am I crasy?
I just ordered a MBP with a 512 GB SSD. When I get it I will tell you all information related...
I just ordered a MBP with a 512 GB SSD. When I get it I will tell you all information related...
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The 2010 Macbook Pro's use Toshiba's HG2 SSD Drives
- Thread starter Jon03021
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OK, my 17" MBP with the 128SSD arrived this morning.
Here is the info from System Profiler:
APPLE SSD TS128B:
Capacity: 121.33 GB (121,332,826,112 bytes)
Model: APPLE SSD TS128B
So, I can't tell what brand this, presumably, Apple re-branded SSDs are.
How, so far, everything seems super snappy. Copying files from external hard drives are faster, Finder windows with big photo files open super quick, and iTunes opens in one dock-bounce. Nice.
Edit: I just had a thought, perhaps the "TS" in the name stands for Toshiba?
Here is the info from System Profiler:
APPLE SSD TS128B:
Capacity: 121.33 GB (121,332,826,112 bytes)
Model: APPLE SSD TS128B
So, I can't tell what brand this, presumably, Apple re-branded SSDs are.
How, so far, everything seems super snappy. Copying files from external hard drives are faster, Finder windows with big photo files open super quick, and iTunes opens in one dock-bounce. Nice.
Edit: I just had a thought, perhaps the "TS" in the name stands for Toshiba?
Thank you for providing this information, as it seems there is no point to go for 3rd party sellers.
Could do some benchmark test ?
I do not know which software you must use but I am sure someone will tell you what to do.
I've never done benchmarking. I've heard of Geekbench, so I'll download that. I'm in the process of calibrating my battery, so I want to wait until I plug my MacBook Pro back into the charger before I start the benchmark test.
I will post my findings later.
For Sure Toshiba
My new Core i7 Macbook Pro 17" arrived today.
The drive shows up in software as "Apple SSD TS512" (500.1gb formatted) due to its custom Apple firmware.
When I open my hours-old Macbook, printed right on the drive:
Toshiba THNS512GG8BBAA
Note #1: This is not the THNS512GG8BB, it's the special Apple firmware edition.
Note #2: Same SSD brand as my now-old Early 2009 Macbook Pro 256gb Apple-firmwared Toshiba SSD, which runs about as fast as an 5400rpm hard disk. :-(
In other words, it appears to be the Toshiba 2008 model SSD series.
:-(
My new Core i7 Macbook Pro 17" arrived today.
The drive shows up in software as "Apple SSD TS512" (500.1gb formatted) due to its custom Apple firmware.
When I open my hours-old Macbook, printed right on the drive:
Toshiba THNS512GG8BBAA
Note #1: This is not the THNS512GG8BB, it's the special Apple firmware edition.
Note #2: Same SSD brand as my now-old Early 2009 Macbook Pro 256gb Apple-firmwared Toshiba SSD, which runs about as fast as an 5400rpm hard disk. :-(
In other words, it appears to be the Toshiba 2008 model SSD series.
:-(
The model shipping in the new 2010 model using Core i7 is the old 2008 Toshiba SSD model.
Yeah, I've confirmed since - though I don't think these were actually shipping (or at least in any volume) until mid-2009. Certainly not the 512GB units, anyway. These units are dramatically faster than a platter drive though - see benchmarks versus other SSDs and Apple platter drives at http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp19.html.
Not the fastest though
Of course - frankly, we all know Apple does not use the fastest hardware, almost ever, and esp. in laptops. But this drive absolutely flies compared to a hard drive, and if it's a little slower than some other SSDs but meets Apple's reliability requirements and is fully supported with Apple firmware, that's fine by me in this case.
Of course, I would like it if they used the very fastest there is, and would even pay for it, but even as it is, this thing opens applications and documents and resumes from sleep in literally the blink of an eye - I have never been one of those "I don't need it any faster" guys, and in fact have certainly been one of the first to criticize Apple for not producing up to spec equipment in the past, but this drive seems pretty damned quick to me...
So you don't think its worth getting this SSD, and that you wouldn't notice any difference in performance?
I'm looking for the ultimate MBP here!
Oh, sure it is! I just wanted Apple's warranty and to make sure the OS supports the drive's TRIM features, etc. when this is added, etc. But color me conservative - I did not want to source my own and reinstall the OS, even though this is really a very easy task according to almost all sources. By all means, go for it!
