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To SSD or not to SSD?

M

mab75

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 24, 2008
9
0
The 250Gb drive in my early 2008 black MB just gave up one month after warranty expired. (For those interested it was the Travelstar 5k250 HTS542525K9SA00. Second time a Hitachi drive dies early on me, last it was the deskstar aka deathstar).
I managed to salvage most of my data, and I will be running time machine from now on.

This has given me an opportunity to replace the internal drive of my MacBook. I've been looking at the Seagate momentus 7200.4 500Gb. But also at various SSD solutions, and figure I can afford about 80-120Gb. I use my computer for everyday tasks, and often bring it with me - which is probably why the drive failed..

SSD pros: fast, reliable, fast, fast, power efficient
SSD cons: small storage, expensive, I will probably have to use my LaCie littledisk for most of my data.

The real question is: will the happiness of speed make up for all the lost space?
Any thoughts on this would be appriciated!

Regds
Martin Bergman
Stockholm, Sweden
 
I've been looking at SSDs too, and the Seagate. Think I'd go with the Seagate for now, scads of room, fairly fast, and from what I've read power consumption is not much worse than a 5400 RPM drive. I think I'm going to give SSDs a little time to get bigger and cheaper.

On the other hand, the only HDD that ever failed on me was a Seagate.....
 
I don't think SSDs are worth the extra money. You get less space, they cost more all for your files booting a couple of seconds faster. I say you should get the 7200 rpm one, with the time machine backup you'll be fine.
 
Intel 80GB

While it may be better to wait for SSDs to come down in price, you may be blown away by the performance offered by Intel's SSDs. They are currently top of the charts in performance with the 256GB Samsung SSD (an option for the latest MacBook Pros) being a close second.

The read/write speeds are literally many times that of even the fastest HDDs available and lest we forget the almost negligible latency with SSD that so plagues HDDs. A computer with any Intel SSD or Samsung 256GB SSD can feel like something from the future today. For speed freaks it is well worth the significant investment. Intel's are quite high priced, making the Samsung 256GB look like great value in the current market.

Windows 7 is the first version of Windows which is properly optimised to run with an SSD. It was discovered that Operating Systems need to behave differently when running on an SSD in order to prevent massive amounts of fragmentation seen in XP and Vista leading to loss of performance. While Mac OS X includes several under the bonnet features designed to 'bypass fragmentation as an issue, I do not know if Leopard or Snow Leopard are truly optimised for SSD or if this is a given with their existing anti-fragmentation capabilities. I would anticipate that Snow Leopard would be SSD-optimised in the first instance.
 
it might be worth, but it's just too early to tell right now (my opinion). but if you have the money, and hear about others' experiences with an SSD, get one.

but i personally like my 500 GB
 
That technology is still new it will be dropping in price fast. You should just save your money and buy a decent sata drive.
 
I still see the time for SSD's becoming an affordable mainstream option a bit off. The technology is awsome but still being mastered. Id grab the seagate 7200.4 500gb at the moment, but make sure its has the new firmware. The first release most likely had some problems which is why the drive has been so hard to get a hold of up until now.
 
The speed increases with an Intel drive or a Vertex drive are very real and very fast. I guess you'll need to balance that with the inconvenience of the small storage and larger price.
 
mab75 said:
The 250Gb drive in my early 2008 black MB just gave up one month after warranty expired. (For those interested it was the Travelstar 5k250 HTS542525K9SA00. Second time a Hitachi drive dies early on me, last it was the deskstar aka deathstar).
I managed to salvage most of my data, and I will be running time machine from now on.

This has given me an opportunity to replace the internal drive of my MacBook. I've been looking at the Seagate momentus 7200.4 500Gb. But also at various SSD solutions, and figure I can afford about 80-120Gb. I use my computer for everyday tasks, and often bring it with me - which is probably why the drive failed..

SSD pros: fast, reliable, fast, fast, power efficient
SSD cons: small storage, expensive, I will probably have to use my LaCie littledisk for most of my data.

The real question is: will the happiness of speed make up for all the lost space?
Any thoughts on this would be appriciated!

Regds
Martin Bergman
Stockholm, Sweden
Click to expand...

Intel, or OCZ for you my friend. Most reliable and fastest drives out there. Con like you said, they are quite pricy.
 
Is the cost truly worth it???

I have a hacintosh with a ssd and must say launching applications and certain tasks are noticeably faster than my brand new aluminum macbook (2.4ghz). I think osx runs brilliantly on these drives, but that being said, I don't think the small advantages outweigh the extra cost of ssd drives. I also would not expect much better battery life from these drives. Tests done on these type of drives show power consumption to be all over the place and from my personal use I don't see much of a difference.
I recently upgraded my macmini from the stock hdd to a segate momentus 500gb 5200 rpm drive. Even though it is only 5200 rpm (I gave up on trying to find a 7200rpm in stock) it is so much faster than the stock drive it feels like a brand new machine. Most of that performance has to do with the data density of the platters. I cant speak to how much better the performance of the 7200 drive is but do wonder if it generates more heat and vibration. Has any one else here upgraded their portable with a drive like this? How much more noise and heat is there?
Hope this helps.
Jim
 
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