SSD 2.5" SATA for replacing Macbook Pro boot drive

[Belmit]

'Lo!

I've just purchased a new MBP 13" and was looking around at the current SSDs available, since Apple charge waaay over the odds for one of these.

Have been looking at the prices of the 128GB Kingston V+ and Intel X25 series, but on the whole they're still pretty pricy, especially as I've just shelled out for a whole new laptop.

Does anyone know of anywhere that does good prices on these, or have more knowledge about how long SSDs are likely to stay at the current prices? It's really the first time I've looked at it so I'm not that au fait with the technology.

[Feek]

I've been looking at these for a while and at some point I'm going to pick up the 80Gb Intel jobbie. Prices have fallen a lot but seem to have steadied recently with a number of faster drives appearing.

[Glaucus]

Do you need a 128GB hard drive even with multiple games you are unlikely to use even half of that.

it also depends. you can get some very cheap second hand ones from the first generation. Which are around 80/100mbps but still have the immense seek time. The new generation are around 190/230mbps. For a laptop and anything other than massive file writing or faster loading game maps, it's unlikely you will notice the speed increase.

[Belmit]

Hmm, I could probably get away with as low as a 64GB, but I'll be loading some large-ish programs like Logic Pro. My external HD can handle the usual media overflow though.

Will look into the lower speed ones too. Thanks.

[divine]

I'd avoid older ones, they often suffer heavily from performance degradation, poor controller chips or firmwares, some had write speeds slower than that of a 5400rpm hard drive etc.

I'd not get one unless you can get one of the latest ones, the best choices atm being Intel's G2 drives (Kingston do a rebrand too) or one of the Indilinx drives like the OCZ Vertex drives.

I don't know about OSX but Windows has only just introduced TRIM support which IMO is a fairly essential feature to an SSD and I wouldn't be buying one without support for it. Currently I don't think any drives support it but the Intel and Indilinx stuff can be upgraded to a newer firmware as and when (though most manufacturers don't recommend you try and upgrade a boot drive) support gets added.

It's something i'd still personally hold off of for at least 3 months or so yet...

[Belmit]

OK, thanks for the info. Not sure I can afford it right now, especially considering the inconsistencies and current pricing. I'm sure it'll be far easier to access once it becomes more normal to use SSD, which it inevitably will. Will hold off for now.

[divine]

Another reason i'd prefer to let the market mature:

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news...-ssd-death.ars

Intel release new firmware - new firmware bricks swathes of drives. Intel are supposed to be leaders of the market and they still can't manage to do this properly yet.