SSD Help

[startrek1997]

Hello,

I am new to SSDs. and would a SSD be worth to put it in my mid-2010 Macbook? I have 5gb of Ram in it now so i dont think i need anymore of that atm. what do you guys think?

[Shadrack]

YES! Especially if your current drive is one of the "energy saving" 4800RPM drives like what came with my Mid-2009 MBP.

The performance difference was litterally night and day. Huge boost in performance in about every way. Exceeded my expectations. It was like I went out and purchased a new laptop.

[startrek1997]

Yes..... It came with a 4800 rpm hdd..... I am not buying a new one. just going to get one off ebay.....but will it support a ssd?

[Gotenks98]

It should, just be aware there is an issue where some of the MBP where the sata cables were defective and cause issues with SSDs. I recently had 2 customers with this issue and it took a lot of trouble shooting to figure it out. It wasn't until we put the drive in another system that it was able to be formatted. But when swapped back to the system it was supposed to be in it was not writable in that system. All due to defective Sata cables.

[threetonesun]

Yes, they'll work, and yes they're great, especially coming from a 4800 drive.

[xendrome]

I have 5gb of Ram in it now so i dont think i need anymore of that atm. what do you guys think?

5GB of ram? does the ram in a MBP not work in dual-channel mode like a PC? If it does you might be hurting your performance, how are you getting 5GB?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Don't have a Mac, but for people using non-Apple SSDs on their Macs you may want to make sure TRIM is enabled:

http://www.return1.at/trim-enabler-for-osx-mountain-lion/

But yes, SSDs are fun on any computer.

[startrek1997]

Lol its a mid-2010 macbook.....not the pro. Come to find out that the drive died last night wial i was downliading some games. I am getting a 7200 rpm HDD from a friend just to hold me over. Can't wait to put the ssd in it!!

[Shadrack]

Don't have a Mac, but for people using non-Apple SSDs on their Macs you may want to make sure TRIM is enabled:

http://www.return1.a...-mountain-lion/

But yes, SSDs are fun on any computer.

I'm not an SSD expert by any means. When I first got my SSD I researched this some and found a lot of conflicting opinions on if this was (1) necessary, and (2) a good idea. Some folks even argued that for newer drives turning on software side trim in Mac OS X is not only unnecessary, but could actually degrade the performance of the drive and possibly lesson its life span.

When I first setup my SSD on my Mac, I followed this "hack" that you have linked to to enable TRIM (because the 'OMG **TRIM** is bomb you need it' opinion was pretty prevalent across the Internet). With every OS X update I had to reapply the hack and eventually just stopped reapply the hack. So I went w/o "hacked in TRIM" support and I really didn't notice any difference at all in performance. I've been using an Intel 320 series 80GB SSD w/o using this TRIM hack for over a year and a half now and still have not noticed any change in performance.

In any case, I'm always leery about stuff not directly supported by Apple. One thought is that Apple intentionally cripples SSDs that they don't support. Somewhat related, I believe there have been issues with users replacing iMac HDD/SSD with their own SSD and the result was every fan inside the iMac went to full throttle (something having to do with Apple using a specific SSD that had a temperature sensing feature that was relayed to the main board). I wouldn't put it pass Apple, anyway, and it is crummy that even in Mountain Lion they still have made TRIM support an official OS X feature for anything other than the Apple stock SSDs and ones officially purchased and installed through them.

After all of my research on TRIM support in Mac OS X, I really didn't feel all that "smarter" about the subject. There was too much "muck" on the subject that made it difficult to understand. I think I can summarize my understanding as (and take it all in with a grain of salt and please do your own research):

1) W/o TRIM support a drive will have limited write capability

2) W/o TRIM support a drives read/write speeds will degrade over time

3) W/o TRIM support the life of a drive will probably be limited

4) Apple's support for TRIM might be specific to the drives it sells

5) Newer drives have controllers that solve the same problems that operating system TRIM support solved.

