Bout to buy a Mac Pro... what would you do?

[Bjielsl]

I am about to order a dual 2.4ghz Mac Pro. I was thinking about upgrading the main or systm drive to an SSD to take advantage of all the speed it will have. It seems like the 7200 RPM HDD would be the slowest part of the system.

But i am stuck on what to do.
1. 128gb SSD
2. Momentus XT Hybrid
3. Leave the stock 7200 1TB

My concern is that will having the system drive (where I will install the OS) as the only SSD will that even help?

 

[ChefDude]

I've just bought one

before answering your poll, i'd ask what you are going to be doing?

ssds are expensive per gb storage, but their advantage is zero latency file access. in real world terms, lightning fast access to multiple files compared to a nominal hard disk. like when booting up.

hard drives are cheap and useful when you need lots of TB of space.

if you're buying a mac pro, then i'd personally boot from an SSD, have my images on the Momentus hybrid and then other less frequently accessed data on normal hard drives.

me? I have normal hard drives and I'm happy with them - it was more important for me to get the MP, ram upgrade and a 27" monitor. no money left for SSDs

 

[Bjielsl]

Mostly heavy Photoshop and aperture. I rarely if ever shut my system down so boot speed isn't an issue.

 

[harryb2448]

Avoid the Seagate Momentus. Do a search of the forums for problems. Suggest getting a Mercury Extreme SSD from OWC, and say an Icey Dock case to mount it, and pop it in position number one, and then do a clean install of Snow Leopard, or maybe Lion depending when you get your machine.

The original 7200RPM drive can be mounted in position 2, and used as a cloned backup, installing Bootcamp etc on.

 

[HelpdeskRules]

A hybrid drive seems like a 'best of both worlds' option. From what I understand, the way they work is that everything is stored on the hard disk drive. Then what the SSD section does is copy across the most commonly used files so when you access one of those it comes from the SSD part of the drive.

SSD drives havent been around for a long time yet so people are a bit wary of them and how long they will last before they start losing data as they only have a finite amount of use. With Hybrid drives in the unlikely event of the SSD section failing, it just falls over to the hard disk.

The hybrid is the one I'd go with.

 

[cwa107]

I'd go with a standard HDD at this stage in the game. The "bang for the buck" ratio is just not quite there yet, IMO. Now, when a good quality 256GB SSD is available for $250-300, I will have changed my tune.

The hybrid drives are very interesting - and the prices are very good. My only concern is the plethora of negative reviews. I just have some concern about the reliability and long term performance gains over a standard HDD. I also don't feel entirely comfortable with the drive's own intelligence moving around my data and making determinations about efficiency outside of the OS.