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Which SSD for OS and Scratch Disk?

M

macguy93

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 30, 2012
149
1
Hello Everyone,

I dont know if you saw my last post, but essentially with the problems i was facing with my mac pro apple offered to upgrade my graphics card at first. But looking into the card they offered i realized it wasn't going to benefit me much at all. However, i reached out to the store and asked if they can provide a new SSD drive and they were able to do that; for free! But here are my questions:

1.) What SSD does apple use? They gave me a 512GB drive
2.) I was planning on buying a Samsung 840 pro series 250Gb prior to this anyways. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193)
I wanted to originally buy this SSD to put my media on for video editing. I figured since it was such a fast SSD that it would work great in conjunction with Premiere pro. So my question is, should i use the samsung as the scratch disk or should i use the apple 512gb ssd as my scratch? (i know that its a bigger drive, but at this point im going after speed within my editing software) I don't know the specs on the ssd as far as its speed, but i don't know if i should have a faster SSD as scratch over more space?

To make it more clear, which set up looks better for video editing?

1.) Os/Apps installed on the samsung 840 Pro series and use the apple 512GB as scratch
or
2.) os/apps installed on the Apple 512Gb card and use the Samsung 840 Pro series 250Gb as scratch?

I also have a 1TB HDD in my machine, so im not just relying on those drives for storage.

Hopefully i made this clear..

Any advice is well appreciated!
 
For CS6, media cache (scratch) on the fastest SSD. It makes a huge difference. And the bigger the better if you're doing a lot of work and having to constantly rerender.

My current MBP setup is:

OWC Mercury Extreme 480 6G SSD for OS
2x OWC Mercury Extreme 480 6G SSD RAID0 for CS6 media cache
6TB RAID5 for media
 
Last edited:
From what I understand I believe the Samsung 840 pro is a faster SSD than apple SSD. So I will just use the Samsung as the scratch. However, I will only have the project(s) on that drive that I'm currently working on. When the project is complete I will move them off that drive. But I don't see myself filling up that 250gb drive with work in my software. (After effects, premiere pro, cinema 4D) I don't have a pci card at the moment to take full advantage of the cards speed.
 
That's what I'm thinking.

Do I need to have trim support enabled for the Samsung?

I currently own a OCZ vertex 3 drive and it sucks! I get beach balls all over. It's fast on boot up, but when I'm the computer for a while it will get sluggish at times. I think all of my performance issues have been because of that drive...
 
macguy93 said:
That's what I'm thinking.

Do I need to have trim support enabled for the Samsung?

I currently own a OCZ vertex 3 drive and it sucks! I get beach balls all over. It's fast on boot up, but when I'm the computer for a while it will get sluggish at times. I think all of my performance issues have been because of that drive...
Click to expand...

Hmm, I don't actually know what that is. I've never had any performance issues with my OWC SSDs.
 
I have TRIM enabled on my Samsung 830 boot SSD, and I have no beachballs. Of course, I have also had TRIM off, and used a Crucial M4 with TRIM on and off as well. It seems to make little to zero difference, but I also use 256GB SSDs so that I always have a ton of space.
 
For normal use TRIM won't affect performance feeling. It is more important if drive is used a lot. It is good to have TRIM but it also works without.
 
Believe the 840 PRO is the faster drive and you'd want to use that for your scratch and the Apple 512 for OS.

For a media scratch drive with almost constant read/write and overwrite during heavy & regular usage, it's probably best to keep TRIM enabled for the longest life of the drive. Also suggest to keep a very current backup of all your important media from that scratch SSD if you're housing source media there as well - you can setup or repurpose part of your 1TB HDD to do that easily with Carbon Copy Cloner and scheduled clones/updates.
 
wonderspark said:
I have TRIM enabled on my Samsung 830 boot SSD, and I have no beachballs. Of course, I have also had TRIM off, and used a Crucial M4 with TRIM on and off as well. It seems to make little to zero difference, but I also use 256GB SSDs so that I always have a ton of space.
Click to expand...

