Apple's new MacBook Pros can boot from media in SD card slot - Page 3

128gb is PLENTY for me. I normally never own a computer for more than a year, with my only exception being my 24" iMac that I bought September 2007, as the upgrades since then have been lackluster to say the least. I've had over 80 different computers since 1990, and in that time I have never used more than 95gb on ANY computer.

My music collection is about 9GB, my photo collection is about 15GB, and I usually have 5-6 DVD's encoded on my desktop to offload to my cell phone or ipod as needed, thats only about 3GB. I setup up VMware Fusion and Windows with a 20GB partition so that I can run AnyDVD and UPS Worldship on all my Macs. Mac OSX and all my programs on the Mac side add up to about 35GB.

I own several retail businesses and an online store and even with every single file I have to my name have never cracked 95GB. By the time I start to get close to the 118GB thats available on this SSD, the 256GB or 512GB SSD's will be sitting nicely under $200.

In general people just think they need the biggest baddest thing, when 90% of the population coould get by with a 120gb HD.

I would also trust a SD card over any mechanical drive. But I was just testing the SD card out to see if you could actually use Time Machine with it, I have a WD Passport that I back up to.

Why would you never leave an SD card in for long periods? My SD card in my girlfriends digital camera has been in there 2 years and never been removed.

Anyways to my test results.

It took 36 minutes to install OSX on the Corsair SSD. Not sure if this is fast/slow/average. This SSD is not known for being the fastest on the market, but is in the top 3 as far as reliability. After using a SSD in my Dell Mini for the past few months, I can never ever ever go back to a hard drive in a laptop again.

Each test I did 5 times and averaged all the results out.

Stock Harddrive in new 13" Macbook Pro with only the pre-loaded programs installed, and all updates applied. The only other thing I did was delete Safari and Mail and install Firefox and Thunderbird.

Boot Time: 34.3 seconds
Shutdown Time: 4.1 seconds

New Corsair 128GB SSD with everything exactly the same, same pre-loaded programs, Deleted Safari/Mail and installed Firefox/Thunderbird.

Boot Time: 22.6 seconds
Shutdown Time: 2.8 seconds

Where the SSD really shines is launching apps, instead of the 3-4 dock bounces I got on my iMac when launching Excel and Photoshop, the Macbook loads both programs on the first bounce,

Since OSX took so long to install on the SSD, I didn't even bother installing it on the SD Card. Maybe I will this week if I have some extra time. I was kind of surprised a clean install of OSX took up 19GB!!!

already kind of answered, but if the camera's not plugged into or wirelessly connected to your MacBook, a $10 Compact Flash USB adaptor from Radio Shack will get you there......

I wouldn't trust a DVD for storage of important data for many years. After a few years I would transfer the data to another medium. SD cards are a better solution for long term storage of photos, music, etc. The price has dropped a lot in recent years while capacity keeps increasing, and they are a more stable long term storage solution than DVD.

Also the Mac will support SD 1.x and 2.x type cards that exceed the 30GB max capacity of the SDHC.

So the..

New SDXC (up to 2TB) cards with exFAT not supported
New SDXC (up to 2TB) cards re-formatted for OS X (w/GUID) supported , but limited in bus speed.

...new MacBook Pros have a maximum speed of 240 Mbit/s for SD media

However the new SDXC can handle 104-300 MB/sec.

Which, if my math is correct, is 10x faster than the new MacBook Pro w/SD can handle. (and apx. twice as fast as a 7,200 RPM hard drive.)

So booting from a SD card will remain rather slow until Apple releases a newer Mac with a faster SD bus speed. 5x acceptable, 10x preferred.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3553
http://www.sdcard.org/developers/tech/sdxc

Plus to be a acceptable boot/backup medium, the SD card should be flush with the case, with a spring release. So we can keep it in there all the time.

I cant imagine that Apple would support SDXC out of the gate. The speed of 104MBps is slated for sometime soon with 300MBps being for something in the future, but those are just specs, we cant start expecting a future tech to be ready immediately just because its Apple implementing it. The fastest Ive read about is only 50MBps for a 32GB card, that is 80% faster than the 30MBps available now, but its no where near max of the new SDXC spec of 10x.

The use of SD cards seems somewhat rushed, but that is just my opinion. While I dont see a real need for a flush card as I doubt that Apple would expect you to boot your OS from the card, I dont see it as not being possible in the future, especially if Apple removes the optical drive. There just isnt any room if you look at the iFixit breakdown. Even the 13 had to make a lot changes, like moving the ports to the back and removing the line-in to get the FW800 and SD Card slot in there.

Personally, Im more interested by the possibilities of using SD cards for OS installs. If we see the MBA and Mac desktops with an SD card slot in the future then I think its pretty imminent.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/20/b...ed-car-stereo/

SD card stereo "reader." This article is from 2007. As I said it just never occurred to me before. Having an SD card stereo option in the car, at work (etc) would pretty much negate the need for CDs, iPod cables, docks, etc. Another cool idea: SD Card Video.