Thinking of upgrading to SSD, but have a few questions...

[Jamie0003]

I have used traditional 5400 RPM drives for a while now, but have heard really good stuff about SSD's. I would love to try one, but have some dbouts about it.

I only really use my Mac for general computing stuff, so i'm not fussed about having lots of storage. This is what I want: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-V1...1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1312847047&sr=1-1

Is this a good drive?

1. Is it possible to run Windows on an external USB hard drive? I'm not too fussed about this, as I don't run windows games very often, but would be nice to be able to do (Because obviously a 64GB SSD is a bit small to put two OS's onto.)

2. Are these SSD drives as fast as the ones Apple have built into the macbook air? What is the difference between the two?

3. Most important; is it worth it? What sort of speed boosts do you get?

 

[Synergie]

I could not afford a decent sized SSD so I went with the next best thing. The Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200 RPM and it's a Solid State Hybrid drive. It gets near SSD speeds at a fraction of the cost of a SSD. It does this by storing your most used apps in the on board 4 GB NAND Flash memory.

Have you thought about going that route??

 

[alust2013]

1. Yes it is possible to put windows on a USB drive, but it wouldn't be great for gaming.

2. should be as fast or thereabouts.

3. You basically only get boosts with booting and launching apps for the first time. They are fairly significant improvements, but with my needs and finances, I simply can't justify one.

 

[Jamie0003]

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I could not afford a decent sized SSD so I went with the next best thing. The Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200 RPM and it's a Solid State Hybrid drive. It gets near SSD speeds at a fraction of the cost of a SSD. It does this by storing your most used apps in the on board 4 GB NAND Flash memory.

Have you thought about going that route??

I have tried one of these, and it made a ton of noise, had terrible battery life and got hot. Not sure if it was a problem with the drive

 

[Synergie]

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I have tried one of these, and it made a ton of noise, had terrible battery life and got hot. Not sure if it was a problem with the drive

I just installed mine today and it's very quiet! And I monitor my internal temps with istat pro and have not noticed any difference! It might have been the drive... also I reset the SMC and PRAM both right after I changed out the drives. I have heard that a simple SMC reset can often solve the problems you mentioned. Also some of the older firmware shipping on this drive were having issues with OS X. The newest firmware updates have resolved all the issues.

But I love this drive so far!!