OS X 10.6 Experience on 64GB SSD

Hi Everyone,

I have an older Samsung SLC RBX series 64GB SSD lying around. This was one of the very first generation SSDs to come out on the market. I was interested in installing this in my early 2009 15" MBP, and I wanted to ask how the experience of a limited hard drive (i.e. only 64GB) will be in Mac OS X. I am currently on a 500GB WD Scorpio Blue, and have about 50% used with various documents, music, etc. Obviously, I realize that I won't have the same functionality with a more limited hard drive. However, the speed improvement I think will be far worth the decrease in capacity, and I was hoping that someone with experience running Mac OS X on lower capacities drive could chime and let me know of some of the pros and cons.

Thanks!

 

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Huh?


(this is here to reach the 10 character minimum threshold)

 

He's pointing out that the link in your sig is broken

The only pro is going to be HDD speed with the SSD, and most of the early SLC versions had fair/decent write speeds to go with the blazing reads.

Con is going to be the 1/4 of your current used drive space that you have all that media and docs on. You're going to have to seriously cut back on the amount of media you're carrying around, and depending on your current installed software this may be more or less painful. No one uses a small SSD if they want to have even a moderate media collection, it doesn't work out. That solution is only effective in desktops where you can have the SSD as the OS drive, and a rotary HDD for storage. Given your current space usage, I'm going to guess that this transition will be more trouble than it's worth.

 

How about removing your super drive and putting SL on the 64GB SSD and all your docs, etc onto the 500GB HDD. That should solve all your problems. Besides, with early generation SSDs, you dont want to fill the drive too much if you want to maintain decent speeds. If this is an option for you, I believe there is a long thread about how to replace the superdrive with a HD caddy, which is very simple on the 15" MBP and costs around $40 -or less.

I am currently running a 160GB SSD. I was originally going to put the 500GB in place of the superdrive for storage, but I have about 25GB on the SSD now and the max I'd probably go will be around 50GB. Based on this, I decided to keep the superdrive. If in the future I change my mind, that's a very easy mod actually. The alternative in the future -albeit more costly- would be to replace the 160GB Intel SSD with a 320GB once they are out early 2010

 

You shouldn't have any issues for basic work/play. I gave - or more accurately perhaps, inflicted - one of my crudtastic Rev.A 1.8/64 SSD Air's on a friend, and I did the Snow Leopard upgrade for her with no capacity issues. She doesn't however do anything with movies or music, just photos.

As the post above says, you could do the dual-drive thing.