| Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Tell me about SSDs | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 12 2012, 01:46 PM (289 Views) | |
| George K | Jun 12 2012, 01:46 PM Post #1 |
|
Finally
|
Thinking about using a SSD for my boot drive. It would be connected to my iMac via Firewire 800. Would I notice a performance increase? I would keep my music and photos on a regular hard drive, with the boot drive just having the system and my docs and apps on it. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| KlavierBauer | Jun 12 2012, 02:02 PM Post #2 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
That's a great way to use an SSD George - just as a boot disk. I've not seen an OSX machine setup this way yet, though I've done it to some Windows machines, and the bootup performance is very noticeable. It also frees up a lot of resources/space which boosts performance in other areas as well. |
|
"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper "He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple | |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jun 12 2012, 02:08 PM Post #3 |
|
Finally
|
Since my Mac is an older model (2009) 2.8 GHz core i7 with 8 gig RAM, I was disappointed to see that there were no new models announced this week. It would be nice to get a little more performance out of this machine. RAM is cheap, and I'd probably upgrade to 16 gig. I haven't rebooted my machine in over a month (35 days to be exact), so the startup time is really not an issue. The question is how fast performance would be over a Firewire 800 interface. Would I be better off by just investing in another 8 gig of RAM? |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| Moonbat | Jun 12 2012, 02:29 PM Post #4 |
![]()
Pisa-Carp
|
AFAIK a modern SSD will do much more for you than RAM if you already have 8 gig. Based on the numbers [url=www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2011/benchmarks,129.html]here[/URL] Firewire 800 will definitely reduce the performance, particularly for high end SSDs. However even the lower speced SSDs are supposedly zippier than standard drives. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
![]() |
|
| KlavierBauer | Jun 12 2012, 02:34 PM Post #5 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
The real benefit of the SSD in terms of performance is not having the "seek time" of a drive. In this sense, Moonbat is right, in that reducing that seek time is essentially like having the whole drive in memory, which is obviously a huge performance boost if you're running your OS from that drive. Anything that reduces slows down the SSD's transfer of data also limits the performance enhancement. |
|
"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper "He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple | |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jun 12 2012, 02:34 PM Post #6 |
|
Finally
|
I currently boot from an internal SATA drive. I imagine using Firewire 800 as an interface would not be much faster. In fact it might be slower. However, Other World Computing (www.macsales.com) has an solution that replaces your internal optical drive (which I never use - I have a faster external) with a bracket that accepts a SSD. The bracket is about $60, and you'd have to pay for installation and the drive itself. I could get by with 256 gig - easily - if I store photos, docs and music on another drive. Tempting. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| Lurkalot | Jun 12 2012, 02:35 PM Post #7 |
![]()
Junior Carp
|
Why not fit the SSD internally and put the HD in an enclosure? Or else use an eSATA port (don't know the innards of an iMac, but chances are it's possible). |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jun 12 2012, 02:36 PM Post #8 |
|
Finally
|
There's no eSATA port on an iMac. You'd have to do some serious case mods to do that. But, see my post above yours. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| ivorythumper | Jun 12 2012, 03:42 PM Post #9 |
|
I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
|
Would you house all the programs on the SSD? I'm trying to figure out the iTunes side, since when I store the music on the D: drive, it seems they also populate on to the C: (SSD) drive where the iTunes / iPhone software is. I have 17 GB of music, which would chew up too much SSD space. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jun 12 2012, 03:48 PM Post #10 |
|
Finally
|
You can tell iTunes that any directory is the "iTunes Library". In fact, although my library is on my boot drive, all the *music* is on an external. The library only holds the pointers to where the music is. So, that's not a problem. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449 The same holds true for your iPhoto library. You can put it wherever you want. So, all I'd really need on the boot drive would be the system, my home folder (with iTunes and iPhoto on another drive) and my applications. I could *easily* get by with 256 gigs. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| Copper | Jun 12 2012, 03:55 PM Post #11 |
|
Shortstop
|
http://macintoshhowto.com/hardware/how-to-speed-up-your-mac-with-a-ssd-drive.html
http://vimeo.com/18116571 |
|
The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy | |
![]() |
|
| Mark | Jun 12 2012, 05:01 PM Post #12 |
|
HOLY CARP!!!
|
Put it internal. Get the 480gig from OWC. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Extreme_Pro_6G/ |
|
___.___ (_]===* o 0 When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells | |
![]() |
|
| jon-nyc | Jun 12 2012, 05:03 PM Post #13 |
|
Cheers
|
I have a PC laptop with SSD, and it only takes two times longer to boot than my Mac, instead of the usual 4 times longer. That's a big gain. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jun 12 2012, 05:06 PM Post #14 |
|
Finally
|
If I put my iTunes and iPhoto libraries on an external drive (or, even external to the SSD), I don't need 480 gigs. 250 or so would be more than adequate. OWC will charge $80 an hour to install their bracket where the optical drive was, and the bracket is $60. It's probably a reasonable upgrade. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| ivorythumper | Jun 12 2012, 05:29 PM Post #15 |
|
I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
|
Hmmm.. I have all the music stored on the D drive, but on my C drive, if I click the properties (library>music>itunes>itunes media>music) it lists the C drive as the location and the size of the file (say 5 MB). Not sure how to tweak this -- I'll read through the link.
|
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
![]() |
|
| KlavierBauer | Jun 12 2012, 05:30 PM Post #16 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
IT: The normal route to go with the SSD is to store the OS and any applications that you can on the SSD - which is almost like storing them all in RAM. The data that those files use, would be stored wherever you want (i.e., you could have Photoshop on the SSD, but all of your graphical assets on the other non-solid-state drive. |
|
"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper "He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple | |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jun 12 2012, 05:32 PM Post #17 |
|
Finally
|
iTunes is funky. The "Library" does not necessarily contain your files, only the *pointer* to the files. So, my library is in my home folder, but the actual music files are on an external drive. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| Axtremus | Jun 12 2012, 06:19 PM Post #18 |
|
HOLY CARP!!!
|
I have a MacBook Pro with internal SSD -- fast boot time, fast application load time, freaking impressive Windows 7 boot time from Parallels virtual machine. Definitely a significant speed boost for the whole system. That said, if you're going to go SSD, why not swap out your current internal drive and put an SSD in? Swap an SSD in, put your original internal drive into a Firewire enclosure. You should be able to find an authorized Mac repair shop that can do that for you. Good luck.
|
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic » |









Not sure how to tweak this -- I'll read through the link.
6:32 AM Jul 11