OS X :: Are Solid-state Drives Faster Than Hard Disk Drives?
Sep 13, 2009
I'm looking at the specs page for the MacBook Pro and it reads this...
Your MacBook Pro comes standard with a 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive. Choose a hard drive with a faster speed for greater performance. Or you can choose a solid-state drive that offers enhanced durability.
Basically suggesting that the HDD option has a performance advantage over the SSD, but is this the case? I always thought SSDs could read & write quicker because they use solid-state flash memory as opposed to hard disks.
I want to go with the 256GB SSD but I want to know how it ranks in speed.
I know, I know the video uses Vista as the base OS (so forgive me) but if it is that fast on windows, imagine a Mac Pro with a similar configuration...whoa, baby!
2 GB/sec transfer rate 0.5 sec to load MS office at once 18.5 sec to load 54 apps at once 0.5 sec to rip a 700mb file.
I am thinking of getting a new iMac and would like to know the whys and wherefores of a solid state drive. The one that is sold with the iMac is 250 gig. Does that mean it's storage capacity is lower than a normal 1TB hard drive?
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2), Early 2009. 20 inch
I am considering putting a SSD in my June 2009 13" MBP. Is there any certain ones that work more easily on the macs?
Any quick useful advice anyone can give me first before buying and what to look for? I'm thinking I'd like to get a 256gb one but not sure. I'd like to find one that isn't going to break the bank but I know they're expensive, and I'm just looking for the best buy.
I have 1st generation MBA 1.6 with 80 gig HD. (Which now I have to sell) I bought the new MB when it was released earlier this month. I found it to be a very responsive machine but took it back for either a pro with a great resolution or wait for the new MBA. I decided to get another air. I really love the weight of the machine.
Now the help I need is to (1) get the 1.6 which speed right now I find good or get the 1.8 Ghz. then the big question . . .
(2) get the SATA hard drive or spend the bucks and get the Solid State. I hear the start up time is very quick on the Solid State, but it's slower on writing to disk. I use this machine on the road when working with customers and use File Maker Pro mostly when in that situation. I am a novice compared to what I see on here so I'm asking all y'all mac experts....what would you do?
Iv had my macbook pro for probably a little bit under two years, I bought it when i started college and I am currently finishing my second year. I cannot complain about the performance at all as I have it upgraded to a solid state hard drive and 4GB of ram and the machine is a beast but some physical aspects of it do bother me a little bit. When living in the dorms last year it was hard to keep the machine in top shape especially when I had no idea where my desk was under the pile of GROSS in the room :P, thankfully I live in an apartment now.Anyways the problem that bothers me the most is the monitor hinge. I have seen this on a few laptops after a few years but basically when the LCD is open i can tap it lightly from behind and it will shake in a way it did not when it was first bought. It seems like it is a bit lose either right around the LCD or in the hinge area. I do not mind spending a few bucks and I am very good with my hands and computers in general, currently studying engineering, so I do not mind opening it up and doing some tweaks. Is there anything i can buy to improve this with or tutorial I can read on improving it? I would imagine this is a problem that would affect alot of people with this model of macbooks and as I never really did anything to cause this.
My external hard drive has been corrupted and the error message is telling me to reformat it. However, through all the research I have done to find out how, everything I've found has told me to use Disk Utility to just erase everything on the disk to do this. When I try to do this, it tells me that I can't erase anything because the disk cannot be unnmounted. What should I do?
