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Toshiba SSD vs OWC6G SSD - Noticable?

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atMac

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 20, 2011
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My MacBook Air has the Toshiba 128GB SSD. AFter having it for a few months I've noticed that I don't use more that 20-25GB of storage on it. All of my music, video and important files I keep on an external RAID on my Network and transfer them as needed.

I'm thinking about moving to a 120GB OWC 6G SSD, but would I really notice much of a change in Application launching, file extracting(I do a LOT of that with 14-40GB files that are broken down into 50+ Rar files) and battery life?
 
Honestly, probably not. You are probably looking at quarter second load times of 40MB files compared to say half second. I've used toshiba, samsung, sandforce 1200, sandforce 2200, etc and on day to day operations, none of them feel that much different. Benchmarks might be different, but from a usability feel I don't notice much.
 
For the MacBook Air, I've never owned the Toshiba SSD (thank God).

My 11" i7, came with the Samsung SSD. I upgraded it to the OWC 120gb 3G SSD, and now finally the OWC 6G 240gb SSD.

I can say that comparing the OWC 3G SSD and the stock Samsung SSD, everything is pretty similar.

When I upgraded to the 6G SSD, I noticed a big improvement in boot up times. Right now, the spinning circle on the Apple boot screen with the 6G is fast, about 1/2 a turn and then it's loaded into Lion.

Launching apps is a little snappier, but at most a fraction of a second.

If you want faster boot-ups, go ahead and upgrade to the 6G, especially since you have the Toshiba one.

Truthfully, if you don't need the absolute fastest, then stick with your Toshiba and wait for SSD's to come down later this year.
 
rafalski said:
Did you notice any negative impact on battery performance?
Click to expand...

I know Anandtech reports decreased battery life with the 6G OWC SSD.
I'm sure he is right, but I always try to use an AC adapter when possible to keep the Battery Cycle count low for resale purposes.
I also have a Hypermac external battery pack, so for myself I haven't been able to notice a difference.

If you routinely use your MacBook Air for 4 hours at a time, then that would be a good reason to not upgrade to 6G.
For me, I use my Air at 4 hours at a time rarely, but the performance increase is something I use every time I turn it on, so the decreased battery life is negligible.

Plus, 6G is future proof for at least a couple more years...hopefully.
 
I have used various OWC creations from memory, external drives, SSDs and absolutely love what they do.
 
Thanks. I use mine as my main desktop machine 90% of the time, performance is the priority here.

I process a lot of photos in Lightroom and I am not fully happy with the performance—this is mostly a read/write issue. I think a faster SSD could also in a way make up for the small amount of RAM Air comes with.
 
Wait for some CES products to appear. A company shipping Q1 has 512/430 read/write speeds in the pipeline!
 
The problem with this benchmarks, is that even on the "real life" situation with the 1.5 second faster they don't tell you that is very low to notice it, and even summing up a lot of those extra seconds...you will probably waste more time if you sum up the time you use for rubbing your eyes or standing up for getting a little rest. If is productivity you are worried about it is not that noticeable.

You know what can be a more comprehensive test? Find two 2011 MBA with different SSDs (from two friends or from the AppleStore), use them, and then try to tell wich one is faster. Ohh and of course, using a stopwatch is not allowed. Then see if you actually guessed right. Repeat this at least another time - since MBAs are all the same from the outside, simple recognition will not be possible -.

If you have the incredible ability to tell without a doubt wich one is the faster...please consider using those superhuman senses to the good of humankind and become a superhero of some sort.

The bottleneck of today laptops and desktops is not the CPU any longer (at least for the average user), but the Hard Drive. Any one of the 3 SSDs putting on comparison are way faster than ANY HARD DRIVE. I really don't see it as a good investment, but is your money, do as you please.

To be honest, with that kind of speeds modern SSDs have, I'll start to worry on more practical things, like battery consumption (in case you use the MBA the way it was intended to be used), lifespan of the product or information corruption.
 
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I like how everyone who stated there wouldn't be any noticable difference have been voted down. This is FACT. Yes benchmarks will show you it is X faster, but in real life experience it isn't worth buying the same size just for a faster SSD. Most of your speed gains from SSD comes from the almost instantaneous seek times. Unless doing large files 100+MB, the difference in loading the files will be fractions of a second. This is fact. Most of the stuff you do are a bunch of small files. None of the benchmarks provided actually show any real world "feel". They are just a bunch of benchmarks. In the end, OSX will probably boot a couple seconds faster, and apps will open maybe a half a second faster.

Now if you need more storage, then absolutely upgrade, but just buying a 120GB OWC6G to replace your 128GB Apple just doesn't make sense.

Feel free to vote this down, but those who vote it down, haven't actually tested this for themselves. I've used/owned a variety of SSD's in my life and while it will be a bit faster with the latest and greatest, it won't be dramatically faster.
 
I still have my 128gb Toshina SSD for warranty purposes.... That thing was dog slow....
I bought a 256GB Samsung off a guy on ebay for $125 and the thing flies... I didn't do any spec tests but moving music from the external drive to the ssd was very slow... After the upgrade the speed was noticeable... very noticeable...

