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Yes, yet another SSD thread, Feel free to chime in...
- Thread starter blkonblk17
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Here she is in my external HD caddy getting lion installed via USB drive
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$150 from someone on craigslist. I had to drive about 45 miles but it was all worth it. It was Sealed, never used, never opened
Ok, so far I tested my WD Black Scorpio 7200RPM drive on my bone stock 2011 MBP i5 w/ 4 GB. Out of 5 standardized test I locked in my start up time from pressing the power button to desktop screen to 28 seconds. If I was to have timed it by the time the bong sound starts to play then the time is reduced by 2 seconds making it 26 seconds. Shutting down by pressing the power button on the MBP and then selecting shut down by pressing enter to computer shutting off completely took 2 seconds. Again, these were the result after 5 tries with concurrent results on all tests. More results to come after SSD install
I know people like to test and re-test but bottom line ... it will be about twice as fast. Boot time in about 13/14 secs ...
What is hard to measure is how much snappier your system is once it is up and running.
Clicking on web pages and right clicking etc ( well assuming you have a decent high bandwidth connection in the first place ) ... it is just right there.
Instantaneous ... someone else in a different posting noted something like well so if it goes from 1/2 a second to 1/10th of a second is it worth it?
Until you have one running in your system you don't understand how fast the system is.
Of course the core i5 ain't bad either ... and 4 or better 8 gb of ram.
How did we used to survive???
So true, I agree with you 100%
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Ok Lion just finished installing in 19 minutes flat via the USB enclosure and USB drive. After fresh install the folder shows I have 117.26 GB of the original 128 GB. Not too shabby. Now time to test
holy smokes it's fast compared to my WD Black Scorpio 7200RPM. Boots in only 14-15 seconds and shuts down almost instantly. I can now understand the "Snappiness". Everything just opens almost instantly. Still testing. Overall, really impressed!
Here's a quick test I just ran
Here's a quick test I just ran
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Congrats on the purchase!
The only thing about that drive -- you need a windows computer to update the firmware?
The only thing about that drive -- you need a windows computer to update the firmware?
I tried both the OWC 6G Extreme and the OCZ Vertex Max IOPS (current) before the EFI upgrade and both worked well. I use a 17 inch MBP week 11 manufactured Mac.
After the upgrade, had issues with powering on the machine, but the SSD has continued to work fine.
After the upgrade, had issues with powering on the machine, but the SSD has continued to work fine.
Anybody looking for a new SSD and are looking for a more reliable SSDs like Intel and Samsung, I'd suggest waiting a few more months. Samsung PM840 is coming out in Oct and Intel is readying 520 series later this year.
Those will be fast drives, but will also likely be expensive. There is a strong argument to be made for going with an inexpensive SATA II with mature firmware that we know works... like the OP did.
At the moment, there are no inexpensive SSDs with mature firmware that works without any issues. It'll be another 3-4 generations of SSD's evolution (3-6 years) before we get to that point where firmware becomes stable like the current hard drives. Samsung's current SSD seems to be the most glitch-free but they have some performance issues. Intel 3x0 series has firmware issues (the infamous 8mb drive space bug). I'm not so sure about G2 but it is the most reliable SSD from Intel but much slower than 3x0 series.
As for the new Samsung/Intel drives, You can also say that those old drives will drop in price while new ones take over the same pricepoint from the old ones. (compare the 240GB Vertex 2 price to 240Gb Vertex 3 now)
Here's a review on Samsung's next SSD, the 830. From what I can see, it is not very good compared to other 6Gbps SSD's currently on the market. Especially the performance over time really worries me due to Samsung's garbage collection technology. It seems that the 830's performance significantly declines over time without TRIM, which is not good for us OS X users. The read/write performance seems quite okay, though, but it's still trailing behind Sandforce SSD's. Reliability, not performance, is again the primary reason why one would buy this SSD I suppose.
Anand says this about pretty much every SSD except Sandforce controlled drives, and I don't follow the logic of his statement. Sandforce does GC more real time and the performance of incompressible data suffers as a result. Others choose to do the GC later when the drive is inactive and therefore achieve much higher data rates with incompressible data.
He completely fills the disk for 60 minutes and when that slows the disk due to the designed late GC, he pronounces this a "long term" slow down. I just don't see 60 minutes as long term.
You are entitled to your opinion of course, but I have 2 MacBook Pro's and a MacPro running SSDs and I never have a single issue. I had a lot of trouble trying to get a Crucial C300 to work in my 17" 2011 MacBook however. Ended up going with a Vertex 3 and it has been rock solid and blazing fast for months without 1 single issue.
