero complaints. Then again i did not do the TRIM hack.
 
I have the following drives and they all work perfect.

- Apple 512SSD
- Intel 320 600gb
- Vertex 3 240gb
- Intel G2 160gb
 
gothamm said:
I am reading reports of power management issues, as well as constant beachballing from the vertex 3. But I am glad it worked out for you.
Click to expand...

Running 2 x 240GB Vertex 3s in RAID 0 on 2011 MBP, no issues at all. Ran a 256GB C300 in both 2010 and 2011 MBPs for over a year with no issues. Got a 64GB C300 in my PC, no issues.
 
Yup, all the reports of beach balling are from users who tried the trim hack. Ironically the Vertex 3 is the most resilient drive on the market today so there's very little benefit from this hack.

Anyway, you have to remember that 90 of users will have the drive and never have any issues. Of the remainder, some will try and hack away at their drives for reasons real or imagined. With few exceptions, the main posters are the ones with something to negative to say. So, you have to take it with a grain of salt.

The Vertex 3 is a tremendous drive and is very stable if you don't go hacking it with the unsupported trim command. The only issue with it is the firmware is a bit of a hassle to upgrade. The good news is there's no reason to upgrade your firmware very often. The latest update seems to have resolved the majority of issues so there's little reason for further upgrades. I did it once and I probably won't do it again for a while since its working perfectly.

Don't let the naysayers get you down. Give it a shot and you'll see why everyone with a SSD loves the performance. They are revolutionary.
 
JasonH42 said:
Running 2 x 240GB Vertex 3s in RAID 0 on 2011 MBP, no issues at all. Ran a 256GB C300 in both 2010 and 2011 MBPs for over a year with no issues. Got a 64GB C300 in my PC, no issues.
Click to expand...

this is great news. Its good to hear from folks for whom it actually did work out, as they are far less likely to write about their experience. I just ordered a 256gb crucial c300 and will be installing it in a 2011 13" mbp. Did you update the firmware to the latest .007?
 
I have a brand new unopened C300 256gb sitting in front of me, that I had intended to stick in my 15" 2011 MBP (2.2ghz). But I only discovered all the compatibility issues last night. I'm just wondering now whether to just not open it at all and return it.

I agree though, it's encouraging to hear some success stories. Do you think the fixes are a result of a recent OSX update? gothamm, how did your c300 install work out?

Oh btw, from reading about people's different experiences on this, the evidence seems to point to it being an OSX Sata3 driver issue. I've put the main reasons below, can anyone comment if any of them are incorrect?

- There were never any problems with C300s on pre 2011 macbooks, which only supported Sata 2.

- I've yet to see anyone say that their C300 has had any problems at all on 2011 MBPs under boot camp (running win7).

- I've not seen anyone say that they've had problems with the drives when using the OSX Disk Utility prior to installing OSX. Perhaps because it forces only sata2 at this stage? Which leads onto the next point...

- I've seen many comments saying that when OSX sometimes decides to detect the drive as a Sata 2 drive (3gb/s), all problems disappear.

- This problem is not unique to the C300, and seems to happen with all new Sata 3 enabled SSD drives (like the intel 510 for example).
 
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amroc - If it's any help, I have a Crucial 256GB C300 in my 15" 2011 2.2 Ghz MBP and I haven't yet had any issues with it (on firmware version 6). TRIM has been enabled with no issues so far. No issues with installation, or beachballs so far.
 
HackBook said:
amroc - If it's any help, I have a Crucial 256GB C300 in my 15" 2011 2.2 Ghz MBP and I haven't yet had any issues with it (on firmware version 6). TRIM has been enabled with no issues so far. No issues with installation, or beachballs so far.
Click to expand...

Ah thanks, yeah that helps a lot! I'm happy to try and install it there is at least a reasonable chance of it working without issues, sounds like there might be :)
 
Ok, I went and got screwdriver kit and usb->sata for cloning my drive. All set, I'll report back how it goes!
 
I have an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G in my 2011 MBP 17", and I am one of the unlucky few to have dreaded beachball/hangs with SATA III :(

As far as I can tell, since I can't successfully install Windows 7 through Boot Camp without a failure, it appears to be an issue with the MBP, not the drive. It works fine in the optibay, but how I hate having to cut its speed in half :mad:

I bought my MBP at Best Buy just 2 and half weeks ago. I have a Premiere Silver membership, so I have a 45 day return window. Does anyone think I should go through the trouble of an exchange? If I do, I'll be sure to run the serial number of each model in stock to find one with the latest production date.
 
