SSD For Macbook

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Hi all,

just ordered some ram for my macbook and thought i'd go the whole hog and get an ssd as well.

What's a recommended ssd for a 2009 macbook? Probably looking at 256gb, but open to ideas.
 
Rapscallion said:
Hi all,

just ordered some ram for my macbook and thought i'd go the whole hog and get an ssd as well.

What's a recommended ssd for a 2009 macbook? Probably looking at 256gb, but open to ideas.
Click to expand...

Really depends on what you intend to run from it.

I have one with just windows, CS5 and Lightroom.

Windows has been changed so all documents and folders are oon a separate drive.

Just won a 2nd SSD as well. :)
 
There is a trim enabler for snow leopard, but there are a lot of discussions on whether it really is necessary under os x and hfs...My understanding is that on my sand force based vertex 3 it really isn't necessary...

It is probably the best performance improving upgrade you are going to do...
 
I really don't know the technical ins/outs and to be honest I have little interest in that other than that for NTFS to run on OSX you would require a kernel extension and it is much slower (under OSX).

Fact is with a Sand Force based controller like the OCZ Vertex 3 you do not require, not should use, TRIM support. And they are absolutely flying from a performance perspective...

I'm getting 525MB/s read and 515MB/s write on the Vertex 3...Been running this for a year and the performance test today is exactly the same :thumbs:
 
arad85 said:
Vertex3 speed will be poor on already compressed data - such as images, videos and mp3s.... Take a look here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/582?vs=352 and note that the better results are sometimes the lower values.
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Yes fair point, although i wouldn't quite call it poor. I guess that is why it works so well under OS X as your main system/application drive. As the majority is very compressible, although the point is rather mute and theoretical.

The aja system test which scores 525/515 for my vertex 3 is about writing/reading a 1920x1080/10-bit 4GB video file...

Ultimately I do not think the price point is quite there to store all data on it, I mean I couldn't have all my data in 256GB...Even as purely an app/os drive I only have 50GB free on mine...
 
Oops correction I lied :) My performance with a 1920x1080/10-bit 4GB file is today only 490.7MB/s write and 509.0MB/s read...Doing the same on a 3.0TB hitachi where my ~ is gives me 135.8MB/s write and 140.7MB/s read.
 
dejongj said:
The aja system test which scores 525/515 for my vertex 3 is about writing/reading a 1920x1080/10-bit 4GB video file...
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Interesting... The Anandtech incompressible data write benches the 240G Vertex 3 at 284Mbytes/sec. (which is poor to the 415 of the Perf. Pro). Given the technology in the SF controllers, I'd expect benchmarks of incompressible data to give much lower marks on SF based disks. That's borne out by other benchmark sites if you look around.

Something isn't quite right somewhere....
 
I have been using a 240g vertex 3 for about a year now, good solid drive with no problems to date.
I checked read & write times when installed and these were not far off the spec.
If you are looking Ebuyer had a few left at £185.00, that's a decent price for this drive.
I know there is a vertex 4 out now but I don have any knowledge of this.
I've just talked myself into ordering another with a data doubler bracket and removing the optical drive.
 
arad85 said:
Interesting... The Anandtech incompressible data write benches the 240G Vertex 3 at 284Mbytes/sec. (which is poor to the 415 of the Perf. Pro). Given the technology in the SF controllers, I'd expect benchmarks of incompressible data to give much lower marks on SF based disks. That's borne out by other benchmark sites if you look around.

Something isn't quite right somewhere....
Click to expand...

I use a Mac and not a PC :D:clap: No idea why they get such low results but then again there was something linked above which gave very similar results, for me it is the same if I just 'time dd' very consistent...
 
I've just checked & there seems to be an issue with 6G drives used in 13" MacBook Pro early 2011 optical bays, I was going to use the vertex 3 from Ebuyer at £185.00, and I don't mind if the MacBook pro has 3G optical drive controller but I am a bit worried that it will not work correctly.
Does anyone has a SSD with optical drive removed & if so have you experienced any problems.
Thanks.
 
dejongj said:
I use a Mac and not a PC :D:clap: No idea why they get such low results but then again there was something linked above which gave very similar results, for me it is the same if I just 'time dd' very consistent...
Click to expand...
Yes, but the data HAS to be uncompressable. Does the aja system test actually come with a 4G playable video file which is used for the test or does it write the equivalent of a 4G file? The data has to be entropy encoded otherwise it's not uncompressable. If this doesn't hold, the speed will be much higher as in the case of a dd....

I doubt it's a PC/Mac thing. Fundamentally the performance is limited because to achieve the high speeds, SF controllers compress the data as it is written to the flash. This is all done in the drive firmware and if you can't compress the data, it will go slower. This is what all benchmarks of the SF controllers show.

I can google any number of tests on the Vertex 3 and they all show the same thing: 500MB/s read, ~300MB/s write for uncompressable data. A random one here: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...sk=view&id=717&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=5 or this one: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5785/corsair-performance-series-pro-256gb-review/4 (you'll see it half way down the second performance table).

The Vertex 3 is an attractive proposition at £185 whilst the Perf. Pro is £270, but to claim it is faster when dealing with compressed data is not the case.

FWIW, I've just run the AS-SSD benchmark on my 90G Vertex 2 in my i7-2600K and have got a paltry 146M read, 65M write. It does have a nice .2ms access time though.

I'll rerun the test on the Perf. Pro we have in the laptop when Ms arad85 is finished with it.
 
No idea what aja uses, it is a digital video company. But hey how. The benchmarks i run say it is fast, but more importantly in everyday use it is fast since april last year it is fast, so to me it is fast.
 
All I'm saying is I think, in real life, the Corsair Perf Pro is faster than the Vertex 3. Whether you think that worth paying for is another matter.
 
Might have to buy one for my other project and compare the two in the real world opposed to bench marks and see :) After all it is a new generation than the vertex 3...but then there is also the vertex 4 :)
 
... which appears to use a Marvell based controller :)
 
Hi gents, haven't been at my pc to study the conversation but thanks for the details.. I'll probably be back with some questions.
 
Hi All,

any thoughts in a samung 830 - have seen them for a good price on novatech £154 for a 256gb:-

http://preview.SPAM/83f5q7m

It mentions in a review on www.tomshardware.co.uk:-
"screaming sequentials and so-so random performance"
Click to expand...

What does this mean in laymans terms?

Cheers!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Screaming sequentials, so-so random means that it will read single files very quickly but has average performance when visiting lots of files at the same time.

Samsung is supposed to be a good compromise...
 
arad85 said:
Screaming sequentials, so-so random means that it will read single files very quickly but has average performance when visiting lots of files at the same time.

Samsung is supposed to be a good compromise...
Click to expand...

So i take it that it is good for lightroom / photoshop use then? Just noticed that it is out of stock, but "175 Due 1 June"
 
Yup. Good price too...
 
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