Would you rather have faster SSDs or bigger SSDs?

[tubeexperience]

One of the great annoyance (to my us, at least) is that Apple is shipping a $2399 laptop with a 256GB SSD!!!

Now, one of the common arguments that the SSD is F-A-S-T. "Go check check the benchmark", they say.

I am sure that those who edit 4K videos and high resolution photos, the benefit is greatly pronounced.

And, of cause that SSD options should always be available.

For the rest of us, all that speed doesn't do much good esp. when the SSD is full.

Obviously, it would be ideal to have both the biggest and fastest SSD (and if you can easily afford that, then good for you), but if you have to choose either, which would it be?

 

[kwandrews]

I would rather have a balance. If the chose is between the two, I'll take the 512 at 1500mbps vs. a 256 at 2250 mbps

 

[jclardy]

At this point with SSD's being soldered to the logic board I'd say size.

 

[kevinkyoo]

Anything over 1000-1500mbps is okay with me. Is having these new SSD's over 3000mbps cool? Sure. But the huge price tags on these (I think it was a difference of $2000 between the 2TB and the 500GB ones) is just ridiculous.

For building PC's, I think there's a nice balance of buying a very nice SSD (EVO Pro) that contains your boot-up and main apps, then buying some relatively cheap SSD's (~100-120 for a 500GB one) for excessive storage.

 

[Hyloba]

At the moment I prefer my laptop to be clean. I always back up every file and don't find it necessary to let stuff linger. At the moment I have 128gb of which 50gb still available. I would be happy with 256gb.

If SSDs get to an affordable 2tb, I would take that instead, so I could just use an external HDD for time machine.

 

[powertoold]

Faster SSD = close to becoming RAM performance, so you basically get virtual ram that performs better. In the far future, disk space will be almost as good as ram, so it's a win win situation.

 

[protoxx]

Not just availability but cost. Apple proprietary vs pcie vs pcie vs sata3. You can easily get m2 sata ssd's of 1tb for $250 and 2tb around $500. The cheapest I've seen m2 pcie of 1 tb ~$400. Apple is charging $600 to upgrade to 1tb meaning they are also charging you for the 256 base memory so real cost around $800.

SSD memory speeds are so high already I doubt the value of pcie vs sata3 with the memory costing 75% more for same sizes. For a speed increase that mostly comes into play with large file. I don't buy that apple's improvements to the pcie gain any real speed, especially when it comes at a doubling of the cost. Forcing you to buy more initially (or upgrade) and only being able to buy from them. At prices that likely will not decrease for years.

If you are constantly having to manage disk space you have already lost more time and productivity gained by speed increase. Put it in cloud? What's the access time for that? More like floppy disk speed, even if you have a connection.

 

[borntrouble]

Broad 4k consumer market is on the horizon and the SSDs are merged into the logic board, so I'd say size. But basically, I approve powertoold's statement

 

[Ries]

Faster SSD = close to becoming RAM performance, so you basically get virtual ram that performs better. In the far future, disk space will be almost as good as ram, so it's a win win situation.

Not even close, it's several orders of magnitude lower than the performance of RAM. Those speeds are sequential, which matches badly with the random in "Random Access Memory". Look at 4K random read/write speeds on SSD's.

Then there is latency, the best SSD's have something like 20-200us, memory is at 50ns, it's a factor of 1000 off.

XPoint "flash" gets closer, but that is still a order of magnitude off too.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

As a video editor, I absolutely love the speed increases we've seen over the last couple of years. But of course, the amount of storage is the most important thing now that we've reached ultra-fast speeds. It's just a matter of time before the prices drop down to reasonable levels. Believe it or not, 10 TB SSDs (single unit) are now available for $6,750, so things are moving towards that direction.

I predict that 10 TB SSDs will be readily available in 6 years for less than $1,000.

 

[protoxx]

I predict that 10 TB SSDs will be readily available in 6 years for less than $1,000.

I predict Apple will charge more than $2000.

 

[magbarn]

SIZE SIZE SIZE. Even though I work with big DSLR RAW files and 4K video files, I'm always being limited by what I'm transferring files from/to into my laptop's SSD. Even the fastest XQD cards can't max out a SATA based SSD let alone a PCIe SSD. I seriously doubt SSD speed is the bottleneck in FCPX unless I'm using a TB2/3 SSD array.

I'm starting to look at Win10 laptops to replace my aging 2012 rMBP 15 and they're looking enticing with two M.2 slots. I can easily drop in 2TB worth of SSD storage for only a little over $500.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

I predict Apple will charge more than $2000.

Of course!

 

[Devyn89]

Size for sure.

 

[powertoold]

Not even close, it's several orders of magnitude lower than the performance of RAM. Those speeds are sequential, which matches badly with the random in "Random Access Memory". Look at 4K random read/write speeds on SSD's.

Then there is latency, the best SSD's have something like 20-200us, memory is at 50ns, it's a factor of 1000 off.

XPoint "flash" gets closer, but that is still a order of magnitude off too.

Ya, I caveated with "far future."

I think I've heard somewhere that XPoint approaches the performance of DD2, which is pretty good.

 

[Saturn1217]

I think for the average user, we reached diminishing returns back in 2012-2013 when the first PCIe SSDs were introduced. Beyond that I really don't think super fast storage helps. It still isn't nearly as fast as RAM so it can't substitute for RAM limits. I would rather have more storage at a lower price.

Quickly booting up VMs is the only place where the faster SSD noticeably improves my workflow.

 

[Hyloba]

Question, do you also backup everything on several HDDs? If so how do you keep track of what is changed on your big SSD? My small SSD is handy because I store almost nothing on it, so everything is updated to an external HDD.

 

[xraydoc]

I understand the need for size, as more and more people use their laptops as their only computer. But for me personally, I use the laptop for mobile purposes and don't typically store a lot on it. And since it's not my primary computer, I tend to buy the slower models to save money.

I have a 256GB SSD and I've only used maybe 60GB - including all my apps and the OS itself. Any other file I may need and don't have I can pull off either cloud storage or via VPN to my machine at home.

A fast SSD goes a long way in making an otherwise slower, less expensive laptop seem much faster. I just bought the base 2.0GHz 2016 MBP and it feels like it flies. Also bought this model because battery life > processor speed.

So for me, speed > size.

 

[therealseebs]

I would rather have a choice. Ideally, I'd like to have two, so I can have one of each.

 

[protoxx]

For a comparision between disk/ssd/ram disk. Give you an idea how far away from ram that ssd's are.