08-02-2011, 10:36 PM

Hey everyone!

I'm about to get a new MacBook Pro, and there's one problem I need a little help solving.

I could either get a 500gb 7200rpm HDD at no extra charge, OR I could get a 128gb SSD for an additional $90. I'm slightly leaning towards the SSD for the general reasons you've all probably heard about by now.

Now let me just explain my reasoning here a bit. I should say beforehand that I already plan on getting a 1TB external drive regardless of which one I get.

From what I understand, if I were to buy the MBP with the 500gb HDD and just buy an SSD separately, that would total me around $220 (the price of a 128gb SSD nowadays). However, if I were to buy the laptop with the SSD and then buy a 500 gb HDD at 7200 rpm, it would cost me $90 + $70 = $160. So I'd be saving money by buying the SSD with the MBP it seems, not even counting the fact that I could sell the SSD for a higher price than what I actually bought it for!

I know it sounds like I might already have my answers, but I basically have three questions:

1) Does that argument make sense to you? As in, is there anything I'm missing or not considering?

2) Does anyone know what brand of SSD Apple ships in MBP nowadays?

3) I was planning on using my SSD for the OS/applications, and using the 1TB HDD for files/music/movies etc. Is that an ideal setup or is there something I'm missing about that as well?

I'd appreciate any helpful answers. Thanks!

08-02-2011, 11:04 PM

To be honest, I've been pondering ditching the optical drive and tossing in an SSD on the HDD port, and swapping the 500gb disk I have now in the optical drive port. Boot off the SSD and save to the rotational drive. Seems an almost ideal combination, as I don't often use the optical drive away from home anyway. That said, I have no idea who Apple is using for SSD's, I'd imagine whomever they can source from, with their specs, at the lowest price (which will tend to vary).

08-03-2011, 12:47 AM

That's what I did with my new Macbook Pro. I got it with a 128GB SSD and used the OWC disk doubler to mount a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT in place of the optical drive. I boot off the SSD and moved \Users to the Seagate. I don't miss the optical drive, which is now in an external case but is never used. Once you boot off an SSD, you'll never go back

08-03-2011, 11:10 AM

I just received my new 15" MacBook Pro last week with a 256GB SSD.
You were asking about the brand of SSD. It appears to be a Toshiba as it is labelled with a number that starts with TS.

DavidH

02-23-2012, 06:57 PM

I bought the new MPB with a std 500 gb HD, anticipating putting in either a Crucial M4 256 or the
New Intel 520, 180 GB. This was 2 weeks ago. (Please see my post in another thread.)

IAE, I started with the Crucial SSD and kept getting crashes, even though I was familiar with the

02-24-2012, 07:04 PM

One advantage of the speed of SSD, I have a 2010 MBP 13, in Finder the file icons and in cover flow, it usually takes a second or 2 to load from the HDD, depends on how fast I scroll. There's no such delay with the SSD.