Comments on: MacBook Pro SSD vs Stock 5400 RPM HDD – SSD Performance Blows HDD Away

By: james braselton

james braselton — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:26:32 +0000

hi there my macbook air has a 256 gb ssd and used 86 gb soo i have plenty storage i have instant on instant off fast boot up time no lag time

By: elmefarda

elmefarda — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:48:29 +0000

Thnx . I was looking for this information

By: SG

SG — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:07:51 +0000

the extra sec of your SSD vs HD (59s vs 53s)
i believe is you didn’t set the thing right
You MUST choose the new hard drive as your boot drive once in system preference whenever you change you HD, if you don’t, you’ll probably stay on a white screen a long time before you getting the apple appear on your boot up screen. This is becoz your mac can’t recognize ur new HD.
i guess no SSD should use more than 15 sec boot up your mac, esp in OSX lion.

By: SG

SG — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:07:27 +0000

@MC

By: Paul G

Paul G — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 17:53:34 +0000

This is helpful – about to order (in UK) 15″ MCP 2.2 i7QC with 8GB Ram and am trying to decide whether to get SDD or HDD. From what you say apart from initial boot time there is not much difference in practical terms. Is the 7200 RPM HDD significantly better than 5400 RPM in terms of speed and anybody know if this makes noise/ fan difference as there seems to have been lot in forums about fan noise of 2011 MCP.

thanks

By: MC

MC — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:52:13 +0000

I have just returned my crucial 256Gb SDD as the performance didnt warrant the cost of £325.

I ran geekbench before and after the install and the performance reduced in ALL categories !

The boot time went form 53 secs to 59 secs

Sure all apps loaded much quicker for a first time load, but they were just as quick when they loaded a second time with the HDD.

Windows (parallels) booted in 24 secs instead of 48sec with HDD.

Overall I cant see the value in an SDD unless you have high disk based IO workloads.

For the standard user once you have got over the fact that the apps load quicker, everything else is much the same.

My laptop spec is an (aluminum) 4Gb ,Macbook 2Ghz intel core 2 duo with a seagate 500Gb 7200rpm HDD.

In summary I sent my SDD back for a full refund which I am now waiting for.

Hope this helps ….

By: james braselton

james braselton — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:24:20 +0000

hi there macbook air 2.13 ghz duo core cpu 4 gb ram 256 gb ssd

By: james braselton

james braselton — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:22:48 +0000

hi there you need too buy or download lion ox from the itunes store or apple store lion ox is expecaily adoppted for ssd solid state drive configeration but cost $29.99 from itunes or the memory stick version is like $69.99 hope this help i am on lion 10.7 ox on macbook air

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:32:23 +0000

does the mac book pro come with the OCZ Vertex SSD or did you install it yourself?

By: Shaker

Shaker — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 19:52:48 +0000

I just installed the OCZ 160GB SSD in my MBP 13″ 2010-Mid; amazing difference and it about doubled the battery life too.

I found drive performance on the stock disk absolutely dreadful, my Ubuntu desktop was so much faster it made using the laptop a very painful experience. Heck, even my old 2006 Alienware laptop was smoking the MAC. Now with 8GB of memory and the SSD drive, it’s a much better experience. Can’t wait to install Ubuntu on it… where’d I put that disk?!

By: qka

qka — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 23:16:09 +0000

Looking for a SSD – you may want to investigate Other World Computing (OWC) @ macsales.com

I have no experience with their SSD; I’m just a happy customer of other products I’ve bought from them. They do have helpful tech support folks!

By: James

James — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 06:11:35 +0000

Thanks, Joseph… good to know!

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 02:08:20 +0000

Putting in an SSD in your computer shouldn’t void your warranty. I took mine in and they didn’t care, though the guy was puzzled why the size of the disk was so small. I just mentioned it was an SSD and that was it. So should be the same with RAM.

Or you know what they don’t know wont hurt them

By: James

James — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:52:36 +0000

Wow, Greg, 4 seconds is amazing! That posting alone makes me want to upgrade my MBP’s hard drive.

I have a question. If I put in my own SSD does that void my AppleCare warranty? I’ve already installed my own 8GB of non-Apple RAM but that is so easy to swap out.. if I need to take my MBP to the Apple Store, I could just put the original memory cards back in.

Also, has anyone found a great source for MBP (I have a 13″) SSD? Is the SSD OCZ Vertex Series the best way to go?

Great article!

By: Greg818

Greg818 — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 09:26:58 +0000

My MBP (13″ 2.4GHz/8GB of RAM) boots in 4 seconds with an SSD, compared to the 40 seconds it takes to the MBU (2.4GHz/8GHz too) with the HDD. I personally consider that as instant on… or almost.