A friend of mine at work decided to upgrade his corporate IBM laptop with a 5400rpm drive to a OCZ Vertex 2 out of own pocket without a lack of better judgement. I told him it was Windoz and all of the crap the company puts on it to slow it down. But that is not the problem I have and it really got me thinking of whether I should revisit upgrading my MBP E2011 drive to an SDD. When I got my laptop, I right away pulled the 5400rpm drive for a 7200rpm drive of the same size and have no problems with it whatsoever and its just getting slow nowadays.
Defragging the disk has not provided much improvement, so the validity of having a disk defragger seems to be a waste of time and money. So enter the SDD discussion, I have done some research and would like some feedback from anyone having experience with them. Here are the following candidates:
OCZ 480GB Vertex 3 SSD - Sandforce 2281 - 3 Year warranty
OCZ 512GB Vertex 4 SSD - Indilinx (Indilinx was bought by OCZ to replace the Sandforce technology) - 5 Y warranty
OWC 480GB Mercury Extreme - Sandforce 2281?? (Rebrand of OCZ Vertex3??) - 5 Year warranty
So what is my criteria? Performance, storage longevity, reliability
What do I do? I use I/O intensive applications like VMWare Fusion and Parallels
Current storage usage 250-260GB
I would assume the Vertex 3 and the OWC are the same product, but I don't see the technical details if they are the same.
Another option to consider would be to pull the optical drive and drop a drive into an optibay case. That drive could be another SSD and then RAID the two drives or just move your existing drive over for storage of data you don't need to ultra fast speed for. I have a Muskin Chrono's drive in my main bay and a 1TB Hitachi drive in the optical bay that holds my iTunes library. Tons of space on both drives and total cost is a lot less then the large SSD's.
One thing to consider is wether or not ur MPB can do SATA at 3 or 6GB/S. That might be some consideration to what drive you'd put in there.
The HD bay is 6Gbps capable, however negotiated at 3Gbps for the current SATA II drive. The optibay is only 3Gbps. I wasn't lucky to get a MBP with dual 6Gbps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Pratt
Another option to consider would be to pull the optical drive and drop a drive into an optibay case. That drive could be another SSD and then RAID the two drives or just move your existing drive over for storage of data you don't need to ultra fast speed for. I have a Muskin Chrono's drive in my main bay and a 1TB Hitachi drive in the optical bay that holds my iTunes library. Tons of space on both drives and total cost is a lot less then the large SSD's.
I agree in your suggestion, but losing out on having an internal DVD/CD drive is a issue for me, even when I don't use it much at all. I guess I have a thing against having too many external devices.
I've got the OWC Mercury Extreme 6G 480GB in my main drive bay and a Mushkin Chronos 240GB in my optical bay. I'm totally fine with this. Works like a charm, so far. From what I understand, you can't boot from a SSD in your optical bay.
Just put the optical drive in an external case...you likely don't use it that much and the cases are so slim it doesn't take much room in your bag if you do need to bring it along the odd time. You might as well get used to it as we won't have any choice soon enough
The OWC is reknown for its Mac compatibilty. OCZ has been spotty with the quality of firmware the drives deliver with, and it requires a PC to update them.
The OWC is not a rebrand of the OCZ product, although they both use the same controller chip, the OWC has different firmware. They do not manufacture in house, these drives are most likely made by the same contract factories as AData, Celerity, and other SSDs we have seen.
If you have transaction-intensive software, then ignore the maximum sustained read and write figures, and focus on the IOPS and the read-write performance with 4 KB Random blocks.
The Vertex 4 with the Indilinx controller
128 MB 256 MB 512 MB
Random 4k Read IOPS2 90,000 IOPS 90,000 IOPS 95,000 IOPS
Random 4k Write IOPS2 85,000 IOPS 85,000 IOPS 85,000 IOPS
Maximum IOPS3 120,000 IOPS 120,000 IOPS 120,000 IOPS
The Vertex 3 with the Sandforce controller
120 240
Random Write 4KB: 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
Maximum 4K Random Write: 85,000 IOPS 85,000 IOPS
The Vertex 3 MaxIOPS version with the Sandforce controller
Random Read 4KB: 35,000 IOPS 55,000 IOPS
Random Write 4KB: 75,000 IOPS 65.000 IOPS
Maximum 4K Random Write: 85,000 IOPS 85,000 IOPS
OWC - comment, I am not liking the consistency of the specification across different sizes and different models, there should be variation with size at least. I suspect OWC is using the "Up to" cop-out to give one blanket set of specifications across all of their sizes and lines rather than testing and disclosing the specs on each model. Larry, you can do better than that...