The Kingston SSDNow V+ is apparently the same drive as the Toshiba HG2. I have the Kingston V+ and below is the snapshot of Xbench results for the 512 GB drive. Just for comparison sake, the second screenshot below shows the results for a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500 GB 7200RPM drive.
Attachments
This is a huge difference! thanks for posting your benchmarks. Could you try filling the drive with data and then running the same tests?
Well those speeds look better than the ones I found on thg where the HG2 is hardly smaller than an OCZ summit (Samsung controller). It does show good power requierments but that's it.
I would still go for an aftermarket drive. Besides the Crucial drive there is no price benefit but the speed.
Even the Intel X-25M looks bad in aligned 4K random reads.
In THGs benches there is HG2 about as slow as OCZ Summit which is abysmal. According to these 512MB benches there seems to be some 4k aligned oriented firmware update that might be the reason for the significantly better scores in random write but the read is still could be much better. I think the Curcial is the best deal out there. But it will only get a normal 5400rpm hdd and upgard later when they are cheaper and the firmware is bugfree.
I would still go for an aftermarket drive. Besides the Crucial drive there is no price benefit but the speed.
Even the Intel X-25M looks bad in aligned 4K random reads.
In THGs benches there is HG2 about as slow as OCZ Summit which is abysmal. According to these 512MB benches there seems to be some 4k aligned oriented firmware update that might be the reason for the significantly better scores in random write but the read is still could be much better. I think the Curcial is the best deal out there. But it will only get a normal 5400rpm hdd and upgard later when they are cheaper and the firmware is bugfree.
It's been a while...
Does anyone who bought a Toshiba HG2 SSD Drive from apple regret it?
I don't know understand how "aligned" and "random" can be in the same sentence, let alone benchmark. But that last chart clearly disagrees with the previous posters xbench.... The xbench is 40MB/s while thg states 3MB/s.
Does anyone who bought a Toshiba HG2 SSD Drive from apple regret it?
I don't know understand how "aligned" and "random" can be in the same sentence, let alone benchmark. But that last chart clearly disagrees with the previous posters xbench.... The xbench is 40MB/s while thg states 3MB/s.
My 512GB Apple SSD is fine. Faster than my old SSD in my last macbook pro, and it uses very low power and gives off no heat. I know there are other SSDs out there, and I probably would have purchased my own if I went w/ a lower capacity, but I needed 512GB, and the apple warranty is a nice thing to have as well...
I would not accept the Toshiba drive
I admit, I wanted to hear about Toshiba drive owners real world experience - but even then it's going to be anecdotal - one can get an impression of value based on various inputs.
I went through this last year - evaluating SSD drives for a project - for a linux server.
I found a lot of server vendors coming out with 'supported' SSD products back in 2009. The unfortunate thing about it was, that they would try to sell me the drives as a traditional hard drive replacement, but once I insisted on running a certain benchmark - they'd just go silent.
Unfortunately, just going silent, is how some salespeople handle not telling the bad news. They didn't want to give up the spec's, or the manufacturers name for the drives.
After quite a bit of searching around, I found out many of the manufacturers were going with Toshiba and Samsung drives - and the particular benchmark I was insisting they run - those drives fell flat on their face.
Look at the Toshiba's IOmeter result - it's not just a little slower, in some of the graphs it barely registers at all.
Some would argue that this doesn't apply to a typical 'desktop' application - perhaps.
Although I don't do typical work, and I needed the drive to work at least as well as the Intel X-25 - which it turns out was the top dog on that benchmark.
We considered going with Intel. In 2009, Sun's SSD was really just a rebranded intel, but they paired up the Intel with a latency adding controller. Unfortunately even SUN didn't seem to care about the drives performance VS. other SSDs but was intent on comparing it only to traditional hard drives.
Because my project was an linux server project, we finally decided upon IBM servers with their 'high iops' card - which is a rebranded Fusion-IO.
The project was a great success, and the card is super fast.
This is not an option for the Mac, but since 2009, things have changed, you have a very nice SSD drive in the OWC Mercury RE series.
My experience would be, just go with that. I understand the desire to buy
an Apple installed and supported drive, but I personally just couldn't accept they made so many compromises to increase their profit margin. I do not accept for one moment that it was to improve the reliability of the drive.
But that's me, I am just a doubting Thomas about altruistic moves from large companies.
