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To SSD or not to SSD

S

striker833

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2011
7
0
Hey guys Im new here so hello! :)

I was looking for advice on whether to put an SSD in the MBP which I am going to be ordering in next few days for uni

I have an SSD in my desktop so I know how much of an incredible performance difference there is but in my desktop I run two HDD's the ssd for OS and some other files and the bulk of my stuff goes into my second 1TB HDD

So here is my dilemma I would like an SSD in my MBP but im worried about space on the drive

Does anyone else have a similar issue and if you did/do what are your thoughts/what did you do?
 
We who have SSDs all have to deal with the smaller drive sizes.

I added a second drive with the optibay (removing the optical drive) to get around the smaller drive issue.

You can also use external drives to hold your data as well.
 
I have just swapped out my hdd for an 80gb ssd (probably one of the smallest drives you'll read about on here), this holds the os and applications only. Everything else is held on two 1tb external USB drives, this setup works perfectly for my needs at this time.
 
striker833 said:
Hey guys Im new here so hello! :)

I was looking for advice on whether to put an SSD in the MBP which I am going to be ordering in next few days for uni

I have an SSD in my desktop so I know how much of an incredible performance difference there is but in my desktop I run two HDD's the ssd for OS and some other files and the bulk of my stuff goes into my second 1TB HDD

So here is my dilemma I would like an SSD in my MBP but im worried about space on the drive

Does anyone else have a similar issue and if you did/do what are your thoughts/what did you do?
Click to expand...

I went with Seagate's hybrid drive. For about $100 500GB of storage and SSD like speeds for booting and launching my most used applications.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMldqf5oUZw
 
striker833 said:
I was actually thinking about that, Is it as good as they say or is it only certain things that are faster?
Click to expand...

If you use a limited amount of applications, like shown in the video, the boot times and application launch times are nearly the same as an SSD.

If you use more, larger applications the 4GB SSD can become too small, then it will perform more like a regular 7200rpm hard drive.

This review does a pretty good job of showing the real world performance of a 500GB XT: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6071&p=2
 
striker833 said:
I was actually thinking about that, Is it as good as they say or is it only certain things that are faster?
Click to expand...

The drive is actually designed so that only the most used files are on the ssd. That is: somehow the hardware keeps track of what is accessed and allows the 4GB of most accessed data to be in flash memory, all completely independent of the operating system
 
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