SSD Solid State SATA Drive Upgrade for Apple MacBook

[ecm86]

well.. The only con for me is the price for the space. I using a netbook and would love to get an SSD because I carry this thing around a lot. I have a 250GB 5400rpm HDD that came in it and am using around 44GB's of space. I think I would need at least a 60-80GB SSD but that would run me even today well over 130.00 I think. I may do it at some point because this netbook is newer but hopefully prices can drop even more in 2011.

[macgizmoguy]

2010 SSD FYI Update. Wow so much has changed in the SSD market in the past year. OCZ recently revamped it's product line across the board -- whether it's a Solid Series, Agility or Vertex -- look for the new *V2 or 2 series* drives just released for even better performance at the same price points.

[MrNightWalkerrr]

nice video

[constantinos007]

nice job

[NitroProffin]

SSD's are great news for laptops lower power consumption, smaller, lighter, less heat creation and lower noise also you don't have to worry about having it operating at high angle's putting strain on moving parts, great vid mate =)

[Stuna2150]

what i really like about this guy is he seems to know exactly what hes talking about and makes it exxtreamly clear about what it is hes talking about and refering to ..

any 1 can watch this vid and understand him..

5 stars

[JSantana319]

Hey, I see the Macbook Pro has the option to get 128GB for $350 more and 256GB of SSD for $800 more. I'm wondering if the SSD that come with the Macbook are from Samsung or Toshiba or another brand?

[RetroRepair]

@JSantana319 They are Samsung drives with Apple branded firmware.

[motorbikeguy989]

i dont even use 10GB on my macbook

[feerof]

that either means you have another hard drive to store your data, or you paid the premium for something you don't need.

[jrichardson6]

hi nice concise video!! I was thinking of upgrading my black macbook with a new ssd I notice you have a cable attached to the drive in the video and that you were recording the video onto the ssd is that a firewire cable? Am I correct in thinking you can plug a firewire into the old computer and transfer all the data onto the new ssd including the operating system and then just slide the new ssd into the old computer and bingo... regards john

[macgizmoguy]

Some - but not all SSD's have a mini-USB 2.0 port. So I was able to install OSX & copy over my Home folder and apps, test it out -- before I installed it in my MacBook. And yes, I was booted off that and recorded this YT video while I was holding it. You'd have to use an EXTERNAL drive case to transfer/install otherwise: A COMBO case with BOTH FireWire and USB is your most flexible, best investment

[datalaforge]

I am considering getting a white macbook and want to eventually put a ssd in it or even just a 7200rmp drive. I just chatted with apple and they told me that one of these would not be supported. Is that person misinformed?

[macgizmoguy]

No. Apple and other companies simply want NO responsibility for any 3rd-party upgrades you do with your Mac. "Not supported" is more about their hands-off stance than any technical reason.

2 months later, this low-end OCZ Solid series SSD has performed flawlessly. Tip: If you're about to buy an SSD in 2009 make sure it uses either Samsung or an Indilinx controller chip: their performance is proving to be head and shoulders above last year's JMicron based SSD's.

[datalaforge]

Thanks for responding. I am trying to figure out which machine to get. I want it to be somewhat mobile but I would like it to have low latency for music recording and hopefully firewire. I would be willing to sacrifice mobility for power but I don't want to spend a ton of money. Any suggestions.

[jon780]

There's actually about 3 types of SSD failures. The disk controller failure, individual memory cells and then entire memory bank gates. Some are more catastrophic than others obviously.

But SSD's are still in their infancy - when have we ever seen a technology take off at this speed? Just a few years ago a 2GB USB thumb drive was enormous and now we're seeing blazing fast SSDs with hundreds of gigabytes of capacity.

[jon780]

Oh and SSD's fail as well, typically at a higher MTBF than spinning disks. Which I believe a very small price to pay for the performance, but worth noting if you're going to point out throwing out spinning disks :)

[macgizmoguy]

It'll be interesting to see what the true life-span and failure rates prove to be over the long haul. My gut is telling me tho that unlike some hard drives which can die 'slowly' and let you copy some or most data before death, I'd guess SSD's are going to have a much more *Instantly Fatal* sort of death pattern w/o warning signs

I've struggled throughout my career to get users to realize -- IF YOU HAVE A BACKUP - otherwise unrecoverable software hardware problems don't really matter.

[musicfuse]

I'm confused on this topic. They say 100,000 reads/writes but I also heard it said 100,000 writes. So I don't know if you get to a certain point and it stop writing but can still read from it.

[macgizmoguy]

There's two different types of flash memory used in SSD's - Cheaper MLC - Multi-Layer memory - and SLC - Single Layer. SLC is faster and more 'durable' and can handle 10x more write/erase cycles. And more expensive. Most drives on the market use lower cost MLC to keep it affordable. All drives have a way to monitor cell usage and map cells out when they get 'tired' and 'worn out' to explain it simply.

[jon780]

Just so you know, Virtual Memory and memory paging are not interchangeable. Virtual memory allows mapping applications to different segments of memory, typically in different regions of memory, without the application knowing it. Memory paging extends virtual memory onto the disk to increase usable memory. Very important differences, and a common misunderstanding of virtual memory.

[valdamnit]

+sleeves, +utilize the buttons on shirt

[macgizmoguy]

+don't tell me how to live +don't tell me how to dress +some guys like hairy tits and hairy tatooed arms :)

[Edricofifrit]

I like 'em, and I'm not even gay!

[misterman1222]

Memory doesn't have anything to do with SSD speed. The drives already have onboard cache and don't use the system RAM. Of course RAM will improve performance if you use more than you have, but don't go around giving false information about it improving because of the SSD.

[BearMate]

memory upgrades are a tremendous boon for virtual memory, and virtual memory resides on the hard drive. writes to ssd's are slower than reads so anything you can do to minimize virtual memory writes improves system performance - listen to what he said - he was right on target.

[macgizmoguy]

Thanks 'matey! You prevented me from posting a 'Go make your own damn SSD video if you don't like mine' response. The SSD controller chips most drives currently use have some known slowdown issues with WRITES and this particular SSD doesn't have as much onboard cache as the newer high end Apex/Vertex OCZ models do. The extra RAM upgrade *will in fact* help this SSD avoid some of the intermittent write-delays many have experienced (and is well documented on the net.)

[macgizmoguy]

There's other good reasons to minimize VM is because SSD's DO have limited write-cycles per cell. 'Wear-Leveling' algo's and automatic bad-cell remapping logic can and will cause SSD's to shrink in capacity over it's lifetime. That's normal. So minimizing Virtual Memory writes will extend the usable life of the disk as well.

[jarelloo]

I absolutly agree. SSD are sooo much more comfortable. I use an eee pc with a ssd, and I'd say it's the best part on it ;-)

I may upgrade my new macbook too. Nice Im not the only one with this freaky idea.