And my experience has been great with installing my own drives, I save money and I get better performance.
I stopped by today because I'm looking at those new 27" iMacs that have a built-in slot for SSD. As soon as I can confirm that people can install their own into that slot, I'll look at buying that and I'll probably go with a Sandforce controller drive, like the OWC Mercury RE series. 200GB will hold the system easily, and I'll put large files on the other drive. (well luckily the iMac has two drive slots, so the choice of a smaller SSD is quite easy to make.)
I admit, I wanted to hear about Toshiba drive owners real world experience - but even then it's going to be anecdotal - one can get an impression of value based on various inputs.
I went through this last year - evaluating SSD drives for a project - for a linux server.
I found a lot of server vendors coming out with 'supported' SSD products back in 2009. The unfortunate thing about it was, that they would try to sell me the drives as a traditional hard drive replacement, but once I insisted on running a certain benchmark - they'd just go silent.
Unfortunately, just going silent, is how some salespeople handle not telling the bad news. They didn't want to give up the spec's, or the manufacturers name for the drives.
After quite a bit of searching around, I found out many of the manufacturers were going with Toshiba and Samsung drives - and the particular benchmark I was insisting they run - those drives fell flat on their face.
Look at the Toshiba's IOmeter result - it's not just a little slower, in some of the graphs it barely registers at all.
Some would argue that this doesn't apply to a typical 'desktop' application - perhaps.
Although I don't do typical work, and I needed the drive to work at least as well as the Intel X-25 - which it turns out was the top dog on that benchmark.
We considered going with Intel. In 2009, Sun's SSD was really just a rebranded intel, but they paired up the Intel with a latency adding controller. Unfortunately even SUN didn't seem to care about the drives performance VS. other SSDs but was intent on comparing it only to traditional hard drives.
Because my project was an linux server project, we finally decided upon IBM servers with their 'high iops' card - which is a rebranded Fusion-IO.
The project was a great success, and the card is super fast.
This is not an option for the Mac, but since 2009, things have changed, you have a very nice SSD drive in the OWC Mercury RE series.
My experience would be, just go with that. I understand the desire to buy
an Apple installed and supported drive, but I personally just couldn't accept they made so many compromises to increase their profit margin. I do not accept for one moment that it was to improve the reliability of the drive.
But that's me, I am just a doubting Thomas about altruistic moves from large companies.
And my experience has been great with installing my own drives, I save money and I get better performance.
I stopped by today because I'm looking at those new 27" iMacs that have a built-in slot for SSD. As soon as I can confirm that people can install their own into that slot, I'll look at buying that and I'll probably go with a Sandforce controller drive, like the OWC Mercury RE series. 200GB will hold the system easily, and I'll put large files on the other drive. (well luckily the iMac has two drive slots, so the choice of a smaller SSD is quite easy to make.)
Upgrading 2010 MBP to SSD
I just bought a 2.8 GHz i7 15" MBP with the low-end platter drive. I also bought a Toshiba THNS512GG8BBAA 512GB drive on eBay ($880), which I intend to install. I have an older (2007) MBP and I'm cloning the old drive onto the Toshiba SSD to drop into the new MBP. I'll let you know how it goes.
I just bought a 2.8 GHz i7 15" MBP with the low-end platter drive. I also bought a Toshiba THNS512GG8BBAA 512GB drive on eBay ($880), which I intend to install. I have an older (2007) MBP and I'm cloning the old drive onto the Toshiba SSD to drop into the new MBP. I'll let you know how it goes.
Upgrading 2010 MBP to SSD
My old MBP (2.4 GHz SR, 4 GB, 7200 rpm Seagate) scored 3352 on Geekbench. The new MBP (2.8 GHz i7, 4 GB, 512 GB Toshiba SSD) scored 6521.
The startup time is surprisingly long. I was expecting <30 sec, but it takes more like 1 minute. Apps definitely open quicker. Am running the Apple Hardware diagnostic now.
My old MBP (2.4 GHz SR, 4 GB, 7200 rpm Seagate) scored 3352 on Geekbench. The new MBP (2.8 GHz i7, 4 GB, 512 GB Toshiba SSD) scored 6521.
The startup time is surprisingly long. I was expecting <30 sec, but it takes more like 1 minute. Apps definitely open quicker. Am running the Apple Hardware diagnostic now.