Should You Opt for Apple’s solid state drive?

2010-05-26 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: laptop, MacBook, MacBook Pro, RAID, SSD

Get an SSD that takes a beating and just keeps working

I regularly receive emails from readers asking whether they should spend the money on Apple’s solid state drive offering. The answer is simple— hell no.

Apple has offered a solid state drive (SSD) as an option in the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air for some time now. You can now order a 512GB SSD with your MacBook Pro for only $1300 more (save on a MacBook Pro here).

For many of us, spending an extra $1300 might cause heart palpitations. But if you’re lucky enough to have that kind of cash, don’t you want a solid state drive that is the fastest option to begin with, and stays fast?

An SSD is like getting married— it might feel great on the honeymoon, but the wrong choice can be expensive*.

Solid state drives are not all the same— there is wide variance in top speed, speed with use, and even data safety and reliability.

D0 you want a drive with 0% over-provisioning? Or one with 7% or 28%? You don’t even have to know what over-provisioning means to know which option is a Bad Idea.

Simply put, I wouldn’t spend my money on the Apple options. Or most of the other ones.

Go straight to the Mercury Extreme Pro, a drive I’ve beaten the crap out of using multiple Mac Pros and the MacBook Pro, both with RAID and as a single drive. It’s as fast as you can get in a Mac today, and stays that way, while other brands crap-out. It will still be fast in 2012.

My everyday working machine uses dual 200GB SSDs as a 400GB volume (RAID-0 stripe). It rocks as a system drive, a Photoshop scratch drive, you name it: disk I/O ceases to be an issue. If I could afford it, I would install six 400GB SSDs and forget about internal hard drives. But prices will come down, and I will “get there” eventually.

* Why is divorce so expensive? (because it’s worth it)