[Transcend]

My laptop (2011 MBP) now boots to a fully loaded useable desktop in just about 12 seconds, from over a minute and a bit before on the 7200rpm HDD.

One hell of an upgrade. Not to mention, I now have a spare 500gb HDD to use for photo storage while travelling. WINNING.

 

[H8R]

Details....?

 

[binary visions]

My Crucial M4 boots my desktop in about 7 secs. after I enabled AHCI, down from 13 in IDE mode. Ridiculous.

Great drive that avoids some of the issues with the Sandforce SSD controller in other drives like OCZ.

Yes, SSD is sweet.

 

[Sghost]

My laptop (2011 MBP) now boots to a fully loaded useable desktop in just about 12 seconds, from over a minute and a bit before on the 7200rpm HDD.

One hell of an upgrade. Not to mention, I now have a spare 500gb HDD to use for photo storage while travelling. WINNING.

12 secs...did you set it to AHCI before installing your OS?

 

[JetTeach]

LOVE my SSD in my laptop. Nice thing is this laptop already had two hard drives. I took the original 500 GB drive and threw it in an enclosure for a nice little external.

 

[Transcend]

I haven't touched AHCI. Just pulled the optical drive, installed the SSD in an OWC bracket, cloned my HDD and rebooted.

 

[vikingboy]

It's a MacBook, I don't think you have to arse around with IDE vs AHCI.....unless I missed something but I don't think so.

 

[HardtailHack]

What does it do for a Laptops battery life, noticeably better? I'll grab one when they get a bit cheaper.

 

[Sghost]

What does it do for a Laptops battery life, noticeably better? I'll grab one when they get a bit cheaper.

No real difference, your screen and CPU use all the power.

Cheaper than $1/gb won't be happening for a while.

 

[Transcend]

No real difference, your screen and CPU use all the power.

Cheaper than $1/gb won't be happening for a while.

A HDD can use a tremendous amount of power. SSDs in general are good, but some of them are just as bad as an HDD. You just have to pay attention to which one you get.

 

[Sghost]

A HDD can use a tremendous amount of power. SSDs in general are good, but some of them are just as bad as an HDD. You just have to pay attention to which one you get.

I expect you with your mac book formerly with a 7200 rpm drive to gain 30-40 minutes of battery life. My netbook gained 30 mins. The average user lugging a 15/17" pig with a 5400 rpm drive I expect +/- 10 minutes max. A wash considering people are actually hoping to hear a magical 1-2 hours of additional time.

Yes, a hdd under a constant demand load will suck things down faster. However, with how the two drives interact with the CPU and ram it evens out for those not using it as a workhorse. The 3 watts is a drop in the bucket compared to your screen, wifi, bluetooth, GPU, and 45 watt CPU. If you really want to save power you can undervolt your CPU and disable external ports if you have no plans to utilize them.

Sure the guy trying to justify practical reasons for himself or his wife reading the credit card statement, sure, whatever. A better line would be it will last longer or wont skip and fail though. The ones not to buy I'll blanket as older "first gen consumer drives."

 

[Transcend]

I expect you with your mac book formerly with a 7200 rpm drive to gain 30-40 minutes of battery life. My netbook gained 30 mins. The average user lugging a 15/17" pig with a 5400 rpm drive I expect +/- 10 minutes max. A wash considering people are actually hoping to hear a magical 1-2 hours of additional time.

Yes, a hdd under a constant demand load will suck things down faster. However, with how the two drives interact with the CPU and ram it evens out for those not using it as a workhorse. The 3 watts is a drop in the bucket compared to your screen, wifi, bluetooth, GPU, and 45 watt CPU. If you really want to save power you can undervolt your CPU and disable external ports if you have no plans to utilize them.

Sure the guy trying to justify practical reasons for himself or his wife reading the credit card statement, sure, whatever. A better line would be it will last longer or wont skip and fail though. The ones not to buy I'll blanket as older "first gen consumer drives."

