Crucial 256GB C300 on MBP

killhide · Jul 8, 2010

Just wondering if anyone has upgraded to the Crucial C300 SSD that runs the new SATA III and their thoughts on the drive. Does my Spring 2010 MBP support running SATA III (SATA 6 GB/s)? Or will it be stuck running at SATA II speeds?

zeos · Jul 8, 2010

killhide said:
Just wondering if anyone has upgraded to the Crucial C300 SSD that runs the new SATA III and their thoughts on the drive. Does my Spring 2010 MBP support running SATA III (SATA 6 GB/s)? Or will it be stuck running at SATA II speeds?

I've got one in my 2010 MBP right now, I've been quite impressed with it. Here's a link to my xbench results (i7 2.66Ghz, 8GB RAM)

Xbench: Comparison

cwa107 · Jul 8, 2010

Just out of curiosity, how long have you had it? I'm interested to see how the performance is holding up over time considering that OS X lacks TRIM support.

zeos · Jul 8, 2010

cwa107 said:
Just out of curiosity, how long have you had it? I'm interested to see how the performance is holding up over time considering that OS X lacks TRIM support.

That benchmark was done the day I installed it (5-28). I haven't run it again recently, but I can't honestly say that I've noticed any slowdowns since then.

Just for comparisons sake, here's the same machine as shipped with 4GB and the 500GB 5400RPM drive.

Xbench: Comparison

It would have to do an awful lot of slowing down to get back there.

cwa107 · Jul 8, 2010

zeos said:
That benchmark was done the day I installed it (5-28). I haven't run it again recently, but I can't honestly say that I've noticed any slowdowns since then.

Just for comparisons sake, here's the same machine as shipped with 4GB and the 500GB 5400RPM drive.

Xbench: Comparison

It would have to do an awful lot of slowing down to get back there.

Thanks a lot. I've been thinking about picking one of these up myself.

Smudge · Jul 8, 2010

Sorry to bust in here, I'm very new to my Macs, actually just got my 13" MBP 2.4GHz C2Duo last week and wondering if this SSD would be supported by my computer? I really like the idea of an SSD over a platter and heads configuation!!

Thank you very much!

cwa107 · Jul 8, 2010

Smudge said:
Sorry to bust in here, I'm very new to my Macs, actually just got my 13" MBP 2.4GHz C2Duo last week and wondering if this SSD would be supported by my computer? I really like the idea of an SSD over a platter and heads configuation!!

Thank you very much!

Yes, SSD drives are supported. The only area of concern is that OS X doesn't currently support the "TRIM" command, which means that over time performance can degrade until a complete format is done.

JohnCL · Jul 8, 2010

cwa107 said:
Yes, SSD drives are supported. The only area of concern is that OS X doesn't currently support the "TRIM" command, which means that over time performance can degrade until a complete format is done.

Have you run across anything that states the Samsung drives have TRIM support at the hardware level thus eliminating the need for TRIM support at a software level?

Smudge · Jul 8, 2010

Ah,

I'm assuming that "TRIM" is the SSD equivilent of a disk clean-up command?

Seems like that wouldn't be too difficult for Apple to add to a software update no?

zeos · Jul 8, 2010

cwa107 said:
Thanks a lot. I've been thinking about picking one of these up myself.

I debated over it for some time before I decided to take the plunge. I'm pretty happy that I did now. I had to take a 13" MBP from work last week on a trip and I had forgotten how much difference there was. It almost seemed painfully slow launching applications.

cwa107 · Jul 8, 2010

JohnCL said:
Have you run across anything that states the Samsung drives have TRIM support at the hardware level thus eliminating the need for TRIM support at a software level?

I have not. My understanding of TRIM is that the drive's firmware and the OS must both support it. I haven't heard of a firmware that can do it all itself.

JohnCL · Jul 8, 2010

cwa107 said:
I have not. My understanding of TRIM is that the drive's firmware and the OS must both support it. I haven't heard of a firmware that can do it all itself.

Well, that's what I thought too. I may have read something wrong, but that would be nice and makes things easier.