SSD Upgrade Macbook Pro

Steve Clevenger said:

What is the best 512gb SSD to upgrade my Macbook Pro 2011 to run Logos5? 

thanks

Can't say that I've compared drives. But I recently got the 512GB Crucial m4 2.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s (SATA III) for both my laptop and my wife's laptop. Crucial has a tool that lets you know what SATA drives would be compatible with your specific MBP.

That said, I love the new SSD. I have a 2009 model, and it was starting to run dog slow. I put in the SSD, upgraded to Mountain Lion and it is humming along like it's a brand new machine.

I think you'll be happy with Crucial or Intel. They have great firmware, which matters more than just about anything with an SSD. Cheaper drives have bad algorithms for use which cause them to bottleneck and/or die earlier.

Steve Clevenger said:

Does L5 start up quicker?

For me Logos starts at least twice as fast with an SSD.  Opening to a layout only takes a few seconds after the signing in and online syncing is done I have a late 2011 Macbook pro (13 inch with 8gb RAM) and L5 starts in about 10 to 15 seconds (I start to a layout, not the home page). Most of that is time signing in and syncing.  I understand that these macbooks are a little sensitive about SATA III drives.  I tried the Crucial 512 but returned it due to problems. The drive would hang up for about 15 to 20 seconds every now and then.  This was a common complaint on various discussion groups for that drive and I don't know if it's been fixed yet.  

I currently have a Samsung 830 model at 512GB and couldn't be happier. System report shows it connecting as an SATA III drive and I haven't had any problems at all with it. Samsung has a newer modes (840 I beleive) that is competitively priced with the Crucial drives but it uses tri-level cells instead of MLC (two level cells) so life expectancy would be less.  Apple doesn't support theTrim function on drives other than the ones they sell but all modern SSDs include garbage collection routines in the firmware so this shouldn't be an issue.

An SSD speeds up just about everything (including startup of OSX and L5 as well as indexing in Logos).  

Apologies - thought the thread was about the MBA, not MBP

> "An SSD speeds up just about everything (including startup of OSX and L5 as well as indexing in Logos)."

>

Absolutely. I have replaced a regular hard drive with an SSD and it completely changes how fast that computer works. I almost can't stand to use my iMac anymore because it doesn't have an SSD.

If you turn off the 'document chooser' you can get Microsoft Word on an SSD to launch about as fast as TextEdit.

Logos, however, remains incredibly slow, as does indexing. It is, by far, the slowest program that I use on my MacBook Air.

Which is not to discourage anyone from upgrading to an SSD. You definitely should. But don't expect that it will make Logos "snappy."

Unix said:

I think You need a high system bus speed

Macs have supported SATA III for the last few years and that should be fast enough for SSDs [:P] .  Some users have experienced performance issues with Logos while others on what seems to be similar or even lesser hardware have not.  As the previous poster noted everything else is blazing fast so hardware speed isn't an issue. My experience with L5 is that for me it seems to be as fast on my Mac as on a comparable Windows laptop (indexing included).