How do you enable TRIM on a Samsung 840 PRO drive in Snow Leopard?
 
5050 said:
How do you enable TRIM on a Samsung 840 PRO drive in Snow Leopard?
Click to expand...
My first Samsung 840 Pro SSD is due to arrive tomorrow via FedEx, and when it gets here, I'll try enabling TRIM the same way I did the other SSDs, which is via the Trim Enabler app.
 
wonderspark said:
My first Samsung 840 Pro SSD is due to arrive tomorrow via FedEx, and when it gets here, I'll try enabling TRIM the same way I did the other SSDs, which is via the Trim Enabler app.
Click to expand...

From what someone told me on this forum, the trim enabler app is not the best way to enable trim support. I will have to find the post and put it here, but there's a better/more efficient way to enable through terminal
 
macguy93 said:
From what someone told me on this forum, the trim enabler app is not the best way to enable trim support. I will have to find the post and put it here, but there's a better/more efficient way to enable through terminal
Click to expand...
Ok, thanks!

I've probably read that, too... I've seen arguments for and against both Trim Enabler and use of Terminal. I've only used Trim Enabler, and found no ill effects thus far. I've had SSDs for my boot disk for over about 15 months, but half of that time, TRIM was not enabled. I have had it enabled constantly now for about eight or nine months, maybe?

So far, it all seems the same to me.
 
wonderspark said:
Ok, thanks!

I've probably read that, too... I've seen arguments for and against both Trim Enabler and use of Terminal. I've only used Trim Enabler, and found no ill effects thus far. I've had SSDs for my boot disk for over about 15 months, but half of that time, TRIM was not enabled. I have had it enabled constantly now for about eight or nine months, maybe?

So far, it all seems the same to me.
Click to expand...

Here is the instructions i was referred to a while back:
http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

I wonder how apple will enable trim on the SSD their installing in my machine? I would be curious to know the steps they take to properly enable it
 
macguy93 said:
Here is the instructions i was referred to a while back:
http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

I wonder how apple will enable trim on the SSD their installing in my machine? I would be curious to know the steps they take to properly enable it
Click to expand...

Yeah, I read that a long time ago. Notice how he's only talking about 1.1 and 1.2? Well, I'm using Trim Enabler 2.2, which is far more advanced than the original app.

We have choices in how to enable TRIM. In my experience, Trim Enabler (2.2) works perfectly in both Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, so I'm staying with what works. I appreciate the knowledge shared by all. Maybe if Trim Enabler fails me, I'll look into other methods, but I don't fix what isn't broken.
 
wonderspark said:
Yeah, I read that a long time ago. Notice how he's only talking about 1.1 and 1.2? Well, I'm using Trim Enabler 2.2, which is far more advanced than the original app.

We have choices in how to enable TRIM. In my experience, Trim Enabler (2.2) works perfectly in both Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, so I'm staying with what works. I appreciate the knowledge shared by all. Maybe if Trim Enabler fails me, I'll look into other methods, but I don't fix what isn't broken.
Click to expand...

I've actually never looked at the version of trim enabler.. Whoops! Hah but I will say its much easier with a flip of a switcth rather than wasting time in terminal. However, once I get that SSD i will just continue to use trim enabler since he should have addressed the problems in the latest version
 
macguy93 said:
I've actually never looked at the version of trim enabler.. Whoops! Hah but I will say its much easier with a flip of a switcth rather than wasting time in terminal. However, once I get that SSD i will just continue to use trim enabler since he should have addressed the problems in the latest version
Click to expand...
My understanding is that with Terminal commands, TRIM breaks with updates, while the Trim Enabler app does not break. Also, Cindori updates the app, whereas nobody is going to come to your house and type the new commands into Terminal for you whenever something changes. :)
 
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