I will do a speed test with the Samsung drive and then I will do another with the OWC 480GB 6G SSD I get later this week.
 
IMHO the Toshiba/Samsung difference is not noticeable.

I have used both during extremely disk intensive sessions and I noticed zero difference.

It'a a case of suggestive hysteria, or artificial benchmarks.

The upside to this, is that Amazon has the returns for -$300. LOTS of them. Warehouse deals for new units that are returned for this reason. So you can get really goods deals.

Also, with the Samsung/LG display controversy, there is actually a very noticeable difference.

The LG has some calibration issues, but is brighter and has better viewing angles. The Samsung has weak viewing angles, but looks good out of the box. I probably prefer the Samsung as I'm not good at calibrating, and you sort of have to work at the LG. But I like both, and would not care either way.

Suggestion is a powerful thing :D
 
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mac jones said:
IMHO the Toshiba/Samsung difference is not noticeable.

I have used both during extremely disk intensive sessions and I noticed zero difference.

It'a a case of suggestive hysteria, or artificial benchmarks.

The upside to this, is that Amazon has the returns for -$300. LOTS of them. Warehouse deals for new units that are returned for this reason. So you can get really goods deals.

Also, with the Samsung/LG display controversy, there is actually a very noticeable difference.

The LG has some calibration issues, but is brighter and has better viewing angles. The Samsung has weak viewing angles, but looks good out of the box. I probably prefer the Samsung as I'm not good at calibrating, and you sort of have to work at the LG. But I like both, and would not care either way.

Suggestion is a powerful thing :D
Click to expand...

I have both too and I stick to it. Samsung is most certainly faster. http://i.tuaw.com/2011/07/26/macbook-airs-using-ssds-from-both-toshiba-and-samsung/
 
Smileyboy said:
I still have my 128gb Toshina SSD for warranty purposes.... That thing was dog slow....
I bought a 256GB Samsung off a guy on ebay for $125 and the thing flies... I didn't do any spec tests but moving music from the external drive to the ssd was very slow... After the upgrade the speed was noticeable... very noticeable...

I will do a speed test with the Samsung drive and then I will do another with the OWC 480GB 6G SSD I get later this week.
Click to expand...

See and this is the absolute crap that causes these sorts of threads! An external drive can only be hooked p to your MBA via USB which has a top speed of about 35 MBps (seriously look it up). The "slow" Toshiba has a top read speed of about 200 MBps. Whatever was causing your "slow speed" was NOT the Toshiba drive but rather your external unless you found some magical way to connect your external drive that DOES NOT exist for the rest of us.

This misinformation is why people think the Toshibas are crap. Poor testing and a total lack of understanding....
 
Numbers are numbers... the Toshiba is slower than the Samsung, but regardless, both SSDs or any SSDs for that matter will always be faster than conventional hard drives.

That being said, I have an OCZ Agility (indilinx) and OCZ Vertex 2 (SF) and I notice a slight speed improvement, but nothing too dramatic.

The only time I'll notice something is when I'm booting a computer from a hard drive. I thought there was something wrong with the Apple Store Mac Pros when I realized they were booting from a hard drive :rolleyes:

by all means, save your warranty and your money and don't upgrade. It's not worth it.
 
Smileyboy said:
usb or not.... doesn't change the read/write speeds
Click to expand...

Ummm actually they do! If one drive is slower due to the connection it will completely throw off the numbers! No self respecting website would post drive speeds/reviews based on USB! Again this shows a complete lack of understanding on your part...
 
I can see your point. But the Toshiba SSD's are still slower. Numbers and real world experience don't lie:rolleyes:

Maybe you can't tell and that's fine...... most people won't be able to.

Heres a video to check out to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_vaZl0H56o

Toshiba is the slower of the 2.... No amount of saying I don't understand the SSD experience can refute that...
 
Smileyboy said:
I can see your point. But the Toshiba SSD's are still slower. Numbers and real world experience don't lie:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Synthetic performance is always synthetic. A faster SSD won't help if the bottleneck is elsewhere.

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Vertex 3 is one of the fastest consumer SSDs in the market, theoretically. However, even Intel X25-M G2 is faster than it, even though Vertex 3 is more than twice as fast in synthetic tests. Either way, the difference is so small that it's not noticeably in everyday use, only if you do something really I/O intensive.
 
Yep and that's when I started to notice it... ?.
Aperture and CS5 makes it obvious 2 me....
 
Well...you may have saved a couple of seconds with a faster SSD. I will have simply preferred to start drinking water instead of coffee in my breaks, that way I can avoid having acidity and save me a couple of minutes or so, more than you have saved with the SSD. Cheaper, healthier.

Of course, you can do both and save even more time, I just wanted to put an example of cheaper ways to save time, with nowadays speeds the bottleneck is you not the SSD.

And professionaly speaking...editing files (audio, video) usually happens on an external drive, the bottleneck then is the connection with that external drive. Unless of course you use a desktop (an optibay perhaps is another option, but this is the MBA forum).
 
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