I love SSDs so much. Silent. Fast.
Poll: Are you using SSDs?
111–120 of 153 posts
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#112If you run SSDs on a Mac, I highly recommend OWC's Mercury Pro series: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extr... Since OS X lacks TRIM support (arggh!), normal SSDs tend to degrade in performance over time. The OWC's are designed with a microcontroller to do the equivalent of TRIM behind the scenes, and they also happen to be fast as hell. I upgraded from a year-old 64g Kingston to a 120g OWC, a…
I don't understand how you can do the equivalent of TRIM without filesystem support.
Doesn't TRIM necessarily rely on knowing which blocks contain live data and which contain deleted data? I.e., something the hardware can't know?
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#113I just replaced the 5400rpm drive in my Macbook Pro with an OCZ Vertex2 SSD. The performance improvements for many things are dramatic. I did some very unscientific before-and-after measurements..
* Cold boot (Power button to login screen): 79s HDD, 76s SSD (didn't improve much, surprisingly)
* Login (Login -> Desktop menu bars loaded): 16s HDD, 6s SSD
* Firefox start: 11s HDD, 3s SSD
* OpenOffice start: 11s HDD, 3s SSD
* Metasploit msfconsole start (i.e. loading lots of ruby code): 22s HDD, 12s real
A lot of other things are noticeably faster. Searching for things in Spotlight is almost instantaneous. Previously, there could be a few seconds delay between typing a filename and seeing it appear in the results. Running find over large directories is noticeably faster as well. Time Machine backups are way faster, since it takes much less time to determine what has changed since the last backup.
I was a little hesitant to get an SSD knowing that OSX doesn't have TRIM. We'll see how it goes. I'm hoping Apple adds support soon. If not, I might be doing a secure erase and re-install periodically.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#114If you run SSDs on a Mac, I highly recommend OWC's Mercury Pro series: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extr... Since OS X lacks TRIM support (arggh!), normal SSDs tend to degrade in performance over time. The OWC's are designed with a microcontroller to do the equivalent of TRIM behind the scenes, and they also happen to be fast as hell. I upgraded from a year-old 64g Kingston to a 120g OWC, a…
I don't understand how you can do the equivalent of TRIM without filesystem support. Doesn't TRIM necessarily rely on knowing which blocks contain live data and which contain deleted data? I.e., something the hardware can't know?
An SSD can read the filesystem allocation bitmap, but that's a "rampant layering violation".
Most people confuse trim with garbage collection, which proactively cleans out invalid data (creating more pre-erased blocks to speed future writes) and potentially defragments data (to speed future sequential reads).
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#115Several of our company laptops have been migrated to SSDs and for the most part, people have been pleased with the switch. Also, some file-servers in our datacenter are using SSDs + Disk in a hybrid setup.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#116I've bought a Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB for my new 15" MBP i7 (2010). It worked fine but broke after I've bought another one until my dealer does RMA in the hope that it's not a "generic" problem.
TL;DR
SSD break out of the sudden and usually everything is lost. Don't use a SSD without having backups on a daily basis!
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has nothing to do with speed, it has to do with transistor counts, which should increase disk size or lower cost.
I totally agree. Moore's Law is completely inapplicable when it comes to disk performance.
Which is a strawman of your own invention that you are being an arse about, kbob didn't mention SSD performance.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#118I am not yet. I don't want the hassle of running a small SSD and a big spindle disk, the cost of a big SSD, the cost of moving all my machines to SSD when I see how good it is, or the jarring switching between SSD / nonSSD machines.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#119I've bought a Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB for my new 15" MBP i7 (2010). It worked fine but broke after I've bought another one until my dealer does RMA in the hope that it's not a "generic" problem. TL;DR SSD break out of the sudden and usually everything is lost. Don't use a SSD without having backups on a daily basis!
> Don't use a SSD without having backups on a daily basis!
That goes for hard disks just the same.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you might have misread kbob’s comment. I think he was talking about upgrading from one SSD to another newer SSD — not from HDD to SSD.
It would be stunning for SSDs to take off with exponential speed improvements. Sure, I expect them to get faster and faster, but I have no doubt that there's no Moore's Law at work in this case. I stand by my original comment.
It really depends. Taking a hard black&white stance on other side is just silly.
Say you have an SSD that consists of 8x16GB chips. Internally it's implemented in something like a RAID0 array, which is why they're so fast. If the capacity doubles / size shrinks by a factor of 2 and someone decides to stick 16x16GB chips in the next gen SSD then you will see a speed increase. On the other hand if they go for 8x32GB you won't.