uMBP - SSD or 7200 upgrade? AND Mac Mini + SSD *two machines in one discussion*

VaderDSL

VaderDSL

VaderDSL

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Considering getting rid of my PC, need to wean myself from it :D

So I was thinking of a 2.53Ghz / 4Gb Mac Mini with an 80Gb Intel SSD in it. It will be just for browsing, iwork, ilife, music and general day to day things :) Maybe a game of Civ IV every now and again.

Snow leopard doesn;t yet support trim yes? Does anyone know if that is a feature in OSX that Apple can add themselves or do they need to work with HDD manufacturers to get that feature enabled?

Due to this how much of a hit would you get without trim in OSX?

Cheers
 
uMBP - SSD or 7200 upgrade?

I have a late 2008 MBP with a 250gb 5400 rpm drive.

I'm starting to find that quite often I'm getting the spinning beachball or the system feeling sluggish whilst I can hear the drive chugging away in the background on tasks such as opening multiple applications, opening lots of documents etc

So, I'm thinking about upgrade options of which there seem to be two:

Large 7200 drive - This is the easy cheap option, but i'm not sure whether I'll see any real noticeable performance increase in day to day use over the 5400 drive?

SSD drive - this is very attractive as all the reviews suggest that that day to day performance goes through the roof (boot times, app openings etc), however I have a few concerns:

1. TRIM and OSX: from what I've read performance drops over time on SSDs and TRIM remedies this on Windows 7, but no alternative exists for OSX? I believe that I can manually rectify this degradation by periodically formatting the drive, however does this require a fresh install, or will an erase and time machine restore suffice? If its just a time machine restore I could live with doing that every few months.

2. Which drives are currently recommended? I'd be looking at a capacity somewhere between 60-120gb as all my media is on NAS or FW800 drives so its mainly a system drive (OSX and Win7) Budget would be around 150-300 (though less is better!)


Thanks
 
hehe probably be best merging my thread with this one, got a pretty similar question but in a mac mini.

Just looking around and I can't find much useful info regarding Trim and support in OSX. Surely it's got to be on the priority list for this year at least. SSDs are the way forward for the portabgle and minis, lower power consumption, reliability. I may just put my orders on hold until we see Trim in OSX. Maybe then I could afford a 120gb + SSD :)
 
I moved from a MBP '07, 2.4GHz, 4GB running 5400rpm to an OCZ Vertex 120GB.

Even running SATA1 at 150Mbit/sec it's instantaneous compared to the 5400rpm drive.

Mine's been running since April last year with masses of use - no real slow down to be honest.

For external storage I run:
* FW800 1TB WD Studio for Time Machine and general offload.
* 3x1.5TB in external eSATA/USB caddies.
* 2x200GB

I've asked OcUK to look at a particular caddy that supports four drives and SATA multiplexing. So it means that you only need one eSATA for all four drives (the drives appear seperate), same through USB too. The next mode up also supports FW. I was thinking of one of these (rather than Drobo as it attempts to block-level RAID which I'm not interested in). That way I can attach as needed - especially as my Mini should arrive tomorrow.
 
I had one of the WD Black drives in my MBP and I believe it was by far the best decision I made.

I understand the need for low rpm to save power etc, but in terms of day-to-day it won't make much of an difference.

Now with a mini it'll only help too, sound wont be an issue that drive was super quiet. SSD option is a good idea as long as its only a system hdd, but you'll have to be strict becuase of lack of storage, and perhaps for go having bootcamp.

Ideal world, slap in a 256GB SSD but price is an issue.

The 320/500GB WD Scorp Black would be best for both options above, mbp and mini.
 
Aye I was thinking of an 80Gb SSD, have things like iwork etc. and as you say ignore bootcamp and a 1Tb minimax underneath for my modest 12gb of music :) plus my vids and films.

But the 7200 black sounds like an adequate intermediate step as well :) But ultimately I will probably end up waiting for a new refresh or introduction of trim to OSX or higher capacity lower cost SSDs, which ever happens first :)
 
NickK said:
I moved from a MBP '07, 2.4GHz, 4GB running 5400rpm to an OCZ Vertex 120GB.

Even running SATA1 at 150Mbit/sec it's instantaneous compared to the 5400rpm drive.

Mine's been running since April last year with masses of use - no real slow down to be honest.
Click to expand...

Thats really interesting. From reading around on the internet, the impression i've got is the degradation can be pretty severe, but I did wonder whether that was just benchmarking and not real world degradation.

In terms of reconditioning an SSD in OSX, how easy/time consuming is it?

I think i'm getting close to shooting for the Intel 80gb as it seems a good sweet spot between space and price, 64gb feels a bit small to me, and the 120gb drives are more like £300, so long as I can get my head around whether the lack of TRIM is an issue in OSX!
 
Well I think I'll be ordering the 320GB version when I get paid this week, the only worry is cracking open this Mini!

Bush - upgrading the MBP's hard drive was a 1 minute job! :D Not like the Mini's
 
Well I've just run an Xbench.

Code: 
[i]Initial benchmark - probably on a fresh boot[/i]
Results	178.35	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.5.6 (9G55)
		Physical RAM		4096 MB
		Model		MacBookPro3,1
		Drive Type		OCZ-VERTEX 1199
	Disk Test	178.35	
		Sequential	131.92	
			Uncached Write	202.55	124.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	176.07	99.62 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	66.59	19.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	213.40	107.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	275.19	
			Uncached Write	116.55	12.34 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	327.73	104.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	2173.79	15.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	409.19	75.93 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Now - with 6 days uptime, an a whole heap of apps running (including DVD player with film paused):
Code: 
Results	192.33	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.6.2 (10C540)
		Physical RAM		4096 MB
		Model		MacBookPro3,1
		Drive Type		OCZ-VERTEX 1275
	Disk Test	192.33	
		Sequential	153.63	
			Uncached Write	183.19	112.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	192.83	109.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	88.05	25.77 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	247.85	124.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	257.09	
			Uncached Write	104.40	11.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	277.09	88.71 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	1404.24	9.95 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	602.56	111.81 MB/sec [256K blocks]

So there's some drop but not really that much. Also note that:
* I've upgraded to 10.6 when it came out
* firmware 1199 was high performance but had a corruption bug (I lost the drive contents!), FW1275 is known to be slower but doesn't corrupt!
* that's on a 2.4GHz 2007 MBP which has SATA 1 only.
 
Last edited:
Pretty impressive, just run xbench on mine for a laugh:

Code: 
Results	33.13	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.6.2 (10C540)
		Physical RAM		2048 MB
		Model		MacBookPro5,1
		Drive Type		Hitachi HTS543225L9SA02
	Disk Test	33.13	
		Sequential	53.38	
			Uncached Write	37.35	22.93 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	66.01	37.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	56.23	16.45 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	65.69	33.02 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	24.01	
			Uncached Write	8.09	0.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	62.94	20.15 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	61.52	0.44 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	92.60	17.18 MB/sec [256K blocks]


Looks like the SSD is the way forward, now just gotta decide which one....

reminds me I need more RAM as well, but can't belive DDR3 SODIMMS have nearly doubled in price from when I last looked before Christmas :(
 
Im planning on waiting until the next generation of the Intel drives come out, hopefully they will have a significant jump in performace and size, and at that point i'll invest in a new 15" MBP (providing it's not near a refresh point) and dump one of those into it.

I think i need to start saving xD
 
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