Time for a new MacBook Pro - SSD questions, please help!

I hear SSD has a life span of 51 years vs. 8 years for HDD

First: “Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.”
Benjamin Franklin

I carry almost 200 GB of data with me. I need it with me. I cant lose it.

Second: Both an SSD and a HHD represent a single point of failure. You may be better off asking how to prevent data loss. The simple answer to that would be to think "RAID".

According to their warranties, I would conclude 3 years for both???

Whose warranties?

I do understand using warranty information to roughly (very roughly) gauge potential longevity. I don't understand how that warranty is going to keep you from losing the data when the drive fails, given your statement: "I need it with me. I cant lose it."

Here is an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro RE SSD 400GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Solid State Drive ( http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/SSDMXRE400/). It has 5 Year OWC Warranty. It use RAISE™ technology for RAID like data protection and reliability. It will only cost you 1,679.99.

Maybe you could get two - one for MBP and use one for Time Machine backups.

i've got a late 2008 macbook pro. i need a bigger hard drive, and the stories about complications upgrading yourself have eliminated that option.

i'm looking at a new macbook pro with a 500 GB hard drive. Question is, should I go HDD or SSD.

I don't know what SSD or HDD is used in the MBP. From otherposters, I gather Apple might use various vendors and there is not guarantee of what drive you might get. May need to upgrade if you want best quality drive.

Here is an alternative SSD: Samsung 470 Series 256GB. Less space but also only $699 suggested retail.

"Samsung Solid State Drives are so reliable they’ll last 1.5 million hours. To put things in perspective, that’s 171 years, 2 months, 12 days, 4 hours and 48 minutes. Or thereabouts." ( http://www.samsungssd.com/meetssd/whyssd). But, these Samsung-brand consumer solid state drives come with a 3-year limited warranty from the date of purchase and SAMSUNG is not responsible for lost data ( http://www.samsungssd.com/faq/how-long-my-samsung-solid-state-drive-covered-warr anty-0).

For me, this makes me thing that the 171 year claim might fall under “Believe...half of what you see.”

Also, note that SSDs can slow down after use and Samsung acknowledges this via FAQ:
My solid state drive is not as fast as it used to be. What can I do?
Techniques like TRIM and garbage collection will help maintain your solid state drive’s performance over time. TRIM can be used by downloading and running Samsung SSD Magician Tool, an application available for Window-based PCs only.

I carry almost 200 GB of data with me. I need it with me. I cant lose it.

But current Mac OS X (10.6.4) does not support TRIM, so it might be necessary to recondition the drive. See Mac Performance Guide: Reconditioning a solid state drive (SSD) ( http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-SSD-Reconditioning.html). As stated in the article, this may involve this process:
1. Backup the SSD onto another hard drive. A clone is your best best, and more or less mandatory if the drive is your boot drive.
2. Erase the SSD with Disk Utility. You will need to boot off the clone if the SSD is your boot drive.
3. Write over the entire capacity of the SSD. This can be probably be done successfully with Apple’s Disk Utility (“Erase free space”), but the fastest approach is a tool like DiskTester’s recondition command.
4. Test the speed (DiskTester run-sequential), and repeat step #3 if the speed is not its best.
5. Erase the SSD with Disk Utility again, then clone the backup you made in step 1 onto it. If it’s the boot drive, you can now boot off the reinvigorated drive.

Seems like ample room for data loss if this procedure is required and does not go as planned.

PS: And I know to make back ups... but I still need the drive with the best life span and least failure.

Maybe the Apple HDD and back ups, considering everything?

Erica: I don't know what stories have scared you away from upgrading to a larger hard drive in your present computer, but replacing the drive in a late-2008 MBP couldn't possibly be any simpler. It's a five-minute job.

If you must have your data with you at all times and can't afford ever to be without it, then no matter what drive is installed in your computer, you must carry a portable backup drive at all times that contains a bootable clone of your internal drive, and you must keep the clone up to date. There is no other option.

Failure statistics for all drives are only statistics, just like the life expectancy for humans. We don't all die at age 77.3, or whatever our life expectancy is. Neither do hard drives or SSDs. Some die in infancy. None is immune to bad luck.

