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Eyenigma · Aug 31, 2010, 08:48 PM

So I recently bought a Macbook Pro w. a SSD - and needless to say I am in love with the speed. Naturally it has me looking to upgrade my MacPro with the exact same. But my question is if I would gain any advantage to having ALL drives in the box SSD's versus a typical SATA drive. What I've done now is use one drive for the OS and apps, and a dedicated drive for documents and files.

I have no problem springing for a SSD for the main drive, but is it overkill for the documents one too? Is there any advantage (say for example, read/write access?)

Lateralus · Aug 31, 2010, 09:19 PM

I honestly wouldn't bother with an SSD for something as rarely used as a backup/documents drive. There will definitely be improvements in the read/write speed, of course. But whether or not you would actually notice them given the drive's purpose is another matter. I doubt it.

Eyenigma · Sep 1, 2010, 01:41 AM

Maynard,

Let me explain better... I am a designer. So I have all of my apps on the main HD, which would be the SSD. I guess another way of asking: When working with large files, (say for example, a large print file)... If Photoshop or Illustrator is running off the SSD but reading/writing from a SATA drive... does one defeat the other?

Is it a case where the application can only go as fast as the slowest component in the system?

To be clearer: The drive is not for backups, it's where I store all of my design files. The idea was to separate 1TB of data completely away from the OS drive in the event of drive failure, etc. I have other drives for backups, external and otherwise. Right now of course, in my current MacPro this is done with multiple SATA drives. So if I had 1 ssd but still used a traditional SATA for the files I design, am I really just negating the advantages of the SSD in the first place?

reader50 · Sep 1, 2010, 02:32 AM

Who is 'Maynard'?

1 TB SSDs are not cheap at 40 or more times the price of a regular 1 TB HD. An SSD for system & apps will accelerate bootup & application launching. Apps that use cache space on the boot drive will gain some speed there too.

Using an SSD for a data drive will cause files to open/save faster. But that's a heck of a lot to pay for such a speedup. You'd have to be opening/saving big files all day, with your time worth serious money. That, or tell us cost is no object and we'll stop objecting.

mduell · Sep 1, 2010, 08:14 PM

You're always better off with more on the SSD, but even just having your OS/apps/current project on the SSD with old projects/backups on spinning disks will give you a significant bump.

Eyenigma · Sep 1, 2010, 08:16 PM

Good to know, I guess my concern/question was whether using a regular SATA for storing the documents I work on would essentially negate the speed of the SSD for the primary Macintosh HD. Thanks for all of the input.

Snow-i · Sep 1, 2010, 08:28 PM

Short answer is no, it won't.

mduell · Sep 1, 2010, 10:01 PM

Working with those documents will be no faster. You need to have your working set on the SSD. Keep the spinny disk for storage.

Veltliner · Sep 2, 2010, 07:35 PM

Prices on SSDs are dropping.

The current price for an SSD as a main drive is $1250 (down from $1450 initially).

SSDs as second and third etc. drive still cost $1400 - for whatever reason.

CharlesS · Sep 3, 2010, 12:41 AM

$1250? What is that for, a 512 GB drive or something? 256 GB SSDs typically run from $550 to $700 these days. A 128 GB would be even less if you could deal with that small a boot disk. If you've got a Mac Pro, you don't need a huge SSD boot drive, since you can just install a big HDD to store your data (which won't benefit as much from the SSD as your apps and system will).

P · Sep 3, 2010, 02:44 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

$1250? What is that for, a 512 GB drive or something?

Yes.

Originally Posted by CharlesS

256 GB SSDs typically run from $550 to $700 these days. A 128 GB would be even less if you could deal with that small a boot disk. If you've got a Mac Pro, you don't need a huge SSD boot drive, since you can just install a big HDD to store your data (which won't benefit as much from the SSD as your apps and system will).

I agree. A 128 gig drive should be enough - just having the OS with all its libs on the SSD will be a huge boost. I wouldn't go lower, though - smaller drives tend to have lower bandwidth, which can hurt in some situations.

Veltliner · Sep 4, 2010, 01:11 AM

Originally Posted by P

A 128 gig drive should be enough - just having the OS with all its libs on the SSD will be a huge boost. I wouldn't go lower, though - smaller drives tend to have lower bandwidth, which can hurt in some situations.

Apple doesn't offer smaller drives.

If installing it is easy, one could buy a smaller drive and install it.

But I would want a drive large enough to store all projects on it I'm currently working on and my core image library.

But if the prices keep dropping...