Anyone using a SSD in thier Mac?

[Whitaker]

I am considering getting an Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for my Mac at work. Has anyone out there done this successfully and if so, do you have any recommendations? I have been doing some research on it, and it appears to be the bleeding edge of technology, so the info out there is sparse, I've been to xlr8yourmac.com and there is some good info there, but not enough to help me make a decision yet.

I have a Mac Pro 2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, with OS 10.4 on it.

Thanks for any input!

 

[kamatt]

To get the best performance out of it I would recommend upgrading the OS, but 10.4 will work fine with an SSD. I recently helped my friend with his system upgrade and we put (4) 32GB SSDs (NewEgg had a great deal going) into his MacPro Intel. We used the software RAID built into the OS to do a stripe for speed. All his data is on a Drobo attached via firewire so only apps are on the SSDs.

First off a note, you won't see any performance increase to be blunt with just one SSD, the write speed pretty much kills the read speed gains for most drives, however in a raid format... OMG. Yeah, the speed increase was exceptionally noticeable. I'm sure a small part was upgrading to 10.6.x cleanly and reinstalling his apps so it's a flawless system but even I made a comment it felt like he bought a brand new tower and his MacPro is a first gen intel.

The only hiccup we had through the whole process was on first boot after the OS install, it hung for about 2 minutes then suddenly launched. We don't know why... blank screen, nothing on the display just blackness. We were about to hit the power button when all of a sudden the chime came, the gray apple, and the OS booted in like 12 seconds.

We have also noticed that the fans run a lot less, I'm assuming because he removed the 3 beastly hard drives he had in there, since the SSDs pretty much run cool the only time the fans seem to kick in would be during number crunching now.

He does graphic design and some light video work (for migration into flash), so far he's been thrilled with the speed of the apps. His data is still on the Drobo so loading docs didn't really increase in speed, but the applications themselves did. An example, Safari, you click the button and it's on the screen instantly. It's kind of crazy.

For anyone considering it, I would suggest a raid setup to get the speed... also remember you're not going to get the storage space unless you want to dump a few grand, so if you have an intel with 4 bays, maybe 3 to SSD and one to a large HDD? You will still see a nice speed bump for sure. We're happy, heck I'm even thinking about doing it at my work now!

 

[Hardwired]

What's your purpose of getting SSD?

First off, it is really expensive. Secondly, it does not really improve speed.

Random Read is what it excel on. But writing is really about the same with HDD.
The biggest improvements are launching of Apps, and boot time, so everything should feel snappier. It'll be great for reading something like database, and data processing, not necessary Graphic apps where a lot of writing is involved.

Also there is no moving parts so probably more reliable.
Some would think that should save battery life, however test out there did not any improvements. But this is mute since you will use it on a Desktop.

I think I'm about to get a new laptop with 256GB SSD soon ; )
But for a desktop, either a Raid setup or a eSata card and drives would make more sense for speed and storage improvements.

Rico

 

[smatros]

Some would think that should save battery life, however test out there did not any improvements. But this is mute since you will use it on a Desktop.

I think I'm about to get a new laptop with 256GB SSD soon ; )
But for a desktop, either a Raid setup or a eSata card and drives would make more sense for speed and storage improvements.

Rico

I agree with the above completely. Got the MBA with SSD and it's great, but the other macbook pro with classic 7200 rpm disk is faster when using it for graphics. ssd drives are also much smaller and the prices are $$$. For a desktop i wouldn't think about it, see no real point in it.

 

[Whitaker]

Thanks for all the input. My interest in a SSD drive is to speed up opening and closing of programs. I work in prepress and I am constantly opening and closing programs. Indesign CS3 to CS4 and back again, Quark 7 to Quark 8 and back again, and I have anywhere to from 10 to 15 programs open all the time (I know the SSD won't help with that). So anything I can do to speed things up is of interest to me. Thanks again for your input!