Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings?

In article
,
AD wrote:

> On Aug 24, 5:46 am, Tim Lance wrote:
> > At some point I assume I'll end up with a regular ole hard drive and an SSD
> > for booting/apps. I can buy the lappie (13" 2.7 i7 MacBook Pro) with the SSD
> > and get a kit for some SATA drive to put into the optical bay. Or I can just
> > buy the MBP and add the SSD kit to the optical bay. So here's my dumb
> > question: Is booting an SSD from the regular drive bay any different from
> > using it in a kit in the optical bay?
> >
>
> osx is not msdos. You don't need to reboot every 10 minutes

That's irrelevant. Startup time isn't the only speed gain. I can tell
you from experience that having an SSD as the internal drive in a
MacBook Pro makes it very noticeably faster after boot as well - so much
so that I likely won't ever have one with a traditional hard drive ever
again. The thing just plain screams with an SSD in it.

> why bother with an internal ssd in a device that you can't easily
> service yourself?

Oh please. I've taken apart and serviced numerous Mac laptops. It's not
hard. And there are step-by-step procedures with pictures and all online
for anyone interested in doing it. It's not rocket science.

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JR
 >> Stay informed about: Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings? 

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 >> Stay informed about: Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings? 

In article , Jolly
Roger wrote:

> In article
> ,
> >
> > osx is not msdos. You don't need to reboot every 10 minutes
>
> That's irrelevant. Startup time isn't the only speed gain. I can tell
> you from experience that having an SSD as the internal drive in a
> MacBook Pro makes it very noticeably faster after boot as well - so much
> so that I likely won't ever have one with a traditional hard drive ever
> again. The thing just plain screams with an SSD in it.

To some extent it of course depends what you're using the computer for and
how you use it. Someone (with a laptop with a ton of RAM) who leaves Mail
and Word open all day won't notice as much benefit as someone using
applications like Photoshop or quitting applications when not in use.
 >> Stay informed about: Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings? 

Jolly Roger writes:


>> why bother with an internal ssd in a device that you can't easily
>> service yourself?

>Oh please. I've taken apart and serviced numerous Mac laptops. It's not
>hard. And there are step-by-step procedures with pictures and all online
>for anyone interested in doing it. It's not rocket science.

I'll call next time either of my iBook's needs a drive or fan swap....

--
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& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
 >> Stay informed about: Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings? 

On 25/08/11 5:47 AM, Tim Lance wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:56:42 -0500, Jolly Roger wrote
> (in article ):
>
>> In article
>> ,
>> AD wrote:
>>
>>> On Aug 24, 5:46 am, Tim Lance wrote:
>>>> At some point I assume I'll end up with a regular ole hard drive and an SSD
>>>> for booting/apps. I can buy the lappie (13" 2.7 i7 MacBook Pro) with the
>>>> SSD
>>>> and get a kit for some SATA drive to put into the optical bay. Or I can
>>>> just
>>>> buy the MBP and add the SSD kit to the optical bay. So here's my dumb
>>>> question: Is booting an SSD from the regular drive bay any different from
>>>> using it in a kit in the optical bay?
>>>>
>>>
>>> osx is not msdos. You don't need to reboot every 10 minutes
>>
>> That's irrelevant. Startup time isn't the only speed gain. I can tell
>> you from experience that having an SSD as the internal drive in a
>> MacBook Pro makes it very noticeably faster after boot as well - so much
>> so that I likely won't ever have one with a traditional hard drive ever
>> again. The thing just plain screams with an SSD in it.
>>
>>> why bother with an internal ssd in a device that you can't easily
>>> service yourself?
>>
>> Oh please. I've taken apart and serviced numerous Mac laptops. It's not
>> hard. And there are step-by-step procedures with pictures and all online
>> for anyone interested in doing it. It's not rocket science.
>>
>>
>
> Much thanks, JR. Yeah, the other reply was essentially useless as it
> disregarded my question..
>
> And upon further research I can choose whether to have the SSD in the regular
> place or the optical so it makes no real difference. And as for the work,
> it's child's play to my daughters 14" G4 iBook - that was a bear I never want
> to cross ever again.
>
> I seldom frequent these parts anymore but did re-up my individualnet account.
> Glad to see you and others still around.
>

I was looking the other day for a replacement drive for my MacBook, and
came across hybrid drives. They have a conventional drive together with
a small SSD. They apparently take a little while to work out what to
cache in the SSD. It does work only as a read cache, not as read/write
partition, but I imagine it would speed boot?

