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Which SSD?

ildondeigiocchi

ildondeigiocchi

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 30, 2007
695
0
Montreal
Ok so I'm getting really tired of my Mac Pro's relatively slow hard drive speed and as a person who wants the latest and greatest of the technology world, I'm thinking of getting an SSD, maybe even two. I already have two 7.2K hard drives in my Mac Pro. This is how I have them arranged:

Drive one: 500GB WD - Partition 1: 350 GB for Mac OSX
Partition 2: 150 GB for Windows XP Pro 32-bit (Bootcamp)

Drive 2: 150 GB WD - Partition 1: 20GB extended for Mac OSX
Partition 2: 130GB for Windows 7 via Bootcamp


Now I know some SSD have really slow write speeds but to be honest I find that the current write speeds on my system aren't stellar in the first place. So the following are some of the options I'm thinking of:


1. Intel X-25M 80GB (still worried about its write speed)
2. OCZ Apex series 120GB (possibly in RAID)
3. OCZ Vertex series 60GB (possibly in RAID)

Now what I'd like to know is if I decide to opt for either option 2 or 3 and get a RAID card, I would need one that would allow me to use Bootcamp and boot into OSX while in RAID 0. I know the CalDigit raid card is great but heck, I can't spend all that $. So the point I'm trying to get at is if there are any RAID cards in the 100-200$, even a bit more, that offer such capabilities. Thanks and feel free to give your opinion. :apple::):apple:
 
The Intel X25-M is still the best Solid State Drive out there.

New Solid State Drives featuring the more expensive Samsung (and the new indilinx) controller are also quite good.

Stay clear of anything that has an JMicron controller (like the OCZ Apex mentioned).

Update: As VirtualRain said I made the mistake of saying the OCZ Vertex has a JMicron controller. I was wrong, it features the Indilinx barefoot controller.
 
Pressure is incorrect in lumping the Vertex in with others... it doesn't use a Jmicron controller but a new Idelix controller and the Vertex has 64MB on-board cache to overcome some issues with stuttering that plagued earlier drives.

If you go to the OCZ support forums you will still find plenty of issues however... even with the latest firmware.

I'm going with the Intel drives, even though they are less capacity for the same price (80GB is around $400 while the Vertex gets you 120GB for that).

From the research I've done, the Intel drives "just work" and they work damn well. Read the latest article on AnandTech for some more background and insights...
http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
Which are the new SSD'S that have the new Samsung JMicron controller?
Click to expand...

The OCZ Summit has the new Samsung controller, to name one but there should be a new firmware for the OCZ Vertex that makes it quite capable.

Again, stay clear of JMicron for the time being. They should have a new controller in Q'3 2009.

If you want to know more about the current state of Solid State Drives I strongly recommend you read this article: The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ.
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
Ok so I'm getting really tired of my Mac Pro's relatively slow hard drive speed and as a person who wants the latest and greatest of the technology world, I'm thinking of getting an SSD, maybe even two. I already have two 7.2K hard drives in my Mac Pro. This is how I have them arranged:

Drive one: 500GB WD - Partition 1: 350 GB for Mac OSX
Partition 2: 150 GB for Windows XP Pro 32-bit (Bootcamp)

Drive 2: 150 GB WD - Partition 1: 20GB extended for Mac OSX
Partition 2: 130GB for Windows 7 via Bootcamp


Now I know some SSD have really slow write speeds but to be honest I find that the current write speeds on my system aren't stellar in the first place. So the following are some of the options I'm thinking of:


1. Intel X-25M 80GB (still worried about its write speed)
2. OCZ Apex series 120GB (possibly in RAID)
3. OCZ Vertex series 60GB (possibly in RAID)

Now what I'd like to know is if I decide to opt for either option 2 or 3 and get a RAID card, I would need one that would allow me to use Bootcamp and boot into OSX while in RAID 0. I know the CalDigit raid card is great but heck, I can't spend all that $. So the point I'm trying to get at is if there are any RAID cards in the 100-200$, even a bit more, that offer such capabilities. Thanks and feel free to give your opinion. :apple::):apple:
Click to expand...

What about a raid card?
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
Any ideas on the above mentioned Raid card. Is it bootable in OSX and allow for Bootcamp to work?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what RAID cards are supported exactly... Areca cards and some Highpoint cards... you will have to do a search.

BTW, I have an Areca 1210 from my previous PC I was considering using with a pair of Vertex or Intel drives in my forthecoming Mac Pro but I ultimately decided to just forget about it for a few reasons.