HighSeasCaptain said:
I have an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G in my 2011 MBP 17", and I am one of the unlucky few to have dreaded beachball/hangs with SATA III :(

As far as I can tell, since I can't successfully install Windows 7 through Boot Camp without a failure, it appears to be an issue with the MBP, not the drive. It works fine in the optibay, but how I hate having to cut its speed in half :mad:

I bought my MBP at Best Buy just 2 and half weeks ago. I have a Premiere Silver membership, so I have a 45 day return window. Does anyone think I should go through the trouble of an exchange? If I do, I'll be sure to run the serial number of each model in stock to find one with the latest production date.
Click to expand...

just return the owc pro 6g. You won't be able to see the difference between that and a sata II drive or the crucial m4. sequential speeds are for bragging rights. thats about it.
 
gothamm said:
I am reading reports of power management issues, as well as constant beachballing from the vertex 3. But I am glad it worked out for you.
Click to expand...

I think that's only if you install the TRIMEnabler hack. Without the hack installed, the Vertex 3 works great on mine (15" though). I haven't seen a beachball yet :)
 
Ok bootup worked fine, and everything seems fine so far. I guess I'm past the first step.

I need to watch out for 30 second freezes now right? I'm on 0006 of the C300, worth upgrading to 0007? Or is it best to take the aint broke approach...

cDLc0.png
 
amroc said:
Ok bootup worked fine, and everything seems fine so far. I guess I'm past the first step.

I need to watch out for 30 second freezes now right? I'm on 0006 of the C300, worth upgrading to 0007? Or is it best to take the aint broke approach...

Image
Click to expand...

I encourage you to try rebooting a few times - both warm and cold reboots.

In my experience, I could get the C300 to boot intermittently and that's only with the developer 10.6.8 build. Out of 10 restarts, twice was I able to boot clean. The others it either just did the spinning gear endlessly or some other nonsense. Returning my C300 on Friday - same day I return the newer MBP that I bought it for.

In the original 2011 MBP - same day purchase - the C300 doesn't work at all. 15 minutes to copy a 100MB file to it is unacceptable.
 
I've been leaving my affected SATA III MBP with my OWC Pro 6G running while I download some torrents, and after a few hours I'll come back to my laptop and the screen is black (from auto-shut off) and it won't respond. I have sleep turned off. I'm guessing the system permanently hangs at some point while the screen is off. I just want to make sure this isn't a problem with the drive but yet another problem with my damn SATA III.
 
revelated said:
I encourage you to try rebooting a few times - both warm and cold reboots.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about your problems, it is totally unacceptable. Apple should replace your macbook if this is happening. Well, should, as in they 'ought' to...

I was using my MacBook Pro most of the day yesterday, during which I restarted a few times with no issues. But I tried what you said just now. Did over 10 reboots, mixture of warm and cold, no problems at all. Often the bootup is so fast that the spinny thing doesn't even appear. The drive/OS performance in general seems excellent, had no freezes. Linkspeed is 6gb/s and TRIM is off.

I'm wondering if perhaps the problem is related to Intel's announcement in feb that there was a bug in their Sandy Bridge 6gb/s chipset? Perhaps some of them creeped into to early 11 MacBook Pros? Just a guess from what I've been reading.

Anyway I'll stop speaking too soon... There's still time for issues to happen, will let you know.
 
Last edited:
amroc said:
Sorry to hear about your problems, it is totally unacceptable. Apple should replace your macbook if this is happening. Well, should, as in they 'ought' to...

I was using my MacBook Pro most of the day yesterday, during which I restarted a few times with no issues. But I tried what you said just now. Did over 10 reboots, mixture of warm and cold, no problems at all. Often the bootup is so fast that the spinny thing doesn't even appear. The drive/OS performance in general seems excellent, had no freezes. Linkspeed is 6gb/s and TRIM is off.

I'm wondering if perhaps the problem is related to Intel's announcement in feb that there was a bug in their Sandy Bridge 6gb/s chipset? Perhaps some of them creeped into to early 11 MacBook Pros? Just a guess from what I've been reading.

Anyway I'll stop speaking too soon... There's still time for issues to happen, will let you know.
Click to expand...

Question is, does your SATA connection show 6/6 (6 for the SSD, 6 for the optical) or 6/3? If you're having no issues you very well may be a 6/6, in which case there is definite changes to something in the later MacBook Pros. Unfortunately, unless I CTO it and wait for it to be shipped to me, I'll not be able to take advantage of it, and the risk of having it still be wrong and having to wait to get my ~$3000 back is just unacceptable.

For now I'm going to investigate the Intel 320 for my current 17". I hate to settle for less, but I appear not to have any choice in the matter.
 
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