Best SSD upgrade for 2012 MacBook Pro? Adata, Corsair, Intel, Kingston, Samsung...

[ponder]

Samsung or Intel.

 

[PostmanPot]

Best SSD upgrade for 2012 MacBook Pro? Adata, Corsair, Intel, Kingston, Samsu...

Thanks, this is what I feared. Though going 500GB should help a bit you say?

This review only includes the 2TB and 512GB models, but it gives you an idea:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-evo-ssd-review/3

I had to go look for a review that includes three different sizes - here's one for the Cruical models:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9144/crucial-bx100-120gb-250gb-500gb-1tb-ssd-review/4

For Samsung's part, they list the performance as follows (for the 850 Evo):

Random Read (4KB, QD32)

• 120 GB : Up to 94,000 IOPS
• 250 GB : Up to 97,000 IOPS
• 500GB, 1TB, 2TB : Up to 98,000 IOPS

Random Write (4KB, QD32)

• 120,250 GB : Up to 88,000 IOPS
• 500GB, 1TB, 2TB : Up to 90,000 IOPS

The gap seems to have closed a bit in the 850 series (or Samsung is cooking the numbers ) - the difference is a bit more prominent in the 840 Evo series:

Random Read (4KB, QD32)

• Max. 98,000 IOPS (500GB / 750GB / 1TB)
• Max. 97,000 IOPS (250GB)
• Max. 94,000 IOPS (120GB)

Random Write (4KB, QD32)

• Max. 90,000 IOPS (500GB / 750GB / 1TB)
• Max. 70,000 IOPS (250GB)
• Max. 36,000 IOPS (120GB)

It is:

SATA1 = 1.5G
SATA2 = 3G
SATA3 = 6G

And Neoprod is right: I have a 2011 MBP (Sandybridge) and it has SATA3 controllers.

For what it's worth, I picked the 850 Pro over the 850 Evo for the following reasons:

	840 Evo	850 Evo	850 Pro
MTBF	1.5 million hours	1.5 million hours	2 million hours
TB Written	? (840 Pro was 73	150	300
Warranty	3 years (or TBW limit)	5 years (or TBW limit)	10 years (or TBW limit)

The 480 GB OCZ Vertex II in my MBP is on its last legs, and since I replace my laptops roughly every 5 years, its replacement will spend maybe a year in the MBP and the rest of its life in my PC, where it will mostly be used for video editing, so I'd like it to last a while


(side note: anyone know how to make a new line after a table? )

Thanks again for the detailed info. I suppose the 850 Pro will be about as good as it gets. Great warranty too, of course.

One thing that concerns me is that the 850 Pro has been out a while now. I wonder if its replacement is imminent or not.

Samsung or Intel.

Would have preferred Intel but it doesn't look like they're competing too well with Samsung in this segment.

 

[Space_Chief]

The thing to remember is that virtually all these SSDs should outlast their software and CPUs. And by the time one gets to upgrade the CPU and software much faster sizes and speeds at lower prices will be available, never mind different (new gen) SATA/PCIE spec.

I have an Intel X25-M 160GB SSD here. It's now so small as to be virtually worthless. So it just sits here gathering dust on a shelf. I have a 480GB which has taken its place 2-3 years ago and now I see I can get a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro for a similar price this thing cost at SATA3 speeds. I could have done better by going for a half price cheapie initially, yet I laboured under the impression I needed to get a better drive (Intel X-25M was the best MLC drive at the time) to make it future proof and whatnot.

 

[koffiejunkie]

One thing that concerns me is that the 850 Pro has been out a while now. I wonder if its replacement is imminent or not.

Doesn't make the 850 any less good. You're not going to get much better performance (if any) out of a new model - they're performing very close to the limits of SATA3 already. For what it's worth, I have a SATA2 SSD in my MBP - it does about 250MB/s - but despite being much slower than the PCIe based flash in my MBA, the difference is only obvious when I write out large file from a source that's fast enough.

The thing to remember is that virtually all these SSDs should outlast their software and CPUs.

That very much depends on what your workload is like. If you do work that does a lot of writing to disk, you shorten the lifespan. I do a fair bit of video - writing 10s of GB, sometimes 100s of GB per day. My old SSD, which I've only bought about 2 years ago, is starting to fail. Granted, modern SSDs - have better reliability, but they'll still fail eventually.

Another thing to address your comment: Even with the video work I do, my 4-year old MBP comfortably handles 4K video, so I don't see a reason to replace it until 8K rolls around. What's that, another 10 years?

 

[Space_Chief]

That very much depends on what your workload is like. If you do work that does a lot of writing to disk, you shorten the lifespan. I do a fair bit of video - writing 10s of GB, sometimes 100s of GB per day. My old SSD, which I've only bought about 2 years ago, is starting to fail. Granted, modern SSDs - have better reliability, but they'll still fail eventually.

Another thing to address your comment: Even with the video work I do, my 4-year old MBP comfortably handles 4K video, so I don't see a reason to replace it until 8K rolls around. What's that, another 10 years?

True. If you write 100's of GBs per day you want the fastest available. Still if you're doing that it's your money earner so you'll go for a proper solution.

Still did you see that old Samsung 830 benchmark?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...25nm-Vs-34nm&p=5136732&viewfull=1#post5136732

180 days of non-stop erasing and writing. Now that's 6months.

4,556 TiB.

Even for you, suppose you work 8 hours per day and use the drive non stop at that time, that's still 18months of such usage.

Ok. Maybe you render stuff overnight but then chances are you still have raid of these as 256GB is puny. So for a RAID of 4, it's 4 times that on average.

Note that your 4 y/d MBP is getting older and older and newer machines will render your stuff at much faster rate, never mind that future upgrades to your NLE and After Effects et al may require new versions of these applications or new plugins.

Also SSDs are going down in price. Instead of getting top of the range back then, you could have gotten middle of the road and so on. But if you're an a good budget it doesn't matter. Such discussions are then moot as the price differences are only a few hundred dollars at best overall which is peanuts for professionals.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Still did you see that old Samsung 830 benchmark?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...25nm-Vs-34nm&p=5136732&viewfull=1#post5136732

No, I didn't read page 209 of some obscure forum

180 days of non-stop erasing and writing. Now that's 6months.

You have to admit that, like Backblaze's statistics, this hardly represents a realistic workload for any desktop/laptop user.

And you seem the miss the point of my previous SSD that died within three years despite a much lighter workload (I've been using external drives for video thus far). So yes, there's a good chance it will last a very long time. But if it doesn't, having a 10 year warranty certainly doesn't hurt!