Wouldn't it be better to put the platter HD in the normal spot and the SSD in the Optibay due to the shock sensing abilities of the normal HD slot? I'm contemplating going this route.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Why you should get an SSD for your Macbook Pro
- Thread starter lunks
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'd love one, but until I can get a 500gb one for a half decent prince they don't offer enough storage for my 13" MBP....
i got the 128 from apple and got a external firewire drive. i went this route for the reason that ssd are dropping slowly and when you can get over 500gb for the price of 128 now then ill upgrade. i have the slower toshiba ssd and its still super fast for what i need. my setup works for what i need. i still need the opitbay for school. and who knows what the next macbook pro update will be like, so im happy with what i have for now.
Basically, SSDs tend to be faster, plus they have no moving parts. Regular hard drives, while they can hold more, are a bit slower & have moving parts. So if your laptop gets knocked over or something, less likely the drive would break if it's an SSD.
HDDs are more than "a bit slower" than even the slowest SDDs; more like half the speed of even the slowest SDD, 1/5 of an average, and 1/10 of the fastest SATA3 drives. And that doesn't even take into account seek time or anything, which is magnitudes faster on an SSD.
But the speeds are only really relevant for things like booting-up and loading big apps.
How often do you reboot your Mac? With me, I'd guess it's typically a few times a year - only when needed for a software update or something went screwy. The rest of the time it just gets put into sleep mode and is almost instantly back.
Big apps might take ten seconds to fully load with a hard drive versus three seconds with an SSD. If I'm using an app day after day, it just stays loaded, so I'm probably loading one of those apps a few times a month, so call it 20 seconds a month saved.
If that sort of time saving justifies the cost versus capacity for you, go for it. For me, storage capacity trumps drive speed every time.
How often do you reboot your Mac? With me, I'd guess it's typically a few times a year - only when needed for a software update or something went screwy. The rest of the time it just gets put into sleep mode and is almost instantly back.
Big apps might take ten seconds to fully load with a hard drive versus three seconds with an SSD. If I'm using an app day after day, it just stays loaded, so I'm probably loading one of those apps a few times a month, so call it 20 seconds a month saved.
If that sort of time saving justifies the cost versus capacity for you, go for it. For me, storage capacity trumps drive speed every time.
But that's the beauty of the optibay. There is no compromise between speed and capacity. I'm a video editor and I am seriously considering an optibay upgrade. I would have a snappy OS drive and an internal drive for my video projects. If I need to work on a really big project I can plug in an external RAID enclosure via an ESATA card in my MBPs express card slot.
It sure depends on your needs, but some people require multiple boots per day (to make use of boot camp). Not only that, apps are a lot faster with an ssd. They open faster, work faster... It's an overall boost in performance that no amount of ram/cpu can offer! In 1-2 years the SSD will become a standard on all (premium?) laptops.
How are you splitting it then? System+Applications+library on SSD, everything else on the 750gb? I agree, it sounds compelling.
That's what I do.
All downloads + iTunes lib + iPhoto lib are stored on my HDD. The rest on SSD.
To people assuming that this only affects boot speeds or app load times, you are making big assumptions about how your computer works, disk is accessed a whole load more times than that. Every disk access is speeded up, hence the "everything just seems faster factor"
Best. Upgrade. Ever.
End of.
Best. Upgrade. Ever.
End of.
I whole heartedly agree. After upgrading to Lion, I frankly found the performance of my mid 2010 i5 MBP unacceptable. It demonstrated substantially reduced performance with choppy animations and extremely lengthened load times even for basic programs like my web browsers. An upgrade to a Crucial M4 solved that problem. I got a 128 gig drive from newegg on shell shocker deal for 170 shipped. The performance increase is nothing short of amazing. The machine is now fun to use again.
You too are assuming that everyone is using the computer in such a way that the disk access speeds will be noticeable (such as moving lots and lots of data). The average user spends the majority of their time surfing the net, composing documents or spreadsheets and surfing the internet (hence the reasons that tablets have become such a major player these days for both enterprise and average level consumers), and the programs are only opened once.
Even the slowest speeds for HDDs will smoke the refresh of a webpage or the read/write commands issued by a word document for the average user to notice a difference. I would like to meet the person that can perceive the difference in webpage refreshes or document saving processes between a HDD and SSD (these differences would only be noticeable in very large data transfer situations, and the more RAM present on the systems the less noticeable it becomes).
