Best SSD for MacBook Pro

Whatever you do, do NOT buy the SSD's from OWC. 12 out of 17 have died in our laptop deployments. Variety of MacBook(s) and iMac(24) devices. Some as internal Scratch disks from Photoshop. Out of all the SSD's we have purchased (OCZ, Intel and OWC) all of the brands have had a failure or two. This has set my expectations that SSD's fail, maybe even more so than an HDD; however 12 out of 17 is not a good failure rate. OWC has yet to admit to a manufacturing defect and still insists on replacing in warranty. We obviously can't trust the drives so we use them as temporary transport storage, or not at all.

My 2 cents...

--melliott

You realize the SSD's that come in the macbooks are samsungs right?

I would only recommend an Angelbird SSD for a Mac. I have one and had no trouble from it, the speed is incredible, once you use, you will never want to go back.

I've bought a Samsung 840 Pro 480GB three weeks ago and it bricked the day before yesterday. After doing some research I've found a couple of similar event reports in MacRumors forums. I don't know if it's just bad luck, some incompatibility or what, but I'm a bit frustated after expending 350€ and four hours of backups and restores.

Now I've went back to an standard 500GB HDD. Slow but cheap. I've *really* liked my SSD, and will go after one of them in sometime in the future but before I'll do a thoroughly brand and model research again.

GoonDD1 wrote:

I procured this Samsung SDD after doing a lot of research on SSD and the current state of the market. I primarily wanted an SSD to replace the physical drive my OS and Applications resided on my MBP. Reliability and longevity were the primary factors I was looking for as these are the only things that differentiate the market for memory. For this reason I decided to spend a bit more a good with a major name brand instead of the discount brands.

Setup was straight forward if you have ever opened up a PC case. Its important to verify that you have an open 2.5" bay or you are procuring a drive that has an adapter bracket to fit one of your open bay.

Samsung did provide some data migration software. It looked to be the easiest way to go if you were not comfortable doing a clean install. I did not use it but did install to view its contents.

Overall I've been very satisfied with the increased performance in boot time and application run-times. I would highly recommend this product to anyone looking to upgrade their PC components.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009NB8WTI

I got the Samsung 840 Pro and I've had no problems. My not brand new Macbook Pro has been reborn. I HIGHTLY recommend this upgrade before you consider buying a new laptop. I was thinking my machine was started to run out of gas, but this SSD has breathed new life into it.

Comming from Windows into the Mac world seems to a rough turn over. My first Mac ever....

Macbook Pro 13" 2,5GHz,10GB RAM 5400 HDD, startup time 45 seconds

Installed SSD (Samsung 840 250GB) in my Mac now it boots in 43 seconds

Preformance has been increased during Apps and normal use by the RAM and SSD

Win PC HP i7 SSD Win7 23 seconds

Win PC HP i7 SSD Win8 12 seconds

Seems to be the IOS and some settings that i am not yet familiar with

What's your boot time?

Br,

Flemming

Hi! I have a FusionDrive with OCZ Vertex 4 128GB. My sturtup time is 11-13 seconds 🙂

What is your boot time with Samsung SSD?

Mine is 43 seconds, let me indicate that I am not impressed by Mac........ 😉

**** I looked at the Vertex 4 🙂

Preformance of the two SSD are very similar I hope it must be something in the setup of IOS

Not a 2 SSD 🙂 SSD + HDD 🙂 OCZ-VERTEX4 + ST9750420ASG

GoonDD1 wrote:

I procured this Samsung SDD after doing a lot of research on SSD and the current state of the market. I primarily wanted an SSD to replace the physical drive my OS and Applications resided on my MBP. Reliability and longevity were the primary factors I was looking for as these are the only things that differentiate the market for memory. For this reason I decided to spend a bit more a good with a major name brand instead of the discount brands.

Setup was straight forward if you have ever opened up a PC case. Its important to verify that you have an open 2.5" bay or you are procuring a drive that has an adapter bracket to fit one of your open bay.

Samsung did provide some data migration software. It looked to be the easiest way to go if you were not comfortable doing a clean install. I did not use it but did install to view its contents.

Overall I've been very satisfied with the increased performance in boot time and application run-times. I would highly recommend this product to anyone looking to upgrade their PC components.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009NB8WTI

No lie! This Samsung 840 Pro SSD is the top of the food chain right now and with the performance measured pretty much plateaued with the current architecture, we can all sit back and watch prices slowly come down. Before I bought the Samsung 840 Pro SSD I read a bunch of reviews and the following graph is as useful as anything.

Currently Samsung has the fastest Read/Write you can get per the HD Tune Pro test. From my boot up speed to routine applications, and video editing/gaming, my computer is CRAZY fast now!

Just bought Plexter M5P 256GB for my MBP late 2011. Installation was prety straight forward & it works like a charm. Blazing fast user experience. A must upgrade for photo / video editing dudes 🙂

You forgot to mention the higher density LARGE SSD are faster, but ALSO much more unstable.

actual SSD benchmarks on the 512GB Samsung SSD offers roughly a 400MB/s increase in write speeds over the 128GB SanDisk/Marvell SSD

this speed increase isnt brand related rather is NAND density related

good is that it is faster .... the downside is error rate due to being 25nm density (incredibly tight density)

A group of SSD gurus concludes that:------as NAND flash densities increase, so do issues such as read and write latency and data errors

Or, ....that the (multilayer or triple layer) BIG SSD that run fast as lightning compared to other (single layer) SSD have a MUCH higher likelihood of having a "mental breakdown" 😢

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

this speed increase isnt brand related rather is NAND density related

incorrect. And higher error rate exists, but it is hidden from user-level

Be aware that TRIM in some cases doesn't need OS support.. Some new sandforce controllers manually handles TRIM without help from OS X. Also is the SSD is not TRIM supported i don't recomend downloading a TRIM enabler tool, since in worst case senario, it can do more damage than good!