PSA: Once you go SSD, you can't stand going back.

D

Dew

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 23, 2003
Messages
3,854
Interesting tid-bit. On my new MBP that I bought in May, I went ahead and got the OWC Mercury Pro SATA3 240GB SSD. That has been my system drive with the original 750GB (This is the 15" High-Res Anti-Glare, 2.3GHz i7, 8GB Model) in the Optical Bay. Now, this machine is fast, really fast. Running Windows7 inside Parallels the HDD benchmark gets a 7.9 WEI. Boot time is ridiculously fast, everything is just plain snappy, under both Parallels and OSX.

Fast forward to a few days ago, my new 2011 Mini with the 2.3GHz i5 and 8GB RAM is just a dog in comparison. Things are slow, installing Windows 7 in Parallels took a good 45 minutes verses the 10 minutes for my MBP. Opening up applications takes a few seconds versus nearly instantaneously on my MBP.

So, I am very glad that it does not have an optical drive. I will be getting the needed SATA cable and hooking up a SSD as the primary drive. Just need to decide which one. Leaning towards a 160GB, as that seems to give me a good 60GB buffer after Windows and OSX and all my apps are installed(No Games, except things like Angry Birds) since all my media resides on the secondary drive.
 
If there are budget concerns, I would highly recommend Seagate's Momentus XT (500gb Hybrid SSD). I put one in a 08' MBP and it felt just as snappy as my 2010 MBP w/ a 128GB Apple SSD. Costs a hell of a lot less, and you get way more space.
 
The minis also come with cheapo 5400rpm drives (apple should be ashamed to put these in a desktop of any sort). The mini needs a price drop especially since it went up a year or two ago and now lost the optical drive. It should start at 449.99 max. To be honest it really is only a 399.99 dollar machine in base spec and even then it should still have 4gb of ram standard, we have laptops with the same hardware selling for those prices.
 
I agree the mini needs a price drop, but Apple won't go for that. It does suck that $600 buys you a machine with no keyboard or mouse, 2 cores and only 2GB of RAM with a 5400rpm drive, but that's the way it is.

I just recently bought a 2011 mini, and although I upgraded the RAM to 8GB, I can still tell it would benefit greatly from even a 7200rpm drive. Opening up some apps takes 3-4 seconds before you even see any acknowledgement that you clicked something.

I think I'm gonna try out one of the Momentus XT drives this week and see how it fares. Thanks for the post, OP!
 
Morazl said:
If there are budget concerns, I would highly recommend Seagate's Momentus XT (500gb Hybrid SSD). I put one in a 08' MBP and it felt just as snappy as my 2010 MBP w/ a 128GB Apple SSD. Costs a hell of a lot less, and you get way more space.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I happen to have a Seagate 500GB Hybrid Drive that is sitting in a USB enclosure and empty. I'll try that later this week.
 
Dew said:
Thanks for the suggestion. I happen to have a Seagate 500GB Hybrid Drive that is sitting in a USB enclosure and empty. I'll try that later this week.
Click to expand...
Another vote for the Momentus XT. I have one in my '07 Santa Rosa MBP, and installing the drive was like I had bought a whole new computer. Make sure to update its firmware to SD25 or later for best performance and reliability. It doesn't do much for VMs (it can't cache the VMDK volumes), but in every other way it's brilliant. :)
 
My solid 3 in my 2011 MBP absolutely flies...won't ever go back to HDD :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top