OWC Electra 3G (SF 2181) 120 GB 240 GB
Random 4K Read Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
Random 4K Write Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
OWC Mercury Electra 6G
Random 4K Read Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
Random 4K Write Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
OWC Mercury Extreme 6G
Random 4K Read Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
Random 4K Write Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
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CanadaRAM supplies RAM memory, drives and upgrades to Mac owners all over Canada http://www.canadaram.com
I have a few OCZ's in various machines at the moment and they're all doing fine. Just make sure they have the latest firmware and you shouldn't have any more issues then most other brands. If reliability is really a priority just go with an Intel
I've got the OWC Mercury Extreme 6G 480GB in my main drive bay and a Mushkin Chronos 240GB in my optical bay. I'm totally fine with this. Works like a charm, so far. From what I understand, you can't boot from a SSD in your optical bay.
Booting from the optibay is not an option for me considering its only 3Gbps (SATAII) performance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Pratt
Just put the optical drive in an external case...you likely don't use it that much and the cases are so slim it doesn't take much room in your bag if you do need to bring it along the odd time. You might as well get used to it as we won't have any choice soon enough
LOL... You make it sound like I don't have a choice. I was wondering if there were any external Blu-ray player/burners compatible with the MBP then I would definitely consider it. BTW can you recommend a really nice external casing for the DVD drive should I go that route?
Quote:
Originally Posted by CanadaRAM
The OWC is reknown for its Mac compatibilty. OCZ has been spotty with the quality of firmware the drives deliver with, and it requires a PC to update them.
The OWC is not a rebrand of the OCZ product, although they both use the same controller chip, the OWC has different firmware. They do not manufacture in house, these drives are most likely made by the same contract factories as AData, Celerity, and other SSDs we have seen.
If you have transaction-intensive software, then ignore the maximum sustained read and write figures, and focus on the IOPS and the read-write performance with 4 KB Random blocks.
The Vertex 4 with the Indilinx controller
128 MB 256 MB 512 MB
Random 4k Read IOPS2 90,000 IOPS 90,000 IOPS 95,000 IOPS
Random 4k Write IOPS2 85,000 IOPS 85,000 IOPS 85,000 IOPS
Maximum IOPS3 120,000 IOPS 120,000 IOPS 120,000 IOPS
The Vertex 3 with the Sandforce controller
120 240
Random Write 4KB: 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
Maximum 4K Random Write: 85,000 IOPS 85,000 IOPS
The Vertex 3 MaxIOPS version with the Sandforce controller
Random Read 4KB: 35,000 IOPS 55,000 IOPS
Random Write 4KB: 75,000 IOPS 65.000 IOPS
Maximum 4K Random Write: 85,000 IOPS 85,000 IOPS
OWC - comment, I am not liking the consistency of the specification across different sizes and different models, there should be variation with size at least. I suspect OWC is using the "Up to" cop-out to give one blanket set of specifications across all of their sizes and lines rather than testing and disclosing the specs on each model. Larry, you can do better than that...
OWC Electra 3G (SF 2181) 120 GB 240 GB
Random 4K Read Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
Random 4K Write Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
OWC Mercury Electra 6G
Random 4K Read Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
Random 4K Write Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
OWC Mercury Extreme 6G
Random 4K Read Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
Random 4K Write Up to 60,000 IOPS 60,000 IOPS
The issue that I have run into is the marketing crap that has changed with the word "up to" indicating a issue with performance or lack of optimal performance. I agree with your suggestion of using IOPS as a deciding factor, but when manufacturers skew the specs with marketing speak it makes it very difficult to choose the correct product from a consumer perspective. I also don't like the variance between device size performance and its almost to the effect of trying to up sell the consumer by purchasing a faster or larger drive, when its only a firmware tweak happening in the background.
I have glanced at Intel and Samsung, but they are really pricey and in some cases been deemed as "Enterprise" class performance and wondering if this is just a money grab. You being a seller of SSDs what has been popular with purchasers, understanding users have different purposes than I do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dona83
From what I've heard with OCZ, I'd stay away from them.
Could you please provide clarification, as it is somewhat ambiguous to state to "stay away" from them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Pratt
I have a few OCZ's in various machines at the moment and they're all doing fine. Just make sure they have the latest firmware and you shouldn't have any more issues then most other brands. If reliability is really a priority just go with an Intel
So how many firmware upgrades do I have to go through in a cycle? What is the impact of each firmware to my filesystem and what performance issues or enhancements am I going to see?
I appreciate everyone's dialog on this and certainly educational.
But that is not the problem I have and it really got me thinking of whether I should revisit upgrading my MBP E2011 drive to an SDD. When I got my laptop, I right away pulled the 5400rpm drive for a 7200rpm drive of the same size and have no problems with it whatsoever and its just getting slow nowadays.
I wasn't lucky to get a MBP with dual 6Gbps. 
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