Given I wanted a bigger drive so that I could keep a Snow Leopard
partition as well as Lion, I didn't think it would work for me, but I'd
be interested to hear from anyone who's tried one.

Steve
 >> Stay informed about: Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings? 

In article
,
yourname.RemoveThis@yourisp.com (Your Name) wrote:

> In article , Jolly
> Roger wrote:
>
> > In article
> > ,
> > >
> > > osx is not msdos. You don't need to reboot every 10 minutes
> >
> > That's irrelevant. Startup time isn't the only speed gain. I can tell
> > you from experience that having an SSD as the internal drive in a
> > MacBook Pro makes it very noticeably faster after boot as well - so much
> > so that I likely won't ever have one with a traditional hard drive ever
> > again. The thing just plain screams with an SSD in it.
>
> To some extent it of course depends what you're using the computer for and
> how you use it. Someone (with a laptop with a ton of RAM) who leaves Mail
> and Word open all day won't notice as much benefit as someone using
> applications like Photoshop or quitting applications when not in use.

Of course. YMMV.

--
Send responses to the relevant news group rather than email to me.
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM
filter. Due to Google's refusal to prevent spammers from posting
messages through their servers, I often ignore posts from Google
Groups. Use a real news client if you want me to see your posts.

JR
 >> Stay informed about: Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings? 

In article , Tim Lance
wrote:

> On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:56:42 -0500, Jolly Roger wrote
> (in article ):
>
> > In article
> > ,
> > AD wrote:
> >
> >> On Aug 24, 5:46 am, Tim Lance wrote:
> >>> At some point I assume I'll end up with a regular ole hard drive and an
> >>> SSD
> >>> for booting/apps. I can buy the lappie (13" 2.7 i7 MacBook Pro) with the
> >>> SSD
> >>> and get a kit for some SATA drive to put into the optical bay. Or I can
> >>> just
> >>> buy the MBP and add the SSD kit to the optical bay. So here's my dumb
> >>> question: Is booting an SSD from the regular drive bay any different from
> >>> using it in a kit in the optical bay?
> >>>
> >>
> >> osx is not msdos. You don't need to reboot every 10 minutes
> >
> > That's irrelevant. Startup time isn't the only speed gain. I can tell
> > you from experience that having an SSD as the internal drive in a
> > MacBook Pro makes it very noticeably faster after boot as well - so much
> > so that I likely won't ever have one with a traditional hard drive ever
> > again. The thing just plain screams with an SSD in it.
> >
> >> why bother with an internal ssd in a device that you can't easily
> >> service yourself?
> >
> > Oh please. I've taken apart and serviced numerous Mac laptops. It's not
> > hard. And there are step-by-step procedures with pictures and all online
> > for anyone interested in doing it. It's not rocket science.
>
> Much thanks, JR. Yeah, the other reply was essentially useless as it
> disregarded my question..
>
> And upon further research I can choose whether to have the SSD in the regular
> place or the optical so it makes no real difference. And as for the work,
> it's child's play to my daughters 14" G4 iBook - that was a bear I never want
> to cross ever again.

I'm not sure I'd bother keeping an HD in mine if it were me. The only
reason I might use the CD bay is if I wanted a second internal SSD -
perhaps to stripe them or something for an even greater peed boost. : )

> I seldom frequent these parts anymore but did re-up my individualnet account.
> Glad to see you and others still around.

Same here! Glad you're back. Hope you'll stay a while. : )

--
Send responses to the relevant news group rather than email to me.
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM
filter. Due to Google's refusal to prevent spammers from posting
messages through their servers, I often ignore posts from Google
Groups. Use a real news client if you want me to see your posts.

