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Anybody wants to put a SSD drive into the Mac Mini?
- Thread starter enochpeng
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Good idea, RAM and SSD make much difference in performance. However I don't think it's the best time now to go for SSD. They are too expensive. You should better wait for arround 6 months and then get 128GB SSD hard disk in resonable price. Prices are gonna drop for sure!
Yes I will. I have ordered the intel X25-M.
My setup will then be 2.26 Ghz, 4 Gb, X25-M 80 Gb SSD.
Anyone thinking about replacing the ODD with a SDD? I think that would be sweet and I believe it's possible as I saw a post from someone on MR that they had replaced the ODD on the MBP with a SDD.
Well remember that some people like to run Minis as servers, taking up less room than a Mac Pro and you wouldn't need the extra screen from the iMac.
In that case, screw ssd, dual hard drives, RAID 1. Make sure my Master Open Directory Server always stays up.
or go dual SDD..oooooh. (I would never do it until SSDs come way down, but I'm sure someone's got extra money and is crazy enough to do it)
Wow I looked at the prices and man are they high.
Some have so little space, they need to be RAID 0 to be even worth it to me. Good thing im a patience person.
Some have so little space, they need to be RAID 0 to be even worth it to me. Good thing im a patience person.
Indeed, I don't want to pay the price for a SDD until they are closer to the price of same capacity 2.5" HDDs and they have to be bigger than 500GB (They're already working on a 1TB so it won't be that long for the size I want, but the price is gonna take longer)
For me it is worth it. I thought about the Mac Pro but I dont need all that rendering power for what I do. Plus I want my computer to be as silent as the mini is, the mac pro is silent but not compared to the mini.
And the iMac is not an option for me, I already have dual cinema displays which I will be using with the mini.
I'm sooooo tempted now!
Would any of those 2.5 inch SSD fit in the Mac Mini?
Does anyone have any recommendation on which one to get?
preferably around $200 bucks. 60GB should be sufficient for me since i have a couple external drives
Would any of those 2.5 inch SSD fit in the Mac Mini?
Does anyone have any recommendation on which one to get?
preferably around $200 bucks. 60GB should be sufficient for me since i have a couple external drives
The latest Intel SSD *are* raid 0 internally, they can saturate the SATA interface.
I am definitely going to be tracking this thread, because I am interested in SSD as well. I have read many good reviews on the Intel X25-M, and have also read only a single report that talked about degradation of write performance.
I think right now, external FW800 is in the cards for me. Once I read and investigate more on the long term reliability of the SSD drives, I will make the switch.
If I was going to be forced to use SSD, right now, and it was going to be used in an application that could not fail (like a server application) - then I would probably pony up the extra bucks and go with the X25-E, which is twice the price of the X2-M, but uses SLC technology instead of MLC.
Once SLC comes down to the same price point that MLC is at today, I might decide to go the SLC route, for the extra reliability.
To be honest, I haven't been keeping up - I have trouble reading all of the messages that are in the Desktops section of MacRumors, and as a result haven't ventured into the Laptop section. Out of curiosity, how has the reliability and performance been on the Macbook Air SSD drives?
I think right now, external FW800 is in the cards for me. Once I read and investigate more on the long term reliability of the SSD drives, I will make the switch.
If I was going to be forced to use SSD, right now, and it was going to be used in an application that could not fail (like a server application) - then I would probably pony up the extra bucks and go with the X25-E, which is twice the price of the X2-M, but uses SLC technology instead of MLC.
Once SLC comes down to the same price point that MLC is at today, I might decide to go the SLC route, for the extra reliability.
To be honest, I haven't been keeping up - I have trouble reading all of the messages that are in the Desktops section of MacRumors, and as a result haven't ventured into the Laptop section. Out of curiosity, how has the reliability and performance been on the Macbook Air SSD drives?
Right now, for MLC drives, the only SSD drives I'm reading good reviews for is the Intel X25-M series drives. If you research all the other lower priced SSD drives, everyone complains about freezing, stuttering and degrading write performance.
If I was going to buy a MLC SSD drive today, it would without a doubt be the X25-M. From the reviews I read, anything else might end up giving you worse performance that the regular HDD you already have...
If I was going to buy a MLC SSD drive today, it would without a doubt be the X25-M. From the reviews I read, anything else might end up giving you worse performance that the regular HDD you already have...
I put a OCZ Core V2 120GB SSD(boutght off ebay) in my G1 Intel Mac Mini about 6 months ago. It absolutely flies ever since, really impressed and none of the problems that some have mentioned so I think it may be windows related.
I've just ordered a new mac mini and I'm going to swap the drives over and install a 4GB RAM upgrade.
I've just ordered a new mac mini and I'm going to swap the drives over and install a 4GB RAM upgrade.
Yeah, I'm not sure. If you see anything regarding tweaks that make it work well, please post a link as I am trying to keep up with this stuff the best I can.
From what I've seