Which SSD for Mid 2010 White MacBook

Hey guys

I want a 120GB SSD for my MacBook.

I have tried a Corsair Force 3 (I know my MacBook is only SATA II), and have had the same problem as a lot of MacBook Pro users, in that the SSD will only work at SATA I speeds (negotiates at 1.5Gbps). I returned that SSD and am after another one. MacBook Pro users were treated to a fix by Apple, however my MacBook is unlikely to get a fix from Corsair or Apple.

I was looking at getting one of the OCZ drives, because I know they have a fix for the SATA I problem on their website. However, as I understand it, they're the worst for reliability.

I have been told that I need a Sandforce drive, because OS X doesn't support TRIM, and sandforce does garbage collection, does anyone know which drives are sandforce?

Can anyone recommend any?

Cheers.

 

that sucks, having to use garbage drives. sandforce is hopless. i would try a intel ssd, im sure thats what apple uses.

Sent from my SGH-T989D using Tapatalk

 

Samsung or Toshiba actually

OP, get whatever is on sale the SATA 2 fix is still garbage for the Macbook and I doubt will ever be fully resolved

side note, good garbage collection is a good idea

 

In your case I would be looking for a V+100 Kingston to try.

See:
AnandTech - Kingston SSDNow V+100 Review

 

I think I'm going to get the OCZ Agility 3.

They are Sandforce controllers from what I can gather, and their customer support seems decent on the Mac OSX forum.

The Vertex 2E is the cheapest, but only by a couple of £, so I may as well get the SATA III SSD, just in case.

All of the others are quite pricey, the Crucial M4, and Intel SSDs are considerably more expensive.

@ Kojack - You can enable TRIM in Mac but it takes some tinkering and isn't guaranteed to work.

@ KCETech - Which drives are good at Garbage Collection? Also, when will garbage collection work? All the time or just when the Macbook is idle?

@ Tilleroftheearth - The Kingston SSD NOW is more expensive than the Agility 3 over here. Is it a better or worse drive than the OCZ drives? Is it a Sandforce drive?

Another couple of questions from me, if you don't mind.

Do firmware upgrades need to be sequential? (i.e 1.02, 1.03, 1.04 for example, or could I jump straight from 1.02 to 1.04)

What do you need to do to keep SSDs performing well?

 

The SF based drives are garbage. You're just asking for a world of hurt if you insist on using them (especially the OCZ version 3's - all of them).

If Apple chose them (Kingston's) for their product, who am I to question if they're better or not? The most important thing is that they're compatible (more so than the SF junk).

If a firmware needs a previous firmware installed first, it will let you know. I would just install the latest version available.

To keep an SSD performing at it's peak? lol... just use it and hope a better one comes along before you are tired of this one.

Good luck.

 

you can jump right to the latest

not to come off as too much of an annoying broad ..... Dont use OSX
I get roughly 2.5 times as much wear on the SSD's vs Solaris, Ubuntu or Windows

other than that there isn't much to do on newer gen SSD's as most of the maintenance is built into the controllers, first and second gen ones were extra work. IMO DONT try the TRIM hack, system stability can go south rather quickly

agreed but unfortunately their garbage collection works good on a Mac, I use M4's and just deal with the crap and wear

the kingstons and sandforce units you want ALOT if free space to keep them fast and help with wear leveling ( 20-30% free )

 

Thanks Guys,

@ KCETech - I don't have any other legal copies of anything, but will consider moving from OSX. Why is the degredation so high on them? Does this mean that they break quicker? Or that they just need erasing more often?

So KCETech, you think the Agility 3 or Kingston would be a good drive? (Which would you recommend? Seeing as you have experience with SSD an OSX)

The SSD itself will only ever get about 65% full at most. I currently use about 60GB now, but am likely to expand, hence why I'm not getting a 64GB SSD, but want a 120GB.

 

I have no issues with Kingston have not tried the Agility drives ( M4 and Intel gal here )

OSX kills SSD's faster for a couple reasons ( on my MBP 17" doing FCPS 7) I get 8 MONTHS of use from a drive before it has too much wear for me ( 25 %) im over a year on my other non OSX units with less than 10% wear

1 HFS file system loves to do thousands of little writes
2 Spotlight and search like to play all over your drive
3 TRIM or lack if decent use of it
4 so many kernel background processes doing 4K writes
5 ( Macs in general ) the Mac firmware doesnt seem to play nice with SSD's the implementation at the hardware level seems to be scabbed on ( 6 firmware updates to get it working so so 2 years ago anyone ?)

 

Ahh okay, so when the drive as too much wear, can you fix that?

I looked at some benchmarks on Anandtech, and the Kingston and Agility perform very similarly. Due to them both being the same price, and the Agility having SATA III capability, I'm tempted to get that one (they're in my price range, after all this is a stock MacBook, I don't really need anything really good like the M4)

I'll have a look around at prices. Who tend to be more reliable out of Kingston and OCZ?

Thanks for all the help guys, really useful. At least I think I've narrowed it down to two.

 

no you cant, the memory cells are unusable

personal preference Kingston, but thats nothing more than ive had great success with their products over the last decade or 2, I dont usually look at the smaller drives etc as its not what I tend to need

 

Thanks. I'll take a look and see if anyone else responds to this thread with a recommendation.

Wouldn't a 25% performance decrease in 8 months come under warranty? Is that not the same thing a secure erase can fix?

 

no because my write cycles are WAY above spec and it falls under the category of excessive or unusual use. I knew this from the beginning and just accept the fact a 1K SSD lasts under a year in my Mac video editing unit. Kindly they asked for my old one back to dissect it, and heavily discounted a new one

 

Ahh okay, so it's not something a secure erase can fix? To be honest, I'm only going to be using the SSD for normal use, I'm a normal home user, no video editing, music editing, coding or anything like that.

Do you think I'll still suffer from the same issues?

The only thing that's pushing me towards the Kingston is the 'always-on garbage collection'. As I understand it, for garbage collection to work on the Agility, I'd have to leave it at the logon screen on my Mac, and not let it sleep.

 

You should be fine for the life of your MB, and I would agree the always on garbage collection is the way to go.

 

I recommend a Samsung SSD.

 

Which one and how come?

Also, KCE Tech, I looked at the benchmarks on Anandtech, it appears that when running at SATA II the Agility 3 is much much faster (There are two options listed, one is Agility 3, the other Agility 3 (6gbps). I'm assuming the first one is SATA II)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/201?vs=372 - That is the link to the benchmarks I was comparing.

The Kingston is also a Toshiba, not a SandForce, however, as it has Garbage Collection, I'm assuming this doesn't matter?

 

After looking, the V+100 is a £50 more expensive than the agility 3.

I'm going to ask Kingston if the V100 still has the always on garbage collection.

Would you guys still recommend the V100 over the Agility 3?

 

No, V+100 is what Apple themselves choose. You're overthinking this.

If $50 is enough for you to go experimenting with your setup, then maybe you should not be considering getting an SSD for your Mac (if you also want a reliable and stable setup).

 

I'm not talking $, I'm talking £. It's rougly $80 more expensive.

It's £180 for a 120GB Kingston V+100, it's too much for me unfortunately.

 

There's a solution for that: keep saving.

Just because you can't do the optimum doesn't mean you're forced to do the worst either.