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Best internal SSD ?

post #1 of 10
12/16/10 at 8:27pm
Thread Starter 
I'm looking for a very good ( = most reliable, high quality or the best) internal SSD available for a new MacBook Pro 13". I prefer to use 256 GB of SSD storage, but if the price is still too high, I may go for a 128 GB only (but this size is tight).

What are your suggestions ? Please, give some references or URLs to the product.

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

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Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply
post #2 of 10
12/17/10 at 12:22am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali View Post

I'm looking for a very good ( = most reliable, high quality or the best) internal SSD

The OCZ Vertex 2, Crucial C300 and Intel x25M are some of the fastest, though the Intel drive is one of the slowest for sequential write.

There are quite a lot of reports about the OCZ drives failing. I think your best bet would be to hold off for CES as Intel will probably launch their Intel x25M G3, which sorts the sequential write performance and should be a bit cheaper.

Even if you want to go for a 160GB G2, it will be cheaper when the G3 arrives. This is just 3 weeks away.

The Crucial SSD has good performance but I haven't heard much about reliability. It hasn't been out all that long relative to the others:

http://www.fastestssd.com/reviews/in...real-ssd-c300/

I'd still wait for CES.
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post #3 of 10
12/17/10 at 6:17am
Thread Starter 
Thanks Marvin.

To me, security of data on the SSD is the most important thing. Access speed (read) is also very important. I don't mind much if the writes are a bit slow.

What is the current price range for high quality 256 GB SSD ?

EDIT : For reference, here's a description of the differences between SLC and MLC (SSC) drives :

http://www.differencebetween.net/tec...n-mlc-and-slc/

And this :

http://www.anandtech.com/tag/storage

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply
post #4 of 10
12/17/10 at 10:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali View Post

What is the current price range for high quality 256 GB SSD ?

Right now, you pretty much double the capacity you want and that's your ballpark for price in dollars with MLC. For SLC, don't even think about it - it's about 10x e.g 64GB is over $650. The Intel x25e is an example of SLC.

The reliability of MLC is high enough now that it doesn't matter for desktop use. Intel will have a 300GB model out soon. I read somewhere they delayed the 25nm models until February but those are good drives.

I'm hopeful (albeit naively) that the price will drop to $1 per GB. Rumour has it, there will be just a 5-10% drop, which would bring 300GB in around $550.
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post #5 of 10
12/17/10 at 2:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

The reliability of MLC is high enough now that it doesn't matter for desktop use. Intel will have a 300GB model out soon. I read somewhere they delayed the 25nm models until February but those are good drives.

Can you tell more about the reliability/longevity for the MLC SSD ?

My data is precious (of course, I have several backups). But I want to be sure that all my data is safe on the long run, on an MLC SSD.

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply
post #6 of 10
12/17/10 at 4:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali View Post

Can you tell more about the reliability/longevity for the MLC SSD ?

My data is precious (of course, I have several backups). But I want to be sure that all my data is safe on the long run, on an MLC SSD.

SSD and HDD aren't designed for the long-term if you mean > 10 years but by then you will probably have replaced your machine and drives a couple of times.

MLC and SLC have 10-100K write cycles per cell. MLC falls nearer the bottom of the range and SLC near the top. But, SSDs have wear-levelling so it doesn't just write to specific areas of the drive lots of times.

Intel rate their lifespan for the MLC drives at 30-60TB of 4k random writes. If you wrote 8GB per day of data in that fashion, your drive would last about 10-20 years and you probably won't. SLC is beneficial for servers because they run 24/7 so they can wear out quicker but the lifespan of the MLC drives is plenty now for desktop use, although the current generation only have 1/3rd of that lifespan so the G3 models and Crucial C300 are better.

It's not just the NAND itself that fails either but the controller, which you can't recover from. So as always, keep multiple regular backups. It's the only way to ensure your data is safe.
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post #7 of 10
12/17/10 at 6:48pm
I use and would recommend an Intel X25-M. They're not the fastest or the cheapest, however.
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post #8 of 10
12/18/10 at 7:04am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

I think your best bet would be to hold off for CES as Intel will probably launch their Intel x25M G3, which sorts the sequential write performance and should be a bit cheaper.

Just for reference :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3965/i...specs-revealed

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply
post #9 of 10
12/26/10 at 6:53pm
After trying a few different SSD's I find the new OCZ Vertex 2 I've installed in my 15" 2010 i7 MBP to be quite fast, the fastest I've had so far.
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post #10 of 10
12/29/10 at 2:53pm
According to several sources, the OWC SSD are highly recommended. That's why I bought one for my MacPro: 240 GB and it rocks.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/inter..._SSD_Sandforce

G5 Dual 2.3 Ghz  > MacBook CD 2.2 GHz > MacPro Hex Westmere 3.33 Ghz SSD ATI 5870 16 GB RAM

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G5 Dual 2.3 Ghz  > MacBook CD 2.2 GHz > MacPro Hex Westmere 3.33 Ghz SSD ATI 5870 16 GB RAM

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