SSD or not to SSD, that's the question

Watch my 2 YouTube videos and let me know.

YouTube - Black Vs White 1

YouTube - Black Vs White 2

I bought both Macs in 2006 - the white one for my wife and the black one for myself. Earlier this year, they were both struggling in terms of speed and boot up time.

I upgraded my wife's HDD from a 60GB 5200rpm to a 320GB 7200rpm from OWC and my own HDD from a 100GB 5200rpm to a 128GB SSD - a Crucial RealSSD 6GB/sec SATA. Note that the MacBook can only use 1/3rd of that speed because it's a 1.5GB interface. Just imagine how quick it would be in a 2010 MacBook pro.

Incidentally, the SSDs that Apple tend to ship with the MBA, are Samsung and tend to get extremely poor reviews.

I just got a new MBP… and now you are making me think about getting an SSD for it..

It's super fast now (with the 500gb 7200rpm), but the SSD would be amazing I would think.

I may have to look into moving my media to my wife's iMac, to not need so much space.

Thanks for the vid!!

At this stage stick with a HDD as Mac OS X has no support for TRIM. When an update is released for this, sure.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/article...tate-disks-ssds-and-why-is-it-important-.aspx

harryb2448 said:

At this stage stick with a HDD as Mac OS X has no support for TRIM. When an update is released for this, sure.

Q. What is the TRIM function for solid state disks (SSDs) and why is it important?

Click to expand...

TRIM is a great feature, but by no means a make or break necessity. There is still garbage collection and an SSD will still blow away a spindle based HDD.

I didn't think much of SSD's until I got my hands on a 1.83 MBA with a SSD , I could definitely see an improvement. Just wish the prices would come down a bit.

I agree with harry. SSDs right now are not IMO ready for prime time for two reasons: TRIM (yes it matters) and Price. If I had a Windows machine running Win 7, I might lean toward a SSD from OWC (Win 7 supports TRIM), but until OS X supports it, the best bang for the buck is a good quality 7200 RPM drive.

My 2 cents... I've been running OS X on SSDs for two years with zero issues. I still enjoy those 20 second shutdown>restart>active desktop hops. Lack of TRIM hasn't effected me in the least thus far. If it is effecting me, I haven't noticed on either my laptop which is sleeping and awake all day long, or my Mini which only reboots when Apple tells me to reboot it.