Forums | MacLife

WOOT!

Got the drive today. Gonna' install it later on this evening, 'cause I need to eat and take a nap, first.
I'll post some info about the speed... I'm going to do a fresh OS X install, with a fresh Adobe CS 3 suite install on top of that, rather than clone anything. That should give a good indication of the write speed.

what size and how much did you pay?

I paid $345 for a 120Gb model, and it came with an icy dock, should I ever want to install it in a tower.

A few things worth mentioning-

First, that it is faster, much faster, both writing and reading, than my Seagate 5400rpm drive. I've been copying files off the old drive, now in a USB 2.0 external case (soon to be in a Firewire case), mostly fonts, of which I have around 8,000 or so, but I also copied my iPhoto library over, and that's around 2Gb.

I was able to copy all of that over in just over three minutes!

The OS X install didn't go much more quickly than with a standard drive. It was about 40 minutes total. I attribute this to the fact that it installs across busses, and the superdrive in this model Macbook Pro is on a PATA bus. Also, I install the developer's tools, which adds to the install time.

Second, it actually runs hotter, by four degrees, than the Seagate.
However, after a thorough Google search, I've found this because they use a metal casing instead of plastic. It seems a comparable Intel model with a plastic casing stayed around 25 degrees. As such, I may just pry open the lappy again and mount some sort of shim between the top of the drive and my warm palmrest, to block some of the heat. Not all of it- I still want the drive to be able to dissipate some of the heat, I'm just tried of my wrist cooking while I work.

I haven't yet installed the Adobe CS 3 suite. It will be very interesting to see how long it takes Photoshop to open one of my larger tiff images. Or better yet, InDesign, with a good number of my fonts activated.

Antonio wrote:

I paid $345 for a 120Gb model, and it came with an icy dock, should I ever want to install it in a tower.

A few things worth mentioning-

First, that it is faster, much faster, both writing and reading, than my Seagate 5400rpm drive.

Should be: but...

I've been copying files off the old drive, now in a USB 2.0 external case (soon to be in a Firewire case), mostly fonts, of which I have around 8,000 or so, but I also copied my iPhoto library over, and that's around 2Gb.

I was able to copy all of that over in just over three minutes!

Don't be too impressed - you're still limited by the speed of the old drive there.

The OS X install didn't go much more quickly than with a standard drive. It was about 40 minutes total. I attribute this to the fact that it installs across busses, and the superdrive in this model Macbook Pro is on a PATA bus.

Actually, it's because CDs or DVDs only read at a maximum of about 8-15 MBs/second (depending on the drive, media, etc), which is about a third as fast as your old hard drive. Even good old fashioned PATA still offers more bandwidth than your SSD can use (except in burst mode, where they can sometimes top 133 MB/sec.)

Sorry to be all pedantic and stuff, but correctly identifying the bottlenecks is rule #1 when trying to address performance concerns.

Hopefully Photoshop will rock your socks off.

Random User wrote:

That's a lot of dough for such a small amount of storage. Just think, you could get three 1 terabyte hard drives for the same price.

I don't think I can fit three terabytes in my laptop.
Think 'performance increase, better shock protection, and better battery life' (though, for some reason, I'm doubting the third).

Last edited by Antonio (2009-03-07 7:47 pm)

Antonio wrote:

Random User wrote:

That's a lot of dough for such a small amount of storage. Just think, you could get three 1 terabyte hard drives for the same price.

I don't think I can fit three terabytes in my laptop.

or one for that matter ... I haven't' seen a 1T in the 2.5 size

Random User wrote:

mrreet2001 wrote:

Antonio wrote:

I don't think I can fit three terabytes in my laptop.

or one for that matter ... I haven't' seen a 1T in the 2.5 size

Unless you need the storage on the go, 3TB of data in the form of a DROBO or three external drives (USB or Firewire take your pick) would be the better choice I think.

Heck you can get a 500GB 2.5" drive nowadays. Even that would be better than an SSD in terms of overall storage.

And why, exactly, would I want to carry around a Drobo? I may as well just carry around a Mac Mini, too
And I can still carry an external Firewire drive for additional storage- unless having an internal SSD now precludes me from doing so? Please tell me if I'm missing something.

Random User wrote:

And with the heat issues he is experiencing I'm still not sure a few seconds better access time is worth the cost/decrease in available storage.

As I mentioned before, it only heats up when making lengthy software installs. I've been working on it all morning, compiling stuff, doing some web development work and also a bit of Photoshop editing, and I hardly notice it's there. It's MUCH better overall, heatwise, than my old drive. I'm not too worried about it getting hot when installing something like OS X or Adobe CS3, because I'm not actively working with the machine during times like that.

Random User wrote:

Just my opinion though.

Exactly, and just like with mine, YMMV, I just seem to be the one who's remembering that.

I'm a little late to the party here, that said however, good to hear you were able to self install this puppy. Have you had any issues since your last post?

Antonio wrote:

More importantly, however, I'm on my machine for hours per day for work. At home, of course, I can pull out the bluetooth keyboard, but my Seagate perpendicular drive hits 41 degrees regularly, which, sweat aside, just makes my left wrist ache

Its very cool and all but it really would have been much simpler if you pulled out that bluetooth keyboard and paired it with a good BT mouse.

But if I had the means I would do it, but when I say "means" I mean more money than I know what to do with. But I certainly would need the larger drive, and for the money it would cost for the 250, it simply is not justifiable for me.

wellfleation wrote:

Antonio wrote:

More importantly, however, I'm on my machine for hours per day for work. At home, of course, I can pull out the bluetooth keyboard, but my Seagate perpendicular drive hits 41 degrees regularly, which, sweat aside, just makes my left wrist ache

Its very cool and all but it really would have been much simpler if you pulled out that bluetooth keyboard and paired it with a good BT mouse.

I have both the Apple bluetooth keyboard and the mighty mouse. They're great at home, but I doubt very highly that it would be convenient at all to pull them out during my commute or on a plane ride, and it would negate having a trackpad and keyboard built-in for sake of portability.

wellfleation wrote:

But if I had the means I would do it, but when I say "means" I mean more money than I know what to do with. But I certainly would need the larger drive, and for the money it would cost for the 250, it simply is not justifiable for me.

Fair enough. What works for me doesn't necessarily work for you, and vice-versa.

nayrk wrote:

Antonio wrote:

Sorry to chime in so late after your inquiry.
I haven't noticed any new issues, at least none that I didn't have with a normal spinning drive (thinks about the days ahead when someone would laugh at that).

Coolies, thanks for the update

Not a problem. With what I said, I was hoping to see a problem or two go away (hibernate has always been a bit problematic, especially after I beefed up the RAM... the SSD didn't make it go away, tho I hoped it would alleviate the issue).

TheMouthOfSauron wrote:

Have you noticed much improvement in battery life with the SSD?

Nothing to write home about.

I will say, however, working with large tiff files in Photoshop is a dream. Load and save times are more than decent, they're damn quick. Actions like rotating images is faster, so is batch-processing files.