The SSD Thread

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cwa107

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Cyber Monday got the best of me... I've been watching the Crucial m500 gradually drop in price over the last several months. When the 480gb dropped down to $269, I couldn't help myself and bought an early Christmas gift (my wife and I aren't exchanging this year because of a forthcoming vacation). Just finished installing it in my MBP - and while performance is comparable to the M4 that it replaced, it sure is nice to have some more elbow room! That 256gb M4 was starting to feel a bit cramped.
 
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Cyber Monday got the best of me... I've been watching the Crucial m500 gradually drop in price over the last several months. When the 480gb dropped down to $269, I couldn't help myself and bought an early Christmas gift (my wife and I aren't exchanging this year because of a forthcoming vacation). Just finished installing it in my MBP - and while performance is comparable to the M4 that it replaced, it sure is nice to have some more elbow room! That 256gb M4 was starting to feel a bit cramped.

Great purchase! Did you see the 1tb Seagate 840 the other day for under 500? There have been some good SSD deals this week. I know the feeling of "elbow room". I went from my MBA with the tiny 64gb to a new rMBP with 256gb. Night and day difference, and not only in size. This thing is fast!!!

Speed test the m500 yet?
 
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Great purchase! Did you see the 1tb Seagate 840 the other day for under 500?

Is that Seagate or Samsung? If the latter, that particular SSD I'm a little wary of because I understand it uses TLC NAND which has far fewer write cycles, meaning that it will be one of the most short-lived SSDs on the market.

Also, I try to avoid patronizing Samsung in any way possible.

There have been some good SSD deals this week. I know the feeling of "elbow room". I went from my MBA with the tiny 64gb to a new rMBP with 256gb. Night and day difference, and not only in size. This thing is fast!!!

Speed test the m500 yet?

Not yet. Any good tools you know of for benchmarking SSDs on the Mac?
 
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Is that Seagate or Samsung? If the latter, that particular SSD I'm a little wary of because I understand it uses TLC NAND which has far fewer write cycles, meaning that it will be one of the most short-lived SSDs on the market.

Also, I try to avoid patronizing Samsung in any way possible.

Oh yes, Samsung. Must have been half asleep when I posted that!! LOL



Not yet. Any good tools you know of for benchmarking SSDs on the Mac?
Give Blackmagic Disk Speed Test a try.
 
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Oh yes, Samsung. Must have been half asleep when I posted that!! LOL

Ah OK, wasn't sure - I know that Seagate has been more aggressive as of late about getting into the SSD market.



It shows 417MB/s Write and 476.5MB/s Read. Not too shabby, though also not as high as it's rated for reads. Then again, this is an older MBP and the chipset was one of the first to support SATA 6Gb/s.
 
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Those are very respectable speeds, especially on some older hardware. I bet it's like you just got a new computer at a fraction of the cost. ;D
 
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Those are very respectable speeds, especially on some older hardware. I bet it's like you just got a new computer at a fraction of the cost. ;D

Well, this replaced a Crucial M4, which was no slouch either... though I don't recall having measured it, I think it was rated somewhere in the 350MB/s read and 200MB/s write range. So, it's not earth shattering (though I have yet to transfer any truly large files).

That said, the old M4 just went into my wife's ancient Dell Latitude D620 (circa 2007) and that is a dramatic difference, even she is sure to notice (and she never notices anything).

Can't wait to see if she reacts at all when she picks it up next time. I haven't told her I was planning on swapping it. ;)
 
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That said, the old M4 just went into my wife's ancient Dell Latitude D620 (circa 2007) and that is a dramatic difference, even she is sure to notice (and she never notices anything).

Can't wait to see if she reacts at all when she picks it up next time. I haven't told her I was planning on swapping it. ;)

She's gonna flip! If she is the least bit technical she will notice right away. I have a friend that upgraded some D620's with SSD's and he loves them. The D620 was one of Dell's best machines IMO. Too bad they don't make them like that anymore.
 
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She's gonna flip! If she is the least bit technical she will notice right away. I have a friend that upgraded some D620's with SSD's and he loves them. The D620 was one of Dell's best machines IMO. Too bad they don't make them like that anymore.

