500 gb SATA or 128gb SSD?

Jeff2666 wrote:

the SSD is much faster and more reliable

Fast, yes, more reliable, I'm not so sure.

For development, I'd probably go with the SSD, plus an ext'l drive. And make sure to back up religiously.

I would go with an SSD because I love mine 😝. Then as you suggested, get a large external drive, or any external drive depending on how much data you plan on storing. I don't know the prices Apple is selling SSD's, but you could always look around and maybe find something larger for a little bit more if you are worried about space. Then you can just swap out the hard drives and get an external enclosure. Either way, SSD would be an awesome investment, even if it is a little bit more money 🙂. Not sure if doing a personal hdd upgrade voids the warranty.

purchase the mac with the HDD and then get an SSD from a third party and install it yourself and save a lot of money. I did this myself and it is not complicated at all. You can install the HDD in an external enclosure once it's removed and use it as an external hard drive.

Your solution was also given to me less than a week ago. I have a MBP with the 500GB 5200 drive and would like a faster drive. I was told the exact same thing! Use time machine to transfer all your data to the new (SSD)hard drive, put it in, then use the original and a exernal backup.

roddyrod wrote:

Use time machine to transfer all your data to the new (SSD)hard drive, put it in, then use the original and a exernal backup.

I actually find it easier to 1) order and external enclosure and SSD/HDD at the same time. 2) rather than use Time Machine, use a cloning program such as CarbonCopyCloner. Installed the new, bare SSD into the external enclosure and download the cloning program. Plug the new SSD that is in the external enclosure to your mac, and run the cloning program. It makes a mirror image of your current drive to the new one. Then, just swap them.

I just switched out my SSD for a Seagate 500GB 7200RPM XT model (has Solid State device in the drive.

So far it boot slower then the SSD buty for opening programs and such I'm not noticing a big difference. I needed more space on the main drive to install Win 7 and 2 other versions of OS X.

IMO 128GB is very tight, you must have very light onboard needs, 500GB is good size to grow into.

If you have large file needs (video, bootcamp, virtual machines etc) then a 750GB or 1TB is better.

IMO, SSD's are highly overrated and overpriced per GB. They work in small devices subjective to shock, but not well in computers yet.

The true speed of SSD's isn't realized because most people work with small file sizes all the time and large files very rarely, if at all.

I've learned this running a RAID 0 as a boot drive in my PowerMacG5 for several years, only on high storage demand I/O and large files does a fast storage come into play. Sort of like havng a race car on city streets, no place for it to open up and run hard.

SSD comes in handy trasfering large files (hundreds of GB's) to another SSD, then one realizes a huge speed advantage over hard drives.

If you transfer huge files all the time, then you need a large SSD, not a small one

A disadvantage of SSD is that they wear out faster than a hard drive, so thus don't make good large file/transfer devices anyway.

SSD to hard drive transfers, it defaults to the slowest speed, the hard drive, so there is no advatage there, your external also has to be a large SSD then you need a fast pipe (thunderbolt)

So with SSD it's better to go all large or really not at all except in a small use device (Airs, iPhones etc)

The advantage of SSD is you get no bit failures like hard drives do, but you lose the ability to "scrub" your drive like a hard drive for privacy reasons, so then you have to enable Filevault and encrypt your SSD boot entirely, which if you have a problem makes file recovery impossible from outside means. Also Filevault robs your computer's performance decdoing and encoding everything to the SSD.

So don't let the SSD fool you, in real world use for most users there really is little difference between 5,400, 7,200 and a SSD. Storage size is what will break you and 128GB is a joke, your going to wanting to increase that in short order most likely as you add content to your machine.

And with the right Mac 13"-17", you could always upgrade to a 500GB SSD later on when the prices come down yourself, doesn't void your warranty if you don't break anything.

http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

Good luck 😀

Shootist007 wrote:

....but for opening programs and such I'm not noticing a big difference.

It's because in small reads/write, there is really little noticable difference between 5,400, 7,200 and a SSD.

It's only when your moving massive files around that a SSD will perform.

I have my 5,400 optimized, using only the first 50% of the drive and it's quite snappy, the other half is a clone.

If I started using photoshop and the like, I likely go with a SSD as a boot/program and replace the Superdrive with a 1TB 7,200 for files.

128GBs is tight if it's the only drive in the system. I had a 128GB installed but I want to run Windows 7 and Snow Leopard and a second copy of Lion, main boot is .2 and the second copy will be .3 as a test bed.

Hard to do all that on a 128GB drive.

For you a large 7,200 RPM likely would be in order as OS X and Windows can only be installed via the internal optical drive (no external) unless you can clone/winclone a existing one married to that machine already.

Well I'm going to give it a try using a USB stick with the Win 7 install files on it. Only time will tell.

The last time I ran BC to get all the driver/support files it had an option to install from USB.

I'll find out in about a hour. I'm defragging my main drive before I run boot camp.