A Beginner's Guide to Choosing a Solid State Drive [SSD]

[Shuckey]

It does. Thanks so much! I figured it was a bunch of marketing language. So pretty much any new generation SSD are just about the same....differences come in the controller (Sandforce or Marvell) and the flash memory (Asynchronous, Synchronous, Toggle, ONFI 1.0 and ONFI 2.0 NAND).

 

[Dschijn]

What about SSD drives from OWC? I know the Enterprise grade is SUPER EXPENSIVE. But what about the other 6G grades, Electra and Extreme? I didn't see too many specs on those but they tout over provisioning, wear leveling, RAISE, and a few other words that are uninformative. Could someone expand on some of those?

http://www.amazon.com/120GB-OWC-Mercury-Electra-2-5-inch/dp/B005NIP07C/

http://www.amazon.com/120GB-OWC-Mercury-Extreme-2-5-inch/dp/B005OW48SY/

I own one of the first 3G OWC SSDs and they still rock!
Over provisioning is extra space on the SSD that u can't use. It is reserved to replace dead cells in the SSD. So if some cells are "dying" because they aged too fast, they get shut down and get replaced by some of the reserved cells.
The high end SSDs from OWC have a lot of that, but thats only necessary for heavy load like server.

 

[Stork]

I have OCZ Vertex 2s & 3s, but became smarter as I got more of an understand of OCZ. I now use the SanDisk Extremes with the Toggle NAND. I recommend them as I've not had to update the f/w.

 

[chaosdesigns]

I have the OCZ Agility 4 128GB SSD in my Late 2011 MacBook Pro using an optibay for my HDD. Not mentioned very often is that the SSD comes unformatted. I did indeed upgrade the firmware on it before I used it anywhere and I had to do that using Windows. Once installed in my Mac, I found performance issues....it just wasn't working the way I expected it to. Here is a great article that outlines how to "tune" your SSD for Lion for performance and longevity. After I implemented all his tips, the SSD preformed much more smoothly. Here is the link:http://blog.alutam.com/2012/04/01/optimizing-macos-x-lion-for-ssd/

Since I now no longer have an optical drive in my Mac, I enabled DVD sharing using this little hack: viewtopic.php?f=76&t=12788

Living life in the fast lane now!

 

[thelostswede]

Thanks for the link, but that guy is overly paranoid.
Things like the "Set noatime flag" might be useful alongside turning off the time machine snapshots, but the rest shouldn't be an issue on a modern SSD.

Turning on sleep actually makes sense even on an SSD, as it'll go down in low power mode, something you'd want on a notebook. Considering it'll wake up in a fraction of a second, unlike a hard drive, it's not exactly an issue. As for system hibernation, I'd actually rather power the system off, as you should boot up and shut down that much quicker with an SSD that hibernation will no longer make sense.

As I mentioned in a commend before, even on a cheap SSD with fairly low over provisioning, you should get a good 5-8 years usage out of it and I can't see most people here keeping their computers for that long.

 

[mannvicky]

Hi, Thanks for the post. I am also planning to buy a SSD. They are very expensive right now... so do u think i should wait for the prices to come down or buy a bigger size at same price?
I am based in India so i am looking for a drive thats compatible with my hackintosh... thats the only priority i have.
240GB is good enough for me. Can you pls check the link below and suggest any SSD for me... thanks.

http://www.smcinternational.in/inde...rt&page=shop.browse&category_id=94&Itemid=163

 

[thelostswede]

That's a con, a lot of those drives are twice the price compared to what they ought to be.
I'd order from abroad if possible, as a 240/256GB is down to about $200-250 in the US now.

 

[mannvicky]

That's a con, a lot of those drives are twice the price compared to what they ought to be.
I'd order from abroad if possible, as a 240/256GB is down to about $200-250 in the US now.

Thanks.
I am getting Kingston SVP200S3/240G for approx. $150 in India.
Now i have two ques.
1. Its got Sandforce controller... is it compatible with mac (ML)?
2. Is this chip good or should i go for marvell or intel?

 

[thelostswede]

As long as it's the V+200 it's fine, the standard V200 isn't a good buy.