Best SSD for wifes Macbook Pro os X

[treepop]

My wife uses photoshop and lightroom quite heavily and I am looking for a fast and reliable drive for her. I have read os X doesn't use trim, so I need SSD's that have "garbage collection". I might be wrong with the terminology, so any input and advice is greatly appreciated. Just letting me know WHAT I am looking for in a SSD would also be equally as helpful.


thanks!

[ChaosInMind]

My wife uses photoshop and lightroom quite heavily and I am looking for a fast and reliable drive for her. I have read os X doesn't use trim, so I need SSD's that have "garbage collection". I might be wrong with the terminology, so any input and advice is greatly appreciated. Just letting me know WHAT I am looking for in a SSD would also be equally as helpful.


thanks!


I think OSX Lion uses TRIM, might want to re-re-search the situation, I haven't looked into it much. :blah:

[ArcticPenguin]

Either the Crucial M4 series or Samsung 470s will be perfect.
Otherwise if you can locate any of the Apple SSD's (which are either Toshiba or Samsung based) those will work too with built in garbage collection.

Depending on the SSD, Lion has TRIM support enabled. IN snow leopard you will have to run a command that will enable TRIM for specific support drives.

What year of MacBook Pro does she have? 2011 by chance?
Reason I ask is because the 2011 MacBook Pros have capability of handling 6Gbps drives.

[treepop]

Either the Crucial M4 series or Samsung 470s will be perfect.
Otherwise if you can locate any of the Apple SSD's (which are either Toshiba or Samsung based) those will work too with built in garbage collection.

Depending on the SSD, Lion has TRIM support enabled. IN snow leopard you will have to run a command that will enable TRIM for specific support drives.

What year of MacBook Pro does she have? 2011 by chance?
Reason I ask is because the 2011 MacBook Pros have capability of handling 6Gbps drives.

Thanks! I am hearing the M4's still have issues with os x. Is this avoidable?

[ArcticPenguin]

i think a recent Firmware update as come out that resolves some issues,and it also might bean OS discrepancy with Lion.
I'm waiting to get my M4to test out in my MBP, as I only have used "Apple provided" SSDs

[treepop]

I ended up going with the Samsung 470-Series MZ-5PA128A 128 GB 2.5-Inch SATA II MLC Internal SSD with Norton Ghost 15 - MZ-5PA128A

it will be here in 2 days. I will keep yall posted. I figured Sata 3 would be a waste, and I liked that Samsung was usually one of the most recommended drives for mac users.

CHEERS! and thanks ;)

[jahsr]

i think intel are better

[dropadrop]

i think intel are better

Thanks for the well explained opinion. Previously I would have gone with a competitor, but now you really convinced me to go Intel.

[Mr.Guvernment]

lol!

Intels are the best performing SSD drives around currently, everyone else seems to be playing catch up with them.

i do agree thought, if you say something is better, explain why

[treepop]

You have to define better. More reliable? Faster? Better suited for a 3 year old Core 2 Duo Macbook pro?

From what I read, Toshiba and Samsung are the go to drives for the Sata 2 Core 2 Duo macbook pros. Since they have garbage collection and Apple used them as their OEM manufacturer.

My wife needs this drive for quick photo editing in photoshop and lightroom. All other performance is secondary.

[dropadrop]

lol!

Intels are the best performing SSD drives around currently, everyone else seems to be playing catch up with them.

i do agree thought, if you say something is better, explain why

From what we've found at work (with a sample set of maybe 50 SSD's in the last two years) Intel drives are very reliable, far better then anything else we tried apart from Samsung (of which we have had less samples though).

I don't know about performance, in real use it's pretty hard to note a difference between drives in a given performance class.

I just got a Samsung 830 for my mac, mainly because it was a lot cheaper then the equivalent Intel, and because I am hoping that being one of the main Apple drive providers Samsung would work ok with osx trim (some people who hacked trim on with various drives have complained about problems).

This drive is a lot faster then the Toshiba which came in my 27" imac at work (Apple provided drive). I'm considering getting a bigger one for my imac at home (my Aperture library is over 100GB...).

The drive I would not get for any important data is anything based on a sandforce chipset. We had about 10 varying brands models at the office and almost all of them are dead one year later. Not only that, but depending on the configuration part of the computers where pretty unstable too. I got one for home at some point and the drive died the first time my machine tried to wake up from sleep, not very convincing testing if that happens to products that have been on the market for over a year.

edit: and regarding trim on osx, it has worked since 10.6.8 (on Apple provided drives). I have 10.7.2 at home and run a perl script from the command line which enabled trim on the Samsung 830, but this laptop is mainly used for programming with a separate version control (so I don't really have to worry about corruption), I would be more weary to hack trim on with a drive that has important data.

[treepop]

From what we've found at work (with a sample set of maybe 50 SSD's in the last two years) Intel drives are very reliable, far better then anything else we tried apart from Samsung (of which we have had less samples though).

I don't know about performance, in real use it's pretty hard to note a difference between drives in a given performance class.

I just got a Samsung 830 for my mac, mainly because it was a lot cheaper then the equivalent Intel, and because I am hoping that being one of the main Apple drive providers Samsung would work ok with osx trim (some people who hacked trim on with various drives have complained about problems).

This drive is a lot faster then the Toshiba which came in my 27" imac at work (Apple provided drive). I'm considering getting a bigger one for my imac at home (my Aperture library is over 100GB...).

The drive I would not get for any important data is anything based on a sandforce chipset. We had about 10 varying brands models at the office and almost all of them are dead one year later. Not only that, but depending on the configuration part of the computers where pretty unstable too. I got one for home at some point and the drive died the first time my machine tried to wake up from sleep, not very convincing testing if that happens to products that have been on the market for over a year.

edit: and regarding trim on osx, it has worked since 10.6.8 (on Apple provided drives). I have 10.7.2 at home and run a perl script from the command line which enabled trim on the Samsung 830, but this laptop is mainly used for programming with a separate version control (so I don't really have to worry about corruption), I would be more weary to hack trim on with a drive that has important data.


Very good to know. They just had (might still be having) a large sale on Intel drives. I am hoping, like you, that as an Apple drive provider, Samsung will do a good job.