Message was edited by: eww

If you just web search company sites for specs, you'll see current SSD hard drives rated for anywhere from 1 million to about 1.5 million hours (e.g. Intel lists theirs at 1.2 million hours MTBF).

But, as with any solid state device, MTBF is just an estimate - some units will fail in far less time, some in far more time, all other things being equal.

Note too that many conventional hard drives will report MTBFs in the same range as the SSDs. Hitachi ultrastar 2.5" drives have a MTBF of 2 million hours.

The only security against data loss is backups, preferably redundant ones for really important data.

You can get a much bigger enterprise level 2.5" hard drive with greater than 500GB for less then an SSD drive of comparable size, so if capacity is the largest concern, that may be the way to go.

P.S. I see OWC has WD scorpio blue 1TB laptop drives for under $140 - only drawback is they are 5400rpm, but it is a terabyte drive.

For portability, OWC's 'Mercury on the Go' HDs are really sweet; they're small and light in weight. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go.
Reliability has been quite good but if your looking for TOTAL reliability, forget it 'cause there ain't no such thing. 😉

but replacing the drive in a late-2008 MBP couldn't possibly be any simpler. It's a five-minute job.

So true.

If you must have your data with you at all times and can't afford ever to be without it, then no matter what drive is installed in your computer, you must carry a portable backup drive at all times that contains a bootable clone of your internal drive, and you must keep the clone up to date. There is no other option.

Also good advice. To "Erica M31", I would just add, even if you do carry a portable hard drive with you all the time, that can still be lost. Granted a portable drive is larger than a set of keys, but if you have ever uttered "where are my keys?", as most people who own keys have, this may be a factor.

Another alternative might be Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) ( http://aws.amazon.com/s3/). They claim, "Designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year." I have used it to store research data. It would take some time to place 200GB there, and also retrieve all 200GB, if you needed it quickly.

I understand some people use Mozy or Carbonite for Internet backup. May want to read Mozy vs. Carbonite: Mac Backup Smackdown ( http://theappleblog.com/2009/07/16/mozy-vs-carbonite-mac-backup-smackdown/) as a starting point if this idea seems appealing to you.

Online storage has its uses, but it's no substitute for a bootable clone of your hard drive if you're stuck somewhere far from help with a failed HD. How will you access that online storage if you can't boot your computer?

For portability, OWC's 'Mercury on the Go' HDs are really sweet; they're small and light in weight. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go.

Yea, this is good. I was also thinking of similar "in reverse" for my own config.

This is my thought process with new MBP:
1) Configure with 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
2) Get 200GB Mercury Extreme Pro RE SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 9.5mm Solid State Drive
3) Get OWC Mercury On-The-Go Portable 2.5" FW800/USB2.0 Enclosure Kit for Serial ATA (SATA) NoteBook HDs
4) Replace 500GB Serial ATA with 200GB Mercury Extreme Pro
5) Place 500GB Serial ATA in OWC Mercury On-The-Go Portable Enclosure
6) Use SuperDuper with Time Machine ( http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html) "allowing you to store a bootable backup alongside your Time Machine volume."

This would allow me to try SSDs in MBP, have decent backup plan, use disk that came with MBP. And, would make use of USB if needed data to be ultra-portable. Would also consider various Internet backups.

Online storage has its uses, but it's no substitute for a bootable clone of your hard drive if you're stuck somewhere far from help with a failed HD. How will you access that online storage if you can't boot your computer?

Definitely agree, just would pose similar question: "How do you boot from a bootable clone of your hard drive that you have just misplaced or lost?" The reality is summed up by "AnonyMouse" TOTAL reliability, forget it 'cause there ain't no such thing.

Supposedly, someone could use a combination of all the suggestion here. Essentially, that comes down to a practical question of how much is your data worth in terms of time and money. Of course, some people may claim sentimental value (i.e. to pictures) is priceless. If people are interested in considering the "time and money" aspect, I usually will float them " Data Backup and Recovery Options" by Jeff Drake ( http://infosecwriters.com/textresources/pdf/BackupJDrake.pdf) or similar article. If people are concerned about "Ultimate Security", which there is no such thing for data, I will usually float them a link to "The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan W. Watts ( http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Insecurity-Alan-W-Watts/dp/0394704681), since it then seems that a philosophical reading might be more to their advantage.