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Hot Rod a Mac Book Pro

glenerrolrd

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
Good ideas all around I watched the OWC videos and they were dead on. I also always buy the small tool set ..beacuse its $17 for the tools and $6-700 for the ssd. Made it quick and easy.

Has anyone found an inexpensive housing for bare naked drives. With the voyager you can get really fast and cheap drives ...but they naked like you install them . I was thinking of something like the old VCR tape boxes.
 
glenerrolrd

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
Guy Mancuso said:
back to OWC Roger they have some really nice enclosures for Firewire 800 and USB for laptop drives

USB http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/USB2/OWC_Express

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MSTG800U2K/
Click to expand...
Guy I am looking for cheap as I have a Voyager and these would be backups. I am thinking like a VCR box like they used to have at blockbuster. So you can date the drive and rotate them . That way you can buy a few drives and use carbon cloner and get everything on a $50 drive. I thought I say diglloyd had a small tote bag with his backups. Maybe there were old VCR boxes and it a VCR tape holder? I bet I have some around will try it. Roger
 
T

Thawley

Guest
Googling "Hot Rod MacBook Pro" lead me to this forum. Great thread.
 
A

aaanorton

Guest
Lars Vinberg said:
There are different technologies for the memory used in SSD's. The expensive tech that Intel uses is called SLC, wheras cheaper tech is called MLC which has unimpressive write speed. The drives you see in netbooks are all MLC.

http://geekadviser.com/2008/12/mlc-vs-slc-ssd-drive-and-their-uses/

In short, SLC is faster and much more reliable, and has greater lifespan.

Re r/w cycles, it's that many cycles in the same location, so it will last much longer than a hard drive.
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I don't mean to be a nudge, but Intel's X25-M drives are MLC SSDs. It is the -E drives that are SLC. Most SSDs on the market now are MLC. As mentioned, OCZ is making some great MLC (and SLC!) SSDs, like their Vertex series. And Intel has just come out with updated X25-Ms using smaller fab which will be better and cheaper!
I've had great success in Mac Pros and MBPs with OCZ Vertex drives. I recommend them highly!
 
B

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
So the crucials are now the fastest on the market for the price? Had the 'box' speed been at all substantiated?

These are the speeds from the 64GB,
200MB/s READ, 150MB/s WRITE
Is that so incredible, as far as I can see it's only the highest capacity disks that get the faster 250MB/s READ, 200MB/s WRITE speeds and it ain't cheap!
 
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D

dfarkas

Workshop Member
I think my Samsung 256GB SSD drives get about 200MB/s read and 170MB/s write. In hardware-based RAID 0, I'm getting over 300MB/s read and write (sequential). My random 4K speeds aren't as good as the Intel drives, but they are still much, much faster than even the fastest spinning HDD. For video editing and large file processing I was much more concerned with getting high sequential read and write speeds (without the stuttering of older, slower drives).

Either way, these SSDs are wicked fast, with plenty of space to spare. Even with a fair amount of files, the entire CS4 Master Collection, LR, C1, Office 2007, etc. I still have 400GB free space.

I converted a 60MP DNG (from P65+) in LR 2.4 to a 16-bit TIFF in 10 seconds.

I then opened the resulting 346MB TIFF in CS4 in 2.5 seconds. :thumbs:

....On my laptop!! :bugeyes:

David
 
M

monza

Active member
barefeats.com has been using a Crucial SSD in his MBP, he should have a RAID 0 review soon. Easy reading, good info and a very nice guy, known him many years.
 
D

dfarkas

Workshop Member
Guy Mancuso said:
These look to be the new Crucial's . Can't seem to locate the Samsungs though

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2E16820148320,N82E16820148318,N82E16820148319
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Guy,

Samsung doesn't sell direct. They only OEM for Dell, Corsair, and OCZ (there might be others, too).

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Solid_State_Disk_SSD/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=341-9999

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233085

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227449

Obviously, the Dell drives are way, way less at $479 vs. $699 for the Corsair or $849 for the OCZ. They are all the identical Samsung drive, with Samsung controller and Samsung NAND. I was incorrect with my specs. They have 220 MB/s read and 200 MB/s write. I got mine from Dell and they work great.

