Do You Need SSD to upgrade to better SSD?

So I dropped in to my local apple reseller people, and asked about Macbook pro with SSD.
I WILL need to dual-Boot Mac/Windows and I need a minimum of 120 GB for windows, which obviously doesn't leave massive amounts of space for what will be Snow Leopard.
So I said I could buy a larger SSD and instal that, and the guy said that in THAT case I'd have to purchase a model with SSD to start with because the casings are different.
that sounded ... odd, so I thought I'd ask.

And I know it's kinda cheating to ask here but:
any advice on large SSDs? I found a 500GB drive by solidata (model X4) and don't ACTUALLY know if it's any good. a drive around 350GB would be fine, but I couldn't find any.
And please advise me as if price isn't an issue ^^ I'll worry about that after

Lots of thanks in advance.

DragonLance said:

I WILL need to dual-Boot Mac/Windows and I need a minimum of 120 GB for windows, which obviously doesn't leave massive amounts of space for what will be Snow Leopard.

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If you're currently running Mac OS 10.5.x...according to the info Apple has released regarding Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard"...Snow Leopard is actually supposed to take up 6 gigabytes less hard drive space than OS 10.5.

So Snow Leopard will take up less space than OS 10.5 Leopard!

- Nick

Local Apple reseller people? Sounds like someone may have given you incorrect information. The MacBook Pro can be fitted with either a standard SATA HD or SSD. The dimensions are the same. You can check that out yourself by going to an on line reseller.

Other World Computing is a good place to start as they stock both types of drives and are Mac specialists. Link

Finding large SSD drives is difficult and most are ridiculously priced. I know you said to ignore price but when you consider that very large SSD drives cost as much as the machine itself.....

My advice is to order your MBP with a very large SATA drive for now and later on when prices come down on SSD drives and a greater variety of large capacity SSD drives are available, you can always do the upgrade yourself.

Regards.

My advice is to order your MBP with a very large SATA drive for now and later on when prices come down on SSD drives and a greater variety of large capacity SSD drives are available, you can always do the upgrade yourself.

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I just make emotional attachments once I start using hardware :heart:
I know it sounds silly
I'd prefer to have a good drive before I start writing files to the drive etc.

And the X4 only costs 1/4 what the system would without it :nuts:

But thanks
I shall ignore the guy in the shop and hunt you down later if you're wrong :lol:

If you're currently running Mac OS 10.5.x...according to the info Apple has released regarding Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard"...Snow Leopard is actually supposed to take up 6 gigabytes less hard drive space than OS 10.5.

So Snow Leopard will take up less space than OS 10.5 Leopard!

Click to expand...

I'm currently using 150 GB on my current disk for OSX, and I will need 120Gig for windows. If you take into account that formatted drive is less than advertised capacity once you take into account 1000/1024 differences, I'll already be out of room.

I would definitely be considering a 256GB drive. You might be thinking 128GB and figuring 120GB for Windows and 8GB for OS X - that would be a mistake. The formatted capacity will likely be far less than 128GB.

Any particular reason you're looking at an SSD at this juncture? The technology is relatively immature, prices are extremely high, and performance benefits are dubious. Although read speeds may be high, the less expensive MLC drives have problems with write speeds that mechanical hard drives do not. To get around this, you'll need an SLC drive, and the prices are generally 2-3 times that of MLC drives.

I haven't seen SLC with 500GB, and 256 isnt big enough for 120 windows (which I'll need for the IT course I'll be studying for 3/5 years) + the 150 for OSX which is what I use as a non-student.

and I was thinking of SSD for a couple of reasons

1) I DO notice that my hard drive is slow sometimes.

2) I kinda want to support the SSD direction of drives

3) In 10 years time I want my system to still be awesome

4) they last longer than spinneys.

5) they use less energy for the I/O

6) they're quieter

where # 2 and 6 aren't really that important.

1) Is it a 7200RPM 16MB cache drive? Brand/model?
2) Trust me, the industry is headed in that direction regardless of whether you decide to be an early adopter.
3) It won't be, if it even still functions.
4) Not necessarily. Write capability on MLC drives degrades over time. Eventually the drive will become smaller as bad blocks are allocated out of the partition map.
5) That's true, but it's relatively insignificant in my experience.
6) Definitely, but most notebook hard drives are virtually silent (at least the better brands0.

Here's an idea. Why don't you go with a 256GB drive and run Windows using VM. This way, your virtual hard disk file will grow only as you need the space.

Here's an idea. Why don't you go with a 256GB drive and run Windows using VM. This way, your virtual hard disk file will grow only as you need the space.

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that still won't help once I need to fill around the 100GB mark with studies....

1)it came with the mac I have ... but since I'm abroad I can't check the speed at the moment...
2) yes, but not fast enough
3)I think computers won't develop THAT fast on the basis that people are running out of ideas of what to do with the new capabilities.
4) they still last longer, especially with wear-evening algorithms.
5) I would use it on battery often, so every bit would help
6) they're not too bad these days, are they? but I wasn't too fussed about that. That was more of an added bonus

I mean I'm not 100% averse to an HDD, but I would definitely go with SSD if I could.

My main point is that hard drives are very mature technology and the price differences are so vast, I'm hard pressed to see that much of an advantage. Conversely, SSDs are very immature and there are a ton of new technologies being introduced at the moment that will impact performance and longevity. I think it's wise to wait this one out, at least for a couple of years.

I think anyone that spends big money on an SSD now will mightily regret it in a very short time frame.

As to your comment in #3, I think you'll be surprised. Although CPU clock frequencies are hitting a brick wall, there's a lot of new stuff on the horizon - in the short term, we're going to start seeing massive parallelism. In 5 years, any machine with less than 16 cores will likely be a netbook, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the same for GPUs in the near future. And with the direction that Apple is taking with OpenCL and Grand Central, Apple will be well positioned to capitalize on it with their platform.

As to your comment in #3, I think you'll be surprised. Although CPU clock frequencies are hitting a brick wall, there's a lot of new stuff on the horizon - in the short term, we're going to start seeing massive parallelism. In 5 years, any machine with less than 16 cores will likely be a netbook, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the same for GPUs in the near future. And with the direction that Apple is taking with OpenCL and Grand Central, Apple will be well positioned to capitalize on it with their platform.

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We ARE going to hit the "molecules are just too big" wall shortly
and when snowcat gets released apple will become the best gaming platform available (in my humble opinion) so I guess it's already taking the advantage without needing 8 cores

But you've convinced me :-/ much as I hate to give up on my dream system
I can always swap in parts when they give up.