External SSD HD as system drive

The same for that one (same as my MBP): still, The SSD starts at 3GB/s instead of 1,5GB/s when you do as I say.

Marco, the SSD will do much more for you than a bit more memory. When your applications need more memory, the computer will start writing and reading on the harddisk, this also will go very much faster than on a normal HDD

Hello JeremyR -

I wonder if anyone will read this, but here it goes...For your same reasons, I too am curious about adding a Firewire(FW) 800 SSD and using it as my boot drive. Tomorrow I will test a drive for that purpose. Here is a link to the drive I chose: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MS8U3SSD120/

With this new external drive I plan to use the Carbon Copy Cloner app (http://www.bombich.com) to make a bootable clone of my iMac's internal drive (stock 1T 7200rpm). my intitial reason was for an emergency backup, but now i wonder if the new SSD will be snappier. Mac App Store has the Blackmagic Disc Speed app which you may know about. I clocked all my drives and will compare them to the new SSD connected by FW800.

Something worth mentioning about the external drive I purchased, very likely a 2.5" drive enclosure supporting Thunderbolt will hit the market. From what I've read, Thunderbolt will be bootable. When those products hit the market, cloning and booting from clones should be cheap, super fast, and easy.

for what it's worth, this kinda cracks me up......

There are bits......there are bytes. And it's annoying to me, kinda like everything else that's annoying, but contained to the annoying things..........

Mps (megabit per second)

MPs (megabyte per second)

8 Mps = 1 MBs (this information is based on 3 internet sources)

I use a FireWire 1 Gig 800 drive for my clone backups. You will only get FireWire 800 speed, nothing more nothing less. Startup time will be about a minute or so... Apps will bounce in the dock a few times before they open... If you not doing anything like video editing or compression you won't notice that much speed difference from you internal system HD.

Down the road I want to use an external Thunderbolt SSD drive to replace the system HD on my iMac (250 MB SSD). Be easier to replace and run faster than changing the SSD in the iMac.

DavidMBrewer: Firewire 800 is about the same spee as USB3. Do NOT use a SSD as backup or external disk: 1: lifetime is less than a magnetic disk, 2: recovery of deleted files (when necessary) does have much less chance than on a magnetic disk because the Trim and/or GarbageCollection on a SSD destroys all deleted files (to prepare for the next write) while they stay on a magnetic disk until the location of the deleted file is rewritten.

DavidFromAppleton: 1Mbs = 1Mega bit per second, 1MBs = 1M Byte per second, 1Byte = 8bit but seen as a stream you calculate on average 10Mbs for 1MBs because there are a lot of controlcharacters sent in a stream.

If you want speed for a second disk to start from: either FW800 or Thunderbolt, but use a HDD not SSD: the Thunderbolt is about the same speed as a HDD internally, The FW800 you calculate: If you have sata2 internally (3Gbs) it is 800/3000, if you have sata3 (6Gbs) it is 800/6000 which is 13%

Thanks for the added clarity on bit/byte differences.

LexSchellings, you have me concerned that my choice for a SSD external was a bad one. I read all around of others using SSDs without the lifetime or recovery concerns. Are you familiar with the OWC Pro 6G SSD drives? Most people seem very happy with them, and down the road I can move the drive into other bays or enclosures (Thunderbolt). I really trust the guy in the following link who seems to favor SSDs:

http://macperformanceguide.com/

I realize with FW800 connections you get FW800 speeds, but thought the SSD might have better continuous read/writes vs. a 7200rpm HDD? Well, the drive should arrive today and I will compare speeds tonight.

Thanks for the input.

David: I am not omniscient.. (ha..) I have about 5 years experience with SSD's, sata1 sata2 and sata3. The SSD is a different animal altogether than HDD: I use SSD for the startup disk always now and am spoiled by the lightning speed. I do not have SSD by the manufacturer of the computer but build them in afterwards, take the superdrive out and put the original HDD in its place.

For backup and long time storage I use only good quality harddisks, never CD's (very short storage time) nor SSD's (speed loss for write unless they are connected and can use Trim or Garbage collection).

I have Samsung, Crucial and Corsair SSD's, and have no issues whatsoever, except that it is very difficult to do a firmware update when they are not in a windows PC.

So my post was not to discourage you, but to point to the differences between HDD and SSD: use the SSD as the (internal) boot disk and HDD as backup/Storage disk.