SSD or HDD and 2.2GHZ or 2.3GHZ??????? HELP!!

If that is the case wouldn't it make more sense to put the HDD in the faster bay since it is the slowest and would benefit the most from the extra speed? An SSD is so fast that the difference would be undetectable.

I noticed a couple of people suggest sticking with the standard HDD and put a SSD in the optical bay. Can someone please explain how you would do this? Do you need to take it to an apple store and get them to make the switch or is it possible to do yourself? Also from what I can understand you have the system and applications on the SSD and store files/movies/music etc on the HDD, and this will result in a jump in performance of the computer?

Sorry if my questions are silly, just trying to understand as I am in the same boat and can't decide if I should go for a SSD or stick with the regular HDD.

Cheers

If I were running the OS and Apps from the SSD, I'd want it on SATA 3 (6 Gb/s). That is assuming that the SSD runs SATA 3.

I just looked up my 7200 RPM Seagate 2.5" HDD and see that it is "limited" to 3 Gb/s, and that the SSD I was considering is also 3 Gb/s. With those specs, it still seems it'd be better to run the OS and Apps on the SSD on the faster interface.

I will be sitting back and watching for the time being, the 3 Gb/s are still a bit rich for my taste. ::grin::

Good luck! Joel.

They are do-it-yourself projects, although MCE does offer $50 or $100 services to install it for you.

OWC offers great videos to see how it's done, you can judge from there if you think it's something you could safely do. AppleCare is voided only if you damage the computer, not automatically when you open the computer.

Here are the products from their respective vendors:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ydtm7aa

http://preview.tinyurl.com/25ytdjy


Good luck! Joel.

Oh, Australia, good day mate!

My Australian friends just laugh and laugh when I say "mate," they apparently think I have a funny accent!

My links are probably irrelevant to you, sorry. Other than info gathering, and videos, I guess.

I'm of the opinion that if you don't know if you need an SSD or not, then you don't. Personally, I know I "need" one, but I am still holding off till they come down further in price, which I know they will.

My 7200 RPM internal drive is quite a bit faster in my late 2008 MBP than its previous 5400 RPM, but I only use 7200 on one of my MBPs, the one I use for video editing.

Funny, I recently saw a receipt from several years ago when I paid almost $200 for a 5400 RPM 320 GB drive, and my current 7200 RPM 750 GB drive is now $103 at OWC!

Good luck! Joel.

I just did this data doubler install myself on my 15" MBP. It was easy and took about 20 minutes. I put a 120GB SSD in the optical bay and 1TB drive in the HDD bay. I put the optical drive in OWC's $24 case and now I can use it when I need it (which is rarely). This setup works great, and the SSD is fast. A few seconds to boot and rarely more than one bounce of the dock icon to launch applications.

That's great! I've done enough swapping drives and RAM with Unibody MBPs that those two things take about 5 minutes. I wish I could get into my 27" iMac, but sources I trust tell me to stay away from that big boy!

I think you didn't have a choice of where to put your 1TB, I don't think it'd fit in the Data Doubler, unless someone is making a new thinner 1 TB drive.

Did you find some links with info about sym links, etc. for your two drive setup? I'd love to read up on it some more while waiting on the price reductions.

Thanks. Joel.

Ha! I'm going to have to agree with your Aussie mate and say it is funny when people say it in an accent we aren't used to.

Thanks for all the advice, I'm pretty set on going the OWC route after reading a bit about it, I was always wanting a SSD for the speed bump but was a bit unsure about it because of the storage capacity as my current 500GB HDD is packed. The data doubler seems like it will solve all my problems.

Hi Gucks,

I am waiting on the delivery of a new MBP 15" with a 500gb 7200 rpm drive. I plan to leave it where it is and replace the DVD drive with a 256gb SSD 6gbps that's sitting on my desk. I have an Optibay clone on its way from Hong Kong that is a caddy for the disk in place of where the DVD goes.

It has been suggested that it's best to keep your internal drive in the original bay due to the auto shock protection as the DVD bay does not have that. This means the HDD is on the 6gpbs SATA port and the SSD will be on the 3gbps port.

That does imply it's not the most performant configuration but it's the simplest method for intallation and as someone has said in this thread, the performance might be more balanced anyway and still miles ahead of a standard single disk HDD. Multiple disk spindles is certainly a sound way to get better performance.

With a bit of shuffling of folders, I will then get OSX onto the SSD and my Home folder and business folders onto the HDD and change the system boot disk to be the SSD.

After that it's some testing to determine where the Windows VM's perform best.

Check out the macrumors forums on this topic as there is plenty being written about this at the moment and its all really useful.

Cheers
Firman (ex of South Autralia)

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If that is the case wouldn't it make more sense to put the HDD in the faster bay since it is the slowest and would benefit the most from the extra speed? An SSD is so fast that the difference would be undetectable.
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No, not really. The physical drive will never exhaust a SATA II (3Gbps) connection anyway as it's simply not fast enough. Putting a physical drive on a SATA III port will only run at SATA II speeds. It will make no difference at all.

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I noticed a couple of people suggest sticking with the standard HDD and put a SSD in the optical bay. Can someone please explain how you would do this?
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Some relevant blog entries for you:

Fitting a second hard disk to a Macbook Pro: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2011/3/5Fitting_a_Second_Hard_Disk_to_an_Apple_MacbookPro.html
2011 Macbook pro & SATA III: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2011/3/32011_Macbook_Pro_and_SATA_III6Gbps.html

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I wish I could get into my 27" iMac, but sources I trust tell me to stay away from that big boy!
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Oh yes. Be afraid 🙂 Took me about 1.5 hours to do mine and it was a royal pain and quite pocket scaring.

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I think you didn't have a choice of where to put your 1TB, I don't think it'd fit in the Data Doubler, unless someone is making a new thinner 1 TB drive.
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Correct - only 1Tb drives I know of currently are 12.5mm as opposed to 9mm. They're too tall to put in the OptiBay.

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Did you find some links with info about sym links, etc. for your two drive setup? I'd love to read up on it some more while waiting on the price reductions.
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These posts should help.

Redirecting folders on OSX: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/12/15Redirecting_folders_on_AppleOSX.html
Moving the MobileMe Sparse Bundle for iDisk: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2011/2/27Moving_the_idisk_Sparse_Bundle_forMobileMe.html

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Ha! I'm going to have to agree with your Aussie mate and say it is funny when people say it in an accent we aren't used to.
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I find it funnier that absolutely nobody in the world other than an Aussie can say Cairns without sounding, well, a bit silly 🙂

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It has been suggested that it's best to keep your internal drive in the original bay due to the auto shock protection as the DVD bay does not have that. This means the HDD is on the 6gpbs SATA port and the SSD will be on the 3gbps port.
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I have never seen evidence of this although I have heard it said a few times. Also, why not just find a hard disk that has in built shot protection anyways? That way you can have the SSD on the 6Gbps port? Assuming the SSD is SATA III capable anyway.

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After that it's some testing to determine where the Windows VM's perform best
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Most of my dev VMs are on my physical drive however I have one Windows 7 setup that runs via Parallels on the SSD. This is my 'normal' office & dev environment that then links to the other VMs on the physical drive. Fantastic performance all round.

As a general thing I've noticed there's an awful lot of interest in this set up now. I can understand why - it's incredibly capable.

Those 2.20 benchmarks are obviously wrong, there's no logic in there and you can not think that the 2.20 is nearly 50% faster then 2.30