JR
 >> Stay informed about: Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings? 

Steve R wrote:

> On 25/08/11 5:47 AM, Tim Lance wrote:
> > On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:56:42 -0500, Jolly Roger wrote
> > (in article ):
> >
> >> In article
> >> ,
> >> AD wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Aug 24, 5:46 am, Tim Lance wrote:
> >>>> At some point I assume I'll end up with a regular ole hard drive and
> >>>> an SSD for booting/apps. I can buy the lappie (13" 2.7 i7 MacBook
> >>>> Pro) with the SSD and get a kit for some SATA drive to put into the
> >>>> optical bay. Or I can just buy the MBP and add the SSD kit to the
> >>>> optical bay. So here's my dumb question: Is booting an SSD from the
> >>>> regular drive bay any different from using it in a kit in the optical
> >>>> bay?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> osx is not msdos. You don't need to reboot every 10 minutes
> >>
> >> That's irrelevant. Startup time isn't the only speed gain. I can tell
> >> you from experience that having an SSD as the internal drive in a
> >> MacBook Pro makes it very noticeably faster after boot as well - so much
> >> so that I likely won't ever have one with a traditional hard drive ever
> >> again. The thing just plain screams with an SSD in it.
> >>
> >>> why bother with an internal ssd in a device that you can't easily
> >>> service yourself?
> >>
> >> Oh please. I've taken apart and serviced numerous Mac laptops. It's not
> >> hard. And there are step-by-step procedures with pictures and all online
> >> for anyone interested in doing it. It's not rocket science.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Much thanks, JR. Yeah, the other reply was essentially useless as it
> > disregarded my question..
> >
> > And upon further research I can choose whether to have the SSD in the
> > regular place or the optical so it makes no real difference. And as for
> > the work, it's child's play to my daughters 14" G4 iBook - that was a
> > bear I never want to cross ever again.
> >
> > I seldom frequent these parts anymore but did re-up my individualnet
> > account. Glad to see you and others still around.
> >
>
> I was looking the other day for a replacement drive for my MacBook, and
> came across hybrid drives. They have a conventional drive together with
> a small SSD. They apparently take a little while to work out what to
> cache in the SSD. It does work only as a read cache, not as read/write
> partition, but I imagine it would speed boot?

I've had a Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB hybrid drive in my MacBook Pro for
about ten months.

I couldn't care less about boot times. I only reboot when forced to by
software updates. On occasions where I have restarted a few times in
quick succession, it is substantially faster at getting from the login
prompt to Finder, Dock, SystemUIServer and DragThing up and running:
about three seconds instead of fifteen.

In day to day operation, it is hard to pinpoint whether the performance
gains are due to having a 7200 rpm drive instead of 5400 rpm, or higher
drive capacity resulting in faster throughput due to higher data
density, or the drive's solid state cache, or a larger RAM cache on the
drive, or enough free RAM in the computer to act as a big cache (some of
these caches may be overlapping each other, reducing the benefit).

I like it, and it will keep me going until circa 500 GB SSDs drop in
price enough to be affordable, or I get a new laptop with hard drive
plus SSD, or I decide to get rid of the optical drive (I could make do
with an external one on my desk at work in addition to my existing one
at home), or I can rearrange things so I don't need as much storage in
my MacBook Pro.

> Given I wanted a bigger drive so that I could keep a Snow Leopard
> partition as well as Lion, I didn't think it would work for me, but I'd
> be interested to hear from anyone who's tried one.

I will be doing that soon unless I get Snow Leopard working in a VM
instead. I'd prefer a VM to avoid Lion and Snow Leopard implementations
of Spotlight fighting with each other on switching systems, and to let
me run old apps at the same time as my regular system.

Need to free up some disk space first.

--
David Empson
dempson.DeleteThis@actrix.gen.nz
 >> Stay informed about: Gonna buy new laptop > SSD wonderings?