1. Many low end RAID cards such as my Areca 1210 top out at around 400MBps throughput which 2 high-end SSD's will saturate.
2. It's a PITA to setup and wire the drives up to it
3. It's just not necessary for RAID0... it really offers minimal benefits over software RAID0.

Instead of buying a RAID card that will boot in both... just use your high end SSD's in software RAID0 for OSX and another regular drive for Vista or if you really want Vista on an SSD, buy a third drive for it... like a Vertex 30GB drive or whatever size you need.
 
Ok so how do I set the drives in software RAID 0. When I look in Disk Utility the only options I get are Striped set, mirored set and one more which one is the Raid 0 option. Will the software RAID 0 still allow me to run bootcamp. Will it destroy any info on my computer ? Do I need to reformat everything?
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
Ok so how do I set the drives in software RAID 0. When I look in Disk Utility the only options I get are Striped set, mirored set and one more which one is the Raid 0 option. Will the software RAID 0 still allow me to run bootcamp. Will it destroy any info on my computer ? Do I need to reformat everything?
Click to expand...

Striped means RAID 0.

If you install Windows on a normal partition you can make a striped set with disk manager with any unused drives once you are in Windows.

Making a striped set unfortunately means you lose any data on the drives at the time of striping them.
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
Ok so how do I set the drives in software RAID 0. When I look in Disk Utility the only options I get are Striped set, mirored set and one more which one is the Raid 0 option. Will the software RAID 0 still allow me to run bootcamp. Will it destroy any info on my computer ? Do I need to reformat everything?
Click to expand...

As I mentioned above, if you are using software RAID in OSX for your SSD's, you will have to install windows on a separate drive.
 
I'm still torn on what to buy? I've come to the decision that I'll be using software Raid. I'm still not sure whether or not SSD's are reliable since I read an Anandtech article stating that SSD's fail over time. The Intel drive looks great but it's way to expensive at the moment. I could almost buy two Velociraptors with that money but since they are old tech I'm trying to keep myself away from them. I already have a 500GB and 150GB drive so I want to get two more. OCZ looks they have good SSD's but I'm hesistant since some people say they are not steady. Any ideas on what I should do. I am willing to pay no more than 500$ CAD on HDD's or SSD's.
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
I could almost buy two Velociraptors with that money but since they are old tech I'm trying to keep myself away from them.
Click to expand...
As you cannot or will not afford the "new tech" you may have to go with the old(er) one :D
Although I wouldn´t devalue the VelociRaptor that way. Situation may change in another 12-24 months ;)
Might be worth waiting for SSDs´ prices coming down to your capital means instead of buying inferior quality for even much money right now?!
 
OCZ just released their Mac Edition of the Vertex, i'd personally get the 120Gb as it has the fastest reads and writes, the Intel has had a lot of problems with multiple writes and slows down to 25MB/s in some instances
 
ekwipt said:
OCZ just released their Mac Edition of the Vertex, i'd personally get the 120Gb as it has the fastest reads and writes, the Intel has had a lot of problems with multiple writes and slows down to 25MB/s in some instances
Click to expand...

The Intel X25-M is really the best Solid State Drive at this time. There are more to the equation than the fastest read and write speed.

I can only urge you to read this article: The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ
 
Here's an interesting read:

OCZ Vertex for Mac Speeds

The 'Mac Approved' Vertex drives are actually 10MB/s slower than the PC counterpart. OCZ discovered a bottleneck in the SATA Drivers built in to OS X, mainly due to the data journaling that HFS+ employs. With one drive you might never hit the bottleneck, but running a RAID could cause it to happen from time to time.
 
wheezy said:
Here's an interesting read:

OCZ Vertex for Mac Speeds

The 'Mac Approved' Vertex drives are actually 10MB/s slower than the PC counterpart. OCZ discovered a bottleneck in the SATA Drivers built in to OS X, mainly due to the data journaling that HFS+ employs. With one drive you might never hit the bottleneck, but running a RAID could cause it to happen from time to time.
Click to expand...

I use the non-Mac version and it works just fine. The Mac version is mainly for the MBP, which many users had problems with. The MP didn't exhibit these problems with the Vertex drives.
 
Question...???

With all this talk of people upgrading to SSD's for speed. Has anyone thought about the consequence, should one of those devices fail?

I mean... with a HD a data recovery centre could remove the platters and recover the lost data due to hardware failure, right? But what if a SSD fails? How would data be saved then? Cause, despite what we all know and should do. The fact of the matter is this, NOT everyone make backups on a regular basis, do we??

And with the emphasis on added security, some SSD's will eventually encrypt data, before it's written to the storage device. I know seagate has this feature on some of their HD's.
 
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