Where are the larger faster WD drives? The 1TB 5200rpm drive has been out for several months, in the garbage MyPassport configuration. What is the holdup to releasing these as bare drives? Also, isn't there supposed to be a WD 640gb 7200rpm drive? It seem like 2.5" drive tech and/or distribution is really lagging.
i have this strange issue that occured just out of nowhere without me (knowingly) having contributed anything to it.yesterday i launched my iMac and my external firewire drive wasn't showing up in neither the finder nor on the desktop. i instantly thought about a hard drive crash, but soon tried other things to evaluate (or not) my guess.
for instance, i unplugged the drive waited a few minutes before i plugged it in again. since this iomega drive is also equipped with a regular usb port i also switched cables and tried connecting it via the iMac usb sockets as well as via an usb hub without any luck. the drive still won't show up. so i launched the Disk Utility, to see if the drive needs some checking/repairing, but to my surprise it wasn't showing in Disk Utility either.
thus far i only considered this to be an issue with only this particular external drive, but when i eventually switched on a 2nd external drive (this time an usb drive i use for Time Machine) that drive also refused to show up in either the Finder or the Disk Utility app.
curious as i was, i then fired up a 3rd and 4th external drive and now had all 4 drives running at the same time. none of which were showing up, just as if they weren't even connected with the iMac.
this strikes me as more than odd. i've heard about hard drive failures and crashes. they just occur over time. maybe and under some very strange coincidences it is possible that two external hard drives quit their jobs at the very same time, but seriously .... 4 of them?? i hardly think so.
well, maybe it's the iMac's usb/firewire controller that's causing the trouble, i thought. but then again, my other connected devices (iPhone, iPad, Printer, Scanner, eyeTV) are functioning and get detected just fine as far as i can tell.
i have no idea what's going on. i dismiss the idea of 4 external drives having crashed all at the same time just as much as i don't think that the iMac's usb/firewire controller has got any issues. re-formatting any of the 4 drives is out of the question and even if i'd consider such desperate measures, the Disk Utility wouldn't let me re-format anything anyhow, because the drives aren't listed there. i wish i could just use my Time Machine to resolve the issue but, as i mentioned earlier, i can't access the Time Machine because it also won't show up.
I have a question regarding Time Machine functionality. Here's my situation. I have two hard drives in my Pro: one that operates as a Boot drive, and one for storage. Right now I have Time Machine set up to backup my storage drive, but I was wondering if it was possible to have plug in a second external drive and use it to back up the Boot drive. I searched for a similar thread, but couldn't really find anything. Has anybody successfully done this?
I am going to get the 13'' MBP, i7, 8gb unit. The question I have is that should I stick with the standard hard drive that comse with the unit (750 GB), or should I upgrade to the solid state drive (desiring 256 gb)?
1. What are the advantages to a solid state?
2. Is it worth the money (trying to stay under $2000 with shipping and taxes)
On my current macbook I have a 250 GB HDD, and I have only used about 100 GB. Size is not the biggest issue, more about speed for me. I am a speed junkie, and I want my computer to perform to it's highest ability. I don't use any heavy intense application, or I am not a computer gamer. Although I know that these are the primary uses, I want the computer I am going to buy to last me several years and to maintain its speed when I use application. I also highly doubt I will use any where close to 200 gb.
I was wondering if it is possible to update to a solid state drive without having to give up a kidney through Apple.
I found a 64GB solid state drive for $140 from an online store. Does the Air need a special hard drive, or any generic one will do? And if any of you have a solid state drive what is your experience with it?
Mac and wondering to get 128 Solid State or not? For those that bought it, do you regret spending money, was it as good of an improvement as you thought?
For those that didn't buy it, do you regret and went ahead and did it on your own? This will be replacing my desctop, it will be used for everything, but not work just for everything and anything
I just purchased a 128 gig Solid State Drive at frys the other day $299. I read a bunch of reviews on SSDs but never pulled the trigger because of the cost.
If anyone is on the fence go out and buy one today, the speed difference is huge. My 17 MBP is wicked fast now! Bootup times are 1-3x faster. Applications load in a flash, no more spinning beach ball. I hit pages and shazam, it's open and ready.
Anyhow, installation was a breeze, cloned drive, had to remove a bunch of stuff because i downgraded from a 500 internal to a ssd. Im not looking at replacing my SuperDrive with a regular HD to reclaim the space, ill keep music, videos and such on that.