Yeah, they are rock solid... I liberated this one from the 'recycle' pile at work. All it needed was an HDD. It's too bad I couldn't have scored a D630 as I believe those ran a bit cooler and were less battery intensive.

Actually, Dell's Latitude line has always been fairly well built and serviceable. I haven't touched their newer stuff since my company shifted over to Lenovo, but I've yet to see a poorly made Latitude.
 
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I convinced my boss to buy a Crucial M500 (480GB) about six months ago for my aging 2010-Macbook Pro, and it's been nothing less than stellar. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the computer feels brand new. It's the single most significant upgrade I've ever made. I was getting ready to push for a new system, but with this SSD there's no need.

For reference, I typically run Safari, Outlook, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Skype, Trillian, Dropbox, TotalFinder, Default Folder X, 1Password, BusyCal, Espresso, FileZilla, and Messages actively. There are a myriad of background items running as well, like MAMP, Little Snitch, iStat Menus.

Start up and shut downs were incredibly long -- around 5-6 minutes to make the system work ready (even with the RAM maxed at 8GB). Popped in the SSD, and the system was work ready, from starting completely cold, in 19 seconds. Nineteen seconds, from over five minutes. That's nearly a 1600% performance increase.

Disk writes (from Dropbox syncs, and etc) were a constant source of agony. It was just a mess, really. But none of that is a problem now. I love my SSD and will NEVER go back to using a traditional hard drive for anything more than backups and/or storage of files I use only rarely.

-------

One thing I've been thinking about are the Fusion drives. I'm considering buying a fully loaded iMac for a startup I'm launching, and the 3TB Fusion had really caught my eye. I'm wondering how it stacks up against a pure SSD. Anybody have any experience in this regard?
 
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Samsung 830 series, 256GB SSD. Works great. Boot up from Pushing the power button to destop on my L2012 Mac Mini under Mavericks is less then 10sec. I have trim support added via Trim Enabler app.

Works great. 500+ MB/s Read and Writes.

Couldn't be happier unless it was a 1TB :p
 
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I did a drive swap from a 750GB HHD to a Crucial M500 240 GB SSD in my 2011 MBP. What a difference! Simple to do w/ Crucial's instructions, too.

I use the swapped-out HHD in an external enclosure + USB cable as my b/u drive. Sweet.
 
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SSD can be really good to use for Photoshop Scratch Disk, also works really well with video editing. Right now my top recommendations are Kingston and Samsung. Does anyone have any experience with Intel SSD's though? I've been thinking about getting those for a RAID 0 Scratch Disk.
 
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I have an early 2011 13" Macbook Pro running OSX Yosemite, and it's been slowing down quite a bit. I upgraded the memory to 16GB a little while back, and now I'm thinking of replacing the current HD with a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD. I would like to copy all the existing data from my current HD to the new SSD.

I've watched a number of videos on how people have done this, but there have been several variations of how it's been done. I'm curious on what would be the best way to install the new SSD and copy all my data over.

I have seen someone use a USB to SATA cable to reformat the SSD, and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the drive. I've been taking this method into consideration, but I'm not sure if there's a more efficient (or suggested) way of doing this. I have also read enabling TRIM is ideal for the SSD, but would like to know people's thoughts on that as well.
 
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Or you can simply use Disk Utility from your Utilities folder in Applications to transfer the data from your current HD to the new one.

Also, Yosemite doesn't allow use of TRIM, BUT the next generation, El Capitan, is rumored to permit its use.
 

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Not true. Yosemite 10.10.4 now allows TRIM to be used.
 
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Keukasmallie - That sounds like a better choice. Thanks!

chscag - Will I need to obtain additional software to allow for TRIM in Yosemite?

Also, on the Apple forums, some people are saying the Sudden Motion Sensor should be disabled when using an SSD. Is this a necessary step to ensure the SSD functions correctly?
 
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Thanks chscag, I learn something every day. The last time I tried to enable TRIM (long time ago) I got a msg that said I had to disable some aspect of Yosemite for TRIM to work; that seemed a bit much, so I didn't do it. Good to hear TRIM is now OK. I just enabled it on my MBP.
 

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