SSD for MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 15")

[soveryapt]

Right, I've heard all sorts of horror stories linked to SSDs in any machines so I thought I'd seek advice on here as well as that other website I use (aka Google .. my favourites list is very short! lol)

 

Basically, I'm looking at getting myself a new MacBook Pro in the next couple of months, but I'm going to be keeping my current one as a) a backup b) to replace my 2007 MacBook that I use for DJing and such. To give my current one a new lease of life though, I'm going to put an SSD in it.

 

The ones I've been looking at are the Samsung, Crucial and Plextor drives (all 512GB)

 

Reasoning:

Crucial - because their website say's it's compatible and they're normally very good with that sort of stuff

Samsung - their kit is normally pretty rock solid and they have the best Read/Write speeds I've come across

Plextor - normally good kit, and read/write speeds are good (as in better than Crucials, but not up there with Samsungs)

 

I've not considered the OCZ ones as those seem to be the ones that crop up with the horror stories about falling over 1 month in and such.

 

Anyway, anyone got any suggestions / thoughts / real life knowledge they wish to feed into my thought processes?

 

Cheers

Andy T

[FN-GM]

Apparently the Intel drives are a good make. very reliable from what i have heard.

[soveryapt]

Apparently the Intel drives are a good make. very reliable from what i have heard.

 

I'll have a looksy ..

[zag]

From experience, don't touch anything other than intel for SSDs.

 

We've had them in all our computers for a couple of years now and still never had a failure.

[soveryapt]

From experience, don't touch anything other than intel for SSDs.

 

We've had them in all our computers for a couple of years now and still never had a failure.

 

Cheers. I'm struggling to find any +300GB Intel SSDs and I want to put in a 512GB to replace "like for like" my current 500GB 2.5" normal HDD.

 

EDIT: Oh wow, just found a 480GB one .. £950 .. YOWCH! I don't want an SSD that much! lol ..

Edited March 27, 2013 by soveryapt

[Arthur]

don't touch anything other than Intel for SSDs.

Samsung 830 / 840 Pro SSDs are reliable. We haven't had any issues with our Crucial M4's either.

 

Edit. Avoid Sandforce-based SSDs if you are using FileVault on your Mac.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Arthur

[soveryapt]

Samsung 830 / 840 Pro SSDs are reliable. We haven't had any issues with our Crucial M4's either.

 

Cheers

[mac_shinobi]

Samsung 840 Pro from amazon I believe was about £360. Also as a side note not sure if you are aware but it is the IOPS that you need to pay attention to. I know OWC Have an SSD that is good but it only has 60k IOPS so not as good as the Samsung 840 Pro which is 100K IOPS.

 

If you are already aware of IOPS then ignore the above

 

If you do go for the Samsung, ensure it is the 840 Pro version , the non pro versions are slower and not as good ( at least speed and IOPS wise )

Edited March 27, 2013 by mac_shinobi

[mac_shinobi]

Samsung 830 / 840 Pro SSDs are reliable. We haven't had any issues with our Crucial M4's either.

 

Edit. Avoid Sandforce-based SSDs if you are using FileVault on your Mac.

 

I used an OWC 6G Mercury Extreme Pro in my 2008 Mac Pro and although the 2008 Mac Pro was SATA 2 and not SATA 3 , I still got 280mbps read and write. Although I did not try file vault when I had it. Am sure the OWC SSD's are Sandforce, thought the sandforce already had hardware encryption or at least the ability to be encrypted on a hardware level etc ? Not sure how good it is though.

 

Although as above it was only 60k IOPS ( ordered from memoryc.co.uk or .com ) and seemed fast to me.

[soveryapt]

Samsung 840 Pro from amazon I believe was about £360. Also as a side note not sure if you are aware but it is the IOPS that you need to pay attention to. I know OWC Have an SSD that is good but it only has 60k IOPS so not as good as the Samsung 840 Pro which is 100K IOPS.

 

If you are already aware of IOPS then ignore the above

 

If you do go for the Samsung, ensure it is the 840 Pro version , the non pro versions are slower and not as good ( at least speed and IOPS wise )

 

Yeah, I'm only looking at the Pro Versions. I think I'll probably be heading down the line of the 840 Pro for it having had a bit more of a look around.

[zag]

Cheers. I'm struggling to find any +300GB Intel SSDs and I want to put in a 512GB to replace "like for like" my current 500GB 2.5" normal HDD.

 

EDIT: Oh wow, just found a 480GB one .. £950 .. YOWCH! I don't want an SSD that much! lol ..

 

I buy the intel 600GB ones for our servers. They are £623 which (for the perfect reliability you get) is not too bad.

 

Intel Solid-State Drive 320 Se... SSDSA2CW600G3K5

 

The reason the intel drives are funny capacity is they use far more redundant chips inside for greater reliability.

Edited March 27, 2013 by zag

[pcstru]

I've chucked a Crucial 256GB M4 in mine. No problems so far.

[mac_shinobi]

I buy the intel 600GB ones for our servers. They are £623 which (for the perfect reliability you get) is not too bad.

 

Intel Solid-State Drive 320 Se... SSDSA2CW600G3K5

 

The reason the intel drives are funny capacity is they use far more redundant chips inside for greater reliability.

 

Looking at the specs on the intel drives the IOPS isn't brilliant and what controller do they use or have ? Sandforce or there own ?

[soveryapt]

I think, having weighed everything up some more, I'm going to go for the Samsung 840 Pro 512 SSD, seems to have the best of all worlds, good reviews, stability, good IOPS and fantastic read / write speeds.

[soveryapt]

Right, I've got the Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD .. whoop ..

 

Now, TRIM, I know that the Samsung drives do Garbage stuff quite well according to various reviews online, but do you recommend enabling TRIM as well for them? If so, on Mountain Lion, what's your recommended method?

 

Ta

[Arthur]

do you recommend enabling TRIM as well for them?

Enabling TRIM support for non-Apple SSDs involves patching a system file (IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext) so there is a risk involved.

 

A (much safer) alternative would be to increase the size of the spare area on your SSD by partitioning it in Disk Utility (reducing the size of 'Macintosh HD' by 10-20%)...

 

Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs « AnandTech

 

With more spare area, write amplification is lower. The controller has more room and thus flexibility with running its defragmentation and garbage collection algorithms. The dreaded read-modify-write scenario is triggered less frequently as there's less space pressure thanks to additional spare area. If you're testing in a full-drive scenario, there's simply less data to keep track of when you've got more NAND set aside as spare area. This keeps internal data structure footprints smaller by default, which also improves performance.

 

It's because of this relationship between write amplification and spare area that we've always recommended setting aside 10-20% of your SSD and not filling it up entirely. Most modern controllers will do just fine if you partition the drive and leave the last 10-20% untouched.

 

Of course, you could do neither of these things and simply let the drive do its stuff. It's up to you.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Arthur

[seawolf]

I've retrofitted SSDs from OWC, Samsung, and Sandisk into over 45 Macbook Pros (2009-2012 models), Mac Pro (2007 and 2010 models) and Mac Minis (2009 and 2010 models) over the past two years with zero failures so far and no compatibility issues. In fact the only SSD we've had fail was an Intel SSD that came factory installed from Apple on a 17" MacBook Pro that was CTO. That drive died after only 11 months.

 

For performance the Samsung and OWC Extreme models offer the best performance and value I've seen.