I'm very serious.
I understand SSD's are faster, but it doesn't seem like the speed is worth the cost just yet. Or that the speed improvements are that huge. And yes I also know SSD's don't have moving parts, but I wonder about the life span. Doesn't flash memory have a more limited life?
Or you can just copy your whole home folder to you platter. When that is complete go to users and groups>authenticate>right click on your account>advanced options>choose your home directory>choose your copied home folder>reboot...this puts you home folder on your platter without the need for shortcuts
The disadvantage is it won't boot without the platter..
Thats really not true..
Yep it's only 6 months old so I want an easy way to whip it out if I need to take it back to apple
----------
Yep, I wrote it out near the bottom of the last page and I think it's quoted above me here
I find my 30 most-often-visited websites load almost instantly now, as all the graphics are on the SSD cache, rather than a slower HDD. Everything the OS does feels quicker - opening System Prefs is now instant, Finder previews for a Movie folder are instant, no slight lag waiting for the refresh. THIS IS NOT ABOUT SAVING TIME, it's about the computer feeling faster. I have a 2010 C2D 13" MBP, but because of the SSD it feels as snappy as a core i5 - therefore worth the cost in my opinion.
You're missing the point - its about overall responsiveness, not just big data transfer.Assimilated said:
Last edited:
First, I'm not 'missing the point', I'm presenting a different point of view.
Second, outside of things where the hard drive is the bottleneck (which are few and far between), there is no practical difference in speed. For example, you said opening System Prefs is instant. I just did it on my 5400rpm hard drive machine, and it was too quick for me to time - I could only estimate it at approximately half a second.
Now, there's nothing wrong with you liking the feel of 'snappiness' of say 0.1 seconds versus 0.5 seconds, but nobody should confuse that with a practical benefit.
Edit to add: By the way, I agree that SSDs are the future. When storage capacities match hard drives for a roughly equivalent cost, we'll all be using them. And as an indication of what we can expect then, see this (Windows) demo using 24 SSDs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs (jump to 2 mins if you just want to see it in action). But for me, today, storage capacity trumps speed given how rare it is that the drive is the bottleneck.
Last edited:
MPB 15, 2.53, Samsung 470 SSD, 8GB RAM - 10 second boot with out login, 15 second boot with login. 4.5 sec shut down with safari and mail running.
I was slower until I upgraded to 8GB....
I paid £310 for a OCZ 240GB Sata 3 disk. I use it for work so no movie files on there or anything and it's great. Being used all day everyday it makes a big difference. FileVault 2 certainly has make the boot up and shutdown slower but once in full swing amazing.
I'm all about reliability and space when it comes to hard drives. I have a 1TB in my macbook pro 2010 and love it, all my projects, photos, movies, files and have around 100GB free. It backs up to a 2tb backup, which is also backed up - everthing's digital so value backups highly!
The speed argument doesnt wash with me, in the real world the added speed of being able to do tasks doesn't mean I can finish work sooner, or that I can create content/get ideas down quicker.
Also doing away with the optical bay is something I cannot do as often clients send discs through with plans etc.
SSD's do have a place but for me it's not until I can get affordable >500GB drives. For me SSD will be beneficial in terms of lowering the number of moving parts and also lower power consumption, having both does not offer anything.
The speed argument doesnt wash with me, in the real world the added speed of being able to do tasks doesn't mean I can finish work sooner, or that I can create content/get ideas down quicker.
Also doing away with the optical bay is something I cannot do as often clients send discs through with plans etc.
SSD's do have a place but for me it's not until I can get affordable >500GB drives. For me SSD will be beneficial in terms of lowering the number of moving parts and also lower power consumption, having both does not offer anything.
Last edited:
I don't know what's your point. You loading speed is similar to my loading speed of Fusion windows7 on i5 2.5GHz MBP, but you lost your CDrom
For those that don't know any better or can't tell by reading this thread (or countless others), worth is always highly subjective. It's pointless to argue whether something is "worth it" or not if you're not considering the needs/wants of the people in the argument. Always consider that your preferences and situation are not universal and don't forget that subjective words like this really don't mean much without some qualification.
For me, ordering my 2011 MBP with SSD from the factory was worth it. Whether or not anyone else does or not is an entirely separate matter.
Excellent point. What size SSD did you get? Hopefully it was not more than 128GB, as they bilk you beyond that.