David
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
My question to myself is replace one drive with a 128 Crucial and leave my other 80gb Intel M in the box for storage. I would be off Raid 0 but these drives are faster overall and as a single would it beat my Raid 0 today. I'm like 70 write for a single drive on the Intel and these are 150 writes. What do you think. Than I can stick my I tunes and actually use that internal as a working /travel drive. Not sure going to the one faster drive would be faster overall than what I have inside now which is two Intel 80gb running on a single drive
Sequential Access - Read: Up to 250MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: Up to 70MB/s

The crucial is running
Sequential Access - Read: Up to 250MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: Up to 190MB/s
 
M

monza

Active member
That's what I'm thinking...a single SSD with one of the newer models with faster writes, instead of RAID. Saves quite a bit, no bracket to buy, and leave the optical as-is. :)
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Yea for me i could keep the bracket in and one of the Intel 80gb that is there and use for the Raw files when traveling and also free up 16gb of space and put my Itunes on it. Even the 128gb new SSD would be plenty big enough for me . I store nothing on my OS drive just work on the very current job than move it off the OS immediately.

Obviously going to a single drive also takes the risk from Raid 0. Even Raiding these new drives you may still run into the Processor bottleneck anyway and not gain much by Raiding them. The write times have really improved here
 
D

dfarkas

Workshop Member
Guy Mancuso said:
Yea for me i could keep the bracket in and one of the Intel 80gb that is there and use for the Raw files when traveling and also free up 16gb of space and put my Itunes on it. Even the 128gb new SSD would be plenty big enough for me . I store nothing on my OS drive just work on the very current job than move it off the OS immediately.

Obviously going to a single drive also takes the risk from Raid 0. Even Raiding these new drives you may still run into the Processor bottleneck anyway and not gain much by Raiding them. The write times have really improved here
Click to expand...
Don't underestimate the importance of Intel's (significant) advantage in random 4K write speed. Intel leads the pack by a wide margin in that regard. If the 320GB X-25M G2s had been available when I was shopping, I probably would have gotten two of those. I am certainly very, very happy with the Samsung SSDs :thumbs:, but you may want to keep your current setup if it is working for you.

What about using an addtional Samsung or Crucial SSD in an external enclosure through Firewire 800 or eSATA? Then you could use that to put all your working files in. eSATA would be faster, but doesn't offer power like USB or Firewire does. for a MBP, I think you need an ExpressCard adapter for eSATA. On the new mid-2009 MBP, there are no ExpressCard slots anymore, right? Kind of sucks. (I'm using a Delkin ExpressCard 54 CF reader that uses the PCI-Express bus and gets about 50MB/s download and sits inside my laptop) Why won't Apple at least give its users an eSATA port? It is about the same size as USB or DisplayPort. Apple giveth, Apple taketh away.... :rolleyes:

And, I don't see very much risk with RAID 0 on solid state. When (in X years) the drives fail, they fail on a write cycle. But, they should still remain readable. How much CPU overhead does RAID take on OSX? My laptop has harware BIOS-controlled RAID so there is no CPU overhead involved and seperate cache on the RAID-controller. Sudden power failure isn't really a problem on laptops like it is in desktops since we use battery and have auto-sleep mode when power is getting low.

Slightly off-topic, but really, this whole post gets me thinking that Apple needs to make a true powerhouse mobile workstation. They need quad core, more RAM, better video, more ports (eSATA, ExpressCard, etc) with a high-gamut LCD and hardware RAID. The Mac Pro is a smoking machine. Why not offer that kind of power in a laptop config? Or is it another case of form over function? :confused:

Or, if you are willing to give up some of that form.... ;)

David
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
The quad core David is the real ticket Apple needs to address . I have a E-sata going through the express port and 8gbs of ram which is very respectable but the issue is the cores and they need to address that especially for us C1 users that is core dependent. Now with Snow Leopard coming I am not sure what that will bring to the table and reported there is a performance boost so I think the best thing for Mac users at the moment is hold on wait for Snow leopard than come back and address the SSD.

But I certainly agree they need a REAL Pro laptop that us pigs really need
 
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