So, it's a good buy. Just wonder what upgrading to 8 gigs of ram will do for me now. I'll let you all know next month.
I'm looking at getting a Mac Pro (but will likely wait about 4 more weeks to see if a new one comes out...you never know!!) and am looking at my options. Basically what I want to know is, if I was to put a solid state drive (say 64GB) in for OS X, then stick say a couple of 1TB SATA drives for apps/docs, would there be a noticeable speed difference in the OS? Obviously docs and apps are still coming from a physical drive, so there wouldn't be an improvement from that perspective, but in general would the OS be faster? If so, would this be a very noticeable speed difference or minimal?
Have another thread on the go regarding fluid leaking from my white MacBook. Exploring avenues outside of the mac itself now. Apple want it taken to the an apple store for immediate inspection but warned I could end up being charged for repairs due to accidental liquid damage, although I didn't damage the machine. No liquid was place around or near the machine. This was a chemical liquid. could the solid state drive installed in the machine have leaked and caused this problem? If its still under warranty and has damaged my whole computer could they be liable to repair or replace this machine? All answer gratefully received.
I threw in with the air. I've been a big MacBook pro and iMac user from way back, but a few days ago I finally did what I've always wanted to do, I bought an Air! The things holding me back were price and the lack of updates from Apple. But you know what? After using this machine for three days I can honestly say it is the best laptop I have ever used. I don't even know why I ever used a pro. I got the high end 2.13GHz machine with the solid state HD. So quiet (silent). So light. Amazing machine and I can never go back to using a pro. Can't wait to see what Apple have in line for the Air in the future too! The coolest thing though is that its not quite mainstream. Not like the Pro anyway. I get looks! Oh yeah, us Air users are legit.
I have a Imac 20 with a small 3.5 hard drive and I have bought a bigger 360 gig 3.5 hard drive to replace the old one. I have the new one in an external case with USB 2.0 right now. Is there some way I can transfer the entire contents of the old hard drive on to the new one and then swap out the old drive with the new drive and not miss a beat?
I have to hard drives in my powermac. And I am running out of space with the one that has the OS on it.
I want to make the 2 internal hard drives i have appear as one so i can still install and use things that say "must have mac OS installed on this drive to use" or whatever.
i've heard of people using RAID to join them, but i want details on how i could do this.
HDD Bay 1: 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s; 7200 rpm; 8MB cache
OSX: Tiger
I need to upgrade to Snow Leopard to be able to use newer Leopard & above only versions of software ie FCP, Aperature, etc.
The issue is that I would like to keep the Tiger OSX as I run Pro Tools LE 7 on it. Upgrading to Snow Leopard would render Pro Tools LE 7 incompatible and I would have to buy it again.
So here's what I'm thinking. I would like to install a secondary HDD in Bay 2 and install Snow Leopard on it.
Is it possible to have OSX Tiger on the HDD in Bay 1 and have OSX Snow Leopard on the HDD Bay 2? Could they each be a different startup to be selected via System Preferences or at bootup? I would only want to run one OS at any given time.
If so what would be a workflow for installing the 2nd HDD and setting it up with OSX Snow Leopard.
Also, compatible hard drives for the 2006 Intel Mac Pros seem to be harder to find now. I called Apple and they no longer sell any compatible internal HDDs.
I'm planning on getting a Mac Pro with multiple hard drives and was thinking about having a main drive for Leopard and documents, one for music, one for video and another for Windows. I was just curious to see how others have theirs set up and any if there is advice to be shared.
I added a second harddrive to my Mac Pro. As it happens, it is larger than the primary harddrive. What I would like to do is use the larger harddrive as my Mac OS disk, while using boot camp to set the smaller one up with windows. when I set up the larger one with 10.6, do I have to use the install disks, or can I just copy all of the files from the old disk to the new? Are there any hidden files that I need that might get left behind?