I see his point, but how many SSD users have a "near full" drive and will subject it to the type of use he describes? The tradeoff is an unreliable Sandforce drive with lousy speeds when working with incompressible data. If you are filling up your drive with large files, those files are likely to be video files (incompressible) and even more subject to the limitations of Sandforce.
I guess my issue is I think Anand overemphasizes OS enabled TRIM's importance in these drives by using an outlier scenario while not giving sufficient weight to the downside of Sandforce. This leads to people focusing only on his final comment that the drive is not good for an OS without TRIM and unjustifiably dismissing a drive for usage in OS X. JMO.
Well, the difference between incompressible data transfer rates of 350MB/s (Samsung) versus 250MB/s (Sandforce) might be hard to notice, it's just blazing fast whichever way you put it. This is also the only point where the Samsung has a performance lead over the Sandforce SSD's. However, the drop in performance over time on the Samsung could reach speeds as low as 50MB/s without TRIM eek. This is sub-HDD speed, mind you.
I acknowledge the fact that, as you pointed out, it does require a healthy combination of circumstances to reach this point. In my opinion, though, it is reasonably likely to happen (my 128GB SSD for example is always around 80%-90% filled). The result, therefore, could be a very inconsistent experience on the Samsung, especially to those who are not aware of the GC technology adopted by this SSD.
eek. This is sub-HDD speed, mind you. I acknowledge the fact that, as you pointed out, it does require a healthy combination of circumstances to reach this point. In my opinion, though, it is reasonably likely to happen (my 128GB SSD for example is always around 80%-90% filled). The result, therefore, could be a very inconsistent experience on the Samsung, especially to those who are not aware of the GC technology adopted by this SSD.
If you have a 64GB SSD, then it's quite likely that you will be running a near full drive. Most people aren't buying 256GB models due to the price, the real market right now is in the smaller capacities, especially when SSD+HD setup is possible. 64GB of data can easily be smaller files too.
Anand's tests and benchmarks in general have always been more or less to test extreme situations. It's also hard for Anand to say anything about reliability since there are no real studies of this. We are actually working on SSD reliability survey but there a few obstacles on the road.
But the reliability of those new SSDs is unknown. It will take at least a couple of months before we get any real data of widespread problems. Intel 320 Series was supposed to be issue free, yet the 8MB bug suddenly came from the bushes months after the release.
Slower, yes, but I wouldn't say much: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/370?vs=126
Not necessarily. Older SSDs are often manufactured using older NAND with bigger manufacturing process. That means higher NAND price which can easily eat up the difference between controller prices. Vertex 2 and 3 aren't comparable because the NANDs are the same (OCZ switched to 25nm).
Point taken, but even Anand's own tests show this will be only a temporary slowdown that is fixed by the drive's own GC. I just think to outright dismiss non-Sandforce drives on OS X like he does is a bit much, particularly given the downsides of Sandforce drives.
I think to describe the issue in context and explain how this might be an issue for some users would be more appropriate rather than Anand's standard line of "I can't recommend this drive for OS X."
You are an active user here... do you recall any posts at all from users with one year old or so SSDs complaining their write speeds have gone to hell (presumably from no TRIM)? The last time I remember reading about this was with gen. 1 Intel X-25 SSDs, then the gen. 2 model fixed it.
Hey Timex, I honestly couldn't be any happier with the drive. It works great right out of the box. As for the firmware I really couldn't tell you since I haven't tried it myself. It worked great out of the box so I never bothered messing with it. I've heard the same thing about the windows computer for updating firmware but wasn't a big thing for me since I knew this drive had awesome reviews and people has no complains about it. There is many SSD brands out there. Some better than others but after all my research I decided to go with the samsung 470 and couldn't be any happier. Hope this can narrow it down some for you. Cheers!
Definitely. I guess sometimes it boils down to being too busy and especially Samsung isn't that big player in the SSD industry. I agree that SandForce SSDs are by no means the best ones. I actually bought 64GB Samsung 470 for my PC, even though it has SATA 6Gb/s.
Not really. The biggest complaints I've heard were about the first gen Samsung SSDs in MBAs. Then again, I doubt most people would notice the difference anyway. I've seen some X25-M G2s getting higher write speeds after applying TRIM though, so I guess there is some performance loss with some SSDs.
For the record, after the latest EFI 2.2 update, nobody is experiencing the well-documented beach ball/system hang up problems that beset SATA III drives for months? I've been scouring the forums. I'm interested in the 830. I may bind two generations of Samsung drives in one computer. 830 in the main HD bay, 470 in the optical bay. Or just RMA the 470 for the 830 and save some dough. It's a very tough call, since the 470 has been performing so well.
I am pretty active in the forums and I agree it seems since the last EFI update complaints about SSD compatibility have dropped to almost zero.