Comments on: Striped OCZ 120GB SSDs (RAID 0 Array) in a MacBook Pro

By: Joe Magee

Joe Magee — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:06:35 +0000

Hey Ed, great article! Thanks for sharing your success with the combo. I'm picking up two OCZ Vertex EX SLC SSD Drives in about a month. I have a vendor who is picking up a large lot of them and is going to break me off with a pair for a very good price. I'm realllly pumped to see how the SLC Drives will do in the config. I'll be sure to post my results and for comparitive purposes I'll run the same tests that you did.

BTW, what filesystem did you format the drives in?

Thanks again Man! - Joe Magee

P.S. I may ping you if I get hung up on the drive formatting I've experienced that issue previously hand had some issues.

By: Michael Finocchiaro

Michael Finocchiaro — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:10:00 +0000

Which of these is inside the new mid-2009 17″ MBP? How good is your overall VMware performance on the SSD? Are you so convinced that you are never going back to traditional spindle drives? I am hesitating b/w the 500GB 7200 rpm and the 256GB SSD primarily because I think that VMware might drive the performance down. I don’t suppose that there are numbers comparing the drives here with the Intel X25-M that everyone is raving about? Post XXVI alludes to an article but leaves no URL to get to it…

By: echeng

echeng — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:25:59 +0000

Here is an excellent article comparing the new OCZ Vertex series to the Intel X25-M SSD (and others). It is definitely worth reading!

By: PoPPaP

PoPPaP — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:56:46 +0000

@david

I have no problem waking up with OptiBay. I have 15" Unibody MBP. 2x Samsung 256GB SSD in RAID0

Have you tried swap the drive from the OptiBay to the HDD bay? But I shouldn't make any different though...

By: david

david — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:52:05 +0000

Snaps to Eric for inspiring me to ditch the optical drive. This blog tipped me over.

Anyone having sleep issues with the OptiBay? I have a unibody (late 08) MBP and I cannot wake my computer from sleep (with an Intel X-25M SSD in the Optibay as startup disk).

I've tried a bunch of different things, but no matter what I do...when I sleep the mbp (by closing lid or clicking sleep), the thing won't wake...that white led just shines and shines...

By: Barclay Horner

Barclay Horner — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:29:49 +0000

I ended up ordering a standard optical bay HD tray from newmodeus for $44.00. Included in the tray is a pata/sata bridge. The tray itself will not fit in the aluminum MBP. But I removed the bridge and connected a drive to the logic board with it while securing the drive with a couple pieces of adhesive Velcro. Works great and the drive is securely in place. My favorite part about having raid 0 ssd other then the speed is not hearing the superdrive twitch upon start up. So yes, the newmodeus device is a cheaper alternative then the optibay. But you will need to be ok with an alternative method of securing the drive.

By: philiKON

philiKON — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:01:47 +0000

I can verify that the NewModeUS optical bay cage doesn’t fit into the MBP. However it can be made to fit with some simple tools. I’m now happily enjoying two harddrives in my machine as well, albeit in a different setup. See http://philikon.wordpress.com/.....cbook-pro/ for details.

By: Data

Data — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:02:07 +0000

Hello all, great read about the Raid in the MBP thanks for that ;-).

I would like to ask your opinion on these drives in comparising to the available 7200rpm drives.I'm hoping to get a new Alu MBP by the end of this year and i would luike to know if a single SSD 120 Gig drive, would out perform a 7200rpm hdd.

Basicly the difference between a 320Gig/7200rpm hdd and a 120gig SSD drive like the OCZ used here. I will be using it as a dj set up with serato ( music is on an external drive of course ) and recording at the same time, so i think that will be I/O intensive and for that reason could benefit from the read/write speeds of a ssd.

In comparrising it's more then twice as expensive, but if the reliability goes up ( no moving parts ) and the real life handeling of the apps goes up i would definitly loan ;-), the extra bucks to get a ssd drive.

So if any of you have any experience with the new MBP and one of those , or any other brand of SSD , could you tell me please if it is wotrh it, thank you in advance, Data.

By: philiKON

philiKON — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:32:25 +0000

Indeed, the NewModeUS optical bay cage won’t fit into the MBP, but it can be made to fit with some simple tools, as I’ve demonstrated on my blog: http://philikon.wordpress.com/.....cbook-pro/.

By: Barclay

Barclay — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 08:12:46 +0000

I gave a call to Nomodeus today to ask if there optical drive bay module would fit in a alu MBP. They told my that it would not but they were making one to come out in January/February. In the meantime I have ordered an optibay and I am taking a real hard look at G.skills 128gb ssd on New Egg going for $259.00.

Eric, I am really curious with all of your drive modifications that you have done, how has it affected your performance with aperture and cs3. Fast start up times are neat, but photo processing cost/performance is the main goal for me.

Your site and work is awesome btw.