Doubtful, the HDD is still in there as a photo storage drive.

 

[HardtailHack]

I do notice my laptop is slightly more power hungry when I insert the second HDD, if I transfer rubbish from one HDD to the other it only runs for about two hours on a full battery.

 

[mattmatt86]

This thread needs moar acronyms.

 

[Westy]

this thread needs moar acronyms.

ttnma
tyg.

 

[zxc1104]

i can't wait till they have SSDs that are over 500gb with somewhat a reasonable pricing. it's still too new for me to invest in etc.

 

[Reactor]

I need to clean up my HDD and buy a 500 GB SSD to replace my 750 GB 7200 RPM HDD in my MBP. My runtime took a major hit when my hybrid 500 GB drive died and I put in the 7200 RPM drive. While running some VMs or my FPGA design software the bottom of my MBP gets really hot.

 

[binary visions]

500 GB SSD?



I just can't see dropping a grand on a hard drive.

edit: or did you mean reverting to a hybrid?

 

[Transcend]

The 480gb kit is around $800 at OWC i think?

 

[binary visions]

I spoke with a guy on Friday who runs the data storage for their multi-campus infrastructure.

They have 25 TB in just the SSD optimization for their storage (i.e. that's not even primary storage). Yikes. That's a lot of NAND.

 

[eaterofdog]

I recently bought an 2.3 i5 Mac mini with 8 gigs of ram. The 5400 rpm hard drive was very obviously the bottleneck on the otherwise fast computer. So I browse around a little and find that I can pick up a 90 gig Agility 3 for $55 bucks shipped from Amazon. (that's 61¢ a gig for mid range SSD for you folks keeping track at home)

Installed it and cloned my boot drive over, then used Trim Enabler to configure the OS (keeps the drive fast.) No problems at all.

It is ridiculously fast. Large Adobe apps open in 3 seconds. Option-dragging a 100mb file to copy it produces no progress bar, the copy is instantaneous. When you do see a progress bar, such installing an app, it zips across. And the computer is now completely silent.

Such a huge difference for only 55 bucks. Wow.

 

[HardtailHack]

I am still running a Centrino 2 processor but maybe a SSD will help my old laptop gain a bit of extra speed, still a bit dearer over here though.

 

[norbar]

I recently bought an 2.3 i5 Mac mini with 8 gigs of ram. The 5400 rpm hard drive was very obviously the bottleneck on the otherwise fast computer. So I browse around a little and find that I can pick up a 90 gig Agility 3 for $55 bucks shipped from Amazon. (that's 61¢ a gig for mid range SSD for you folks keeping track at home)

Installed it and cloned my boot drive over, then used Trim Enabler to configure the OS (keeps the drive fast.) No problems at all.

It is ridiculously fast. Large Adobe apps open in 3 seconds. Option-dragging a 100mb file to copy it produces no progress bar, the copy is instantaneous. When you do see a progress bar, such installing an app, it zips across. And the computer is now completely silent.

Such a huge difference for only 55 bucks. Wow.

I'm planning to go with the same mac so good to know the ssd option worked so well. I'm sure as hell won't pay only for saving 1minute on startup

 

[eaterofdog]

I am still running a Centrino 2 processor but maybe a SSD will help my old laptop gain a bit of extra speed, still a bit dearer over here though.

The limiting factors are if your hardware supports SATA 6 and if your OS supports TRIM. SSDs will completely saturate SATA 3 and the port is a bottleneck, not a deal killer but FYI. If your OS does not support TRIM, the SSD will slow down over time. Newer SSDs with Garbage Collection will help alleviate this, but again FYI. Sticking an SSD into an OS without TRIM on SATA 3 will end up being less than half as fast as a proper set up. However, to put that into perspective, the drive will be roughly 4 times faster than a regular hard drive instead of 12 times faster.

 

[eaterofdog]

I'm planning to go with the same mac so good to know the ssd option worked so well. I'm sure as hell won't pay only for saving 1minute on startup

I'm really happy with the mini.