Which SSD - Crucial or OWC?

[SWD]

Looking to do an upgrade on my 2010 MBP. I really like the price on the Crucial, but why would the OWC one be that much more expensive. As far as I can tell Crucial beats the OWC in most performance tests (from what I could find). Thoughts?

OWC has theirs for $165


Crucial has one for $109

 

[jdblas69]

Last year I put a Crucial M4 in my mid 2010 MBP. The M4 is the predecessor to the M500 you are looking at. It has operated flawlessly.

You may also want to look at the Samsung SSD lineup. Samsung and Crucial are two of the more popular SSD drives mentioned around here.

 

[TheGenerous]

I will get the Crucial SSD. My Mac Minis have Samsung SSDs, but I will expect Crucial to be as good as their memory cards. OWC left me down with an enclosure (for the stock external hard drive) that works sometimes and others don't, and that is scary because I'm afraid of the external hard drive dying

 

[Dc2006ster]

I have one of each. I cannot tell the difference and when I buy another it will be the one that is the best deal.

In my 2006 Mac Pro I have added ram, more hard drives, new video card and swapped the cpus from dual to quad core but adding the SSD was the best upgrade in terms of cost/performance.

 

[SWD]

Thanks. I'm looking at SSD in in general because the prices have dropped, especially the Crucial. I wondered why the OWC was more expensive, I thought their RAM was usually cheaper.

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Next step is to figure out if one should enable TRIM support. I hear opposite things, especially with the newer models of SSD doing pretty good garbage collection. We don't do much on the machine so I doubt it will matter too much.

 

[DrBubba]

My Crucial M500 Is Rockin'!

I'm running a Crucial M500 960GB SSD (with firmware updated to ver 3) in a refurb (new to me) 2012 MBP and it just rocks! Micron suggests enabling TRIM so I'm running Trim Enabler to make it so. This SSD is plenty fast enough for me, it's been stable thus far, and i boot at start-up in about 20 seconds or so. It's quiet, doesn't generate much heat, sips power and has made my MBP a joy to use. I hardly ever see a beach ball and everything both actually is and "seems" faster. Now, when I use my Mac Mini with a spinning HD I really notice the difference. Why did I go with Crucial? I got essentially a 1TB SSD on "special" for way less than 1/2 what the equivalent OWC drive cost, and there weren't many other 1TB options available at the time. The overall value was with M500, and my previous positive experience with Crucial RAM sealed the deal. Are other SSDs better than the M500? Maybe, but based on my experience you can't go wrong with the Crucial M500. As always, YMMV.

 

[SaSaSushi]

Thoughts?

OWC has theirs for $165


Crucial has one for $109

If it were me, I'd split the difference and get the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB for $139.99.

I am booting off the 840 EVO 500GB in a Thunderbolt enclosure on my iMac and love it.

The 840 EVO blows the doors off the Crucial M500 (and most other competitors) in terms of performance.

No matter which SSD you go with, definitely enable TRIM for best performance.

 

[shinji]

I've had no problems with my Samsung, knock on wood. The performance is fantastic.

 

[Parkin Pig]

Last year I put a Crucial M4 in my mid 2010 MBP. The M4 is the predecessor to the M500 you are looking at. It has operated flawlessly.

+1 for Crucial M4 - I've had one in my 2009 MBP for 2 years now and it's had a whole new lease of life ever since. I've been maxing out the RAM on my Macs with Crucial gear for as long as I remember, and they've never let me down.

No matter which SSD you go with, definitely enable TRIM for best performance.

Do a bit of research before enabling TRIM - a lot of SSDs now come with self-management software that eliminates the need, and indeed will cause conflict with TRIM enabling software.

 

[SaSaSushi]

Do a bit of research before enabling TRIM - a lot of SSDs now come with self-management software that eliminates the need, and indeed will cause conflict with TRIM enabling software.

Thanks, I have done. Apparently, garbage collection or no "Enabling Trim is Almost Always Worth It"

 

[Parkin Pig]

Thanks, I have done. Apparently, garbage collection or no "Enabling Trim is Almost Always Worth It"

We can go on forever siting other people's 'definitive' guides. I use a Crucial SSD, and here's an extract from Crucial's website...


