June 24, 2009 by jim
The only SSD drive that I can recommend at this time, after extensive research, are the X25-M drives from Intel. I have one of them in my MacBook and Mac Pro. They are used for the OS and the applications. I only have the 80GB version, but how I have things set up this works fine for such a small drive. Let me come back to that, but first point you to a few articles. I'm linking to the conclusion pages. You can dig further into them if interested.
Update: August 30th, 2009
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Category: MacintoshTags: Intel X25-M, Mac Pro, macbook | Comments (0)
April 10, 2009 by jim
How much faster is a Solid State Drive (SSD) than a hard drive when it comes to launching applications? This video shows about 20 applications being opened at one time on a Mac Pro Quad Nehalem 2.66. The first part of the video shows the stock Western Digital 7,200 RPM drive. The second part of the video shows an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD at the same task.
Just to see how it improved my MacBook (CoreDuo 1.83GHz with 2GB RAM), I put this SSD into it. It was like a different computer. I was amazed at how fast and responsive it became compared to running off a hard drive. I opened approximately twenty applications and was able to switch seamlessly between them, something that would have ground my MB to a halt if it was running with the HD.
80 GB is kind of small, but considering a notebook is not my main computer, I can get away with limited HD space. When needed I can also attached a portable hard drive. I've also contemplated adding an Optibay and the stock HD from the MacBook for more storage, but right now it's not an issue. For a couch surfing / road warrior machine I can make do with the >50GB remaining on the SSD.
Category: MacintoshTags: Intel X25-M, SSD | Comments (0)