6) Newer drives with these controllers already solving the problem may actually be incompatible with operating systems that have TRIM support.

So I decided not to worry about the TRIM support on my computer.

Here is the datasheet on Intel 320 SSDs:

http://www.intel.com...320-series.html

90 MB/s Write Speed

270 MB Read Speed

Notice Note 2: Performance measured using Iometer* with queue depth equal to 32.

I'm trying to find a version of iospeed that will work on Intel Macs... but with BlackMagic Disk Speed Test I get the following:

~90 MB/s Write speed

~260 MB/s Read speeds

I don't know if the two benchmarks are comparable, but they seem pretty consistent to one another to me.

[Shadrack]

5GB of ram? does the ram in a MBP not work in dual-channel mode like a PC? If it does you might be hurting your performance, how are you getting 5GB?

It does. He could have a 4GB and a 1GB, but for that model I'm not sure how as it came with 2x 2GB stock.

[Gotenks98]

In any case, I'm always leery about stuff not directly supported by Apple. One thought is that Apple intentionally cripples SSDs that they don't support. Somewhat related, I believe there have been issues with users replacing iMac HDD/SSD with their own SSD and the result was every fan inside the iMac went to full throttle (something having to do with Apple using a specific SSD that had a temperature sensing feature that was relayed to the main board). I wouldn't put it pass Apple, anyway, and it is crummy that even in Mountain Lion they still have made TRIM support an official OS X feature for anything other than the Apple stock SSDs and ones officially purchased and installed through them.

Apple does this on alot of stuff not just SSDs. Its really shadey how they did bootcamp as a whole. They cripple the windows experience so that the Windows OS will not ever get the benefit of the full hardware. For instance battery life is greately reduced on the Windows side because windows is not able to get access to both the 2d and 3d video card. With bootcamp the 3d one stays on and the 2d is never used. As a result significantly less battery life. On the flipside if you bought a pc with similar chipsets used you would get significantly longer battery life and in some cases longer than OSX because windows can turn off the 3d video card only use the 2d one. All of this is due to how they implimented EFI to convert to bios emulation.

[Shadrack]

Apple does this on alot of stuff not just SSDs. Its really shadey how they did bootcamp as a whole. They cripple the windows experience so that the Windows OS will not ever get the benefit of the full hardware. For instance battery life is greately reduced on the Windows side because windows is not able to get access to both the 2d and 3d video card. With bootcamp the 3d one stays on and the 2d is never used. As a result significantly less battery life. On the flipside if you bought a pc with similar chipsets used you would get significantly longer battery life and in some cases longer than OSX because windows can turn off the 3d video card only use the 2d one. All of this is due to how they implimented EFI to convert to bios emulation.

I'm not so sure that they intentionally cripple Windows installed through Bootcamp so much as conveniently half-assed it but I know what you are talking about. I get about 5-6 hours in Mac OS X while in Windows in bootcamp I get around 2 - 2.5 hours tops. That just doesn't quite add up...

Also their trackpad drivers in Windows are terrible...it is painful using the trackpad in windows, yet in OS X the cursor motion and all the gestures are buttery smooth. Their priority was obviously making sure the OS X experience was top notch and adding "Windows support" was just another line item feature that they wanted to market.

If battery life doesn't bother you (or your Mac is plugged in most of the time anyway) and you use a real Windows mouse and keyboard then Windows performs brilliantly on a Mac. For folks considering a MacBook as a primary Windows machine, I think the poor battery life is a deal breaker.

[startrek1997]

Just got down buying and downloading 10.8.3 for the app store. i am going to make a bootable Flash Drive and restore on to the new HDD tonight just to hold be over untill i get my ssd. I should be ordering it some time this weekend. =D

[alisalem]

It's a bit tricky finding the right SSD for older computers especially if it's a Mac. Newer drives should work fine but make sure you read the reviews. Crucial.com says it's okay to install the M500. http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=MacBook%20(13-inch%2C%20Mid%202010)&Cat=RAM