Crucial SSDs and TRIM/Garbage Collection

Since not all operating systems support TRIM, Crucial SSDs have a special feature called Active Garbage Collection. Active Garbage Collection is a process that helps an SSD maintain optimal performance by freeing up memory sectors that are no longer in use. Garbage collection is part of the SSD itself and thus not dependent on your computer’s operating system. Since garbage collection is part of the SSD’s firmware, it works regardless of which operating and filing systems your computer is using.

 

[Giuly]

SanDisk Ultra Plus.

Your Macbook's SATA ports only support SATA 3.0GBit/s, so whatever top speeds SSD makers claim, it doesn't matter. At those speeds, the SanDisk Ultra Plus is actually faster than a Samsung 840Pro, but costs as much as the 840EVO. And unlike the EVO doesn't use cheaper TLC NAND chips that shorten the lifetime of the drive.

Here's some Photoshop magic for you:

The black bar would mark the bandwidth limits of a 2010 MBP. Long story short, the 256GB Ultra Plus is as fast as an 840 Pro on SATA-II, and a lot faster than the 240GB M500.

 

[jonathanbruce]

If it were me, I'd split the difference and get the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB for $139.99.

I am booting off the 840 EVO 500GB in a Thunderbolt enclosure on my iMac and love it.

The 840 EVO blows the doors off the Crucial M500 (and most other competitors) in terms of performance.

No matter which SSD you go with, definitely enable TRIM for best performance.

Where did you get your thunderbolt enclosure from? I am looking for one for my Samsung 750gb ssd EVO drive i got last month. It has been in a usb3.0 caddy but does feel like it could go faster. especially now i have a new retina MBPro 15" and a MacPro

 

[SWD]

I finally pulled the trigger on the Crucial, it'll be here next week. I didn't need a huge performance ssd. I'm sure anything will beat the pants off of the current 30-50 MB/s (I think, it's not in front of me.)

I should've known better than to open up the TRIM can of worms.


I'm planning on installing Mavericks via SATA to USB cable before opening up the MBP. That's a good idea, right?

We can go on forever siting other people's 'definitive' guides. I use a Crucial SSD, and here's an extract from Crucial's website...





Crucial SSDs and TRIM/Garbage Collection



Since not all operating systems support TRIM, Crucial SSDs have a special feature called Active Garbage Collection. Active Garbage Collection is a process that helps an SSD maintain optimal performance by freeing up memory sectors that are no longer in use. Garbage collection is part of the SSD itself and thus not dependent on your computer’s operating system. Since garbage collection is part of the SSD’s firmware, it works regardless of which operating and filing systems your computer is using.

 

[SaSaSushi]

We can go on forever siting other people's 'definitive' guides. I use a Crucial SSD, and here's an extract from Crucial's website...


Crucial SSDs and TRIM/Garbage Collection

Since not all operating systems support TRIM, Crucial SSDs have a special feature called Active Garbage Collection. Active Garbage Collection is a process that helps an SSD maintain optimal performance by freeing up memory sectors that are no longer in use. Garbage collection is part of the SSD itself and thus not dependent on your computer’s operating system. Since garbage collection is part of the SSD’s firmware, it works regardless of which operating and filing systems your computer is using.

The point made by the article I sent you was that even with the garbage collection on recent flash drives, there is a slight performance increase with TRIM enabled and more importantly, the OS and SSD controller work together, reducing GC's unnecessary writes/erases that shorten the life of the drive.

I actually have an Inateck UASP USB3 enclosure here that performs slightly better than my Thunderbolt enclosure but I stick with the latter because of the ability to enable TRIM, both in OS X and BootCamp Windows.

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Where did you get your thunderbolt enclosure from? I am looking for one for my Samsung 750gb ssd EVO drive i got last month. It has been in a usb3.0 caddy but does feel like it could go faster. especially now i have a new retina MBPro 15" and a MacPro

I am using the Delock 42490 single drive enclosure. It is currently available at Amazon UK for about 112 GBP (I paid much less here in Japan for it and it also seems to be about 40 GBP cheaper from Amazon US). It is very lightweight aluminum, well constructed and AC powered. I'm really satisfied with it.

 

[jimsowden]

If it were me, I'd split the difference and get the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB for $139.99.

I am booting off the 840 EVO 500GB in a Thunderbolt enclosure on my iMac and love it.

The 840 EVO blows the doors off the Crucial M500 (and most other competitors) in terms of performance.

No matter which SSD you go with, definitely enable TRIM for best performance.

Have the EVOIII and it's perfect. So long as you remember to turn on Trim Enabler.

 

[Parkin Pig]

I'm planning on installing Mavericks via SATA to USB cable before opening up the MBP. That's a good idea, right?

That's the way I did it...

1 - I used the USB to SATA cable to do a clean OS install on the SSD.
2 - I installed the SSD in the MBP.
3 - I connected the original internal hard drive using the USB/SATA cable.
4 - I used the Migration Assistant utility to transfer Applications, Settings etc from the old disk to the SSD.

 

[SWD]

That's the way I did it...

1 - I used the USB to SATA cable to do a clean OS install on the SSD.
2 - I installed the SSD in the MBP.
3 - I connected the original internal hard drive using the USB/SATA cable.
4 - I used the Migration Assistant utility to transfer Applications, Settings etc from the old disk to the SSD.

Thanks. I'm going to do a very manual migration. There's just too much junk on this machine.

Here are some screenshots of disk speed tests. One is under normal conditions 2 users logged in, apps running vs only 1 user logged in no apps running.

https://app.box.com/s/2obrhzco1cmw75f2cx6p

https://app.box.com/s/o564iyzj6i0c0q1f1t1n

 

[SWD]

1:30 from boot up to log in screen FYI.

 

[Parasprite]

1:30 from boot up to log in screen FYI.

That's... surprising actually. My 2007 MacBook Air booted in ~70 seconds.

The good news is that even with the PATA limitation of that POS it still benefited significantly from the SSD upgrade.

 

[SWD]

That's... surprising actually. My 2007 MacBook Air booted in ~70 seconds.



The good news is that even with the PATA limitation of that POS it still benefited significantly from the SSD upgrade.

Surprising in a good or bad way?


Today's the day I open up the MBP to install the Crucial SSD drive. Mavericks was installed via SATA to USB, so it should just plop in and work. Wish me luck.

 

[Parasprite]

Surprising in a good or bad way?


Today's the day I open up the MBP to install the Crucial SSD drive. Mavericks was installed via SATA to USB, so it should just plop in and work. Wish me luck.

Surprisingly slow. Maybe I just needed less running or something. The good news either way is that it went down to ~45 seconds after the SSD upgrade. I was floored when the same upgrade put my Mac Mini to under 12 seconds.

Should be pretty straightforward. Good luck and go(o)d speed!

 

[jbachandouris]

I installed the EVO 250GB on my mid 2010 MBP. I rarely reboot, so I notice almost no speed difference and the battery (brand new battery installed by Apple) life appears to be shorter.

Is it the drive or the age of my MBP?

 

[Weaselboy]

I installed the EVO 250GB on my mid 2010 MBP. I rarely reboot, so I notice almost no speed difference and the battery (brand new battery installed by Apple) life appears to be shorter.

Is it the drive or the age of my MBP?

Your MBP uses the older SATA II (3Gbps) drive connection interface, so you will not see the top speeds others with newer machines are mentioning here. But even still, it should be a noticeable difference particularly with random file access type operations.

 

[talmy]

OWC was quickly dismissed in this thread. Well, I bought an OWC SSD last year. Reasons:

• I wanted a drive that was guaranteed to be compatible
• Original HDD failed so I was in a hurry to replace and didn't want to spend time researching
• System had minimal storage needs (media center with media stored on another system) so any additional cost I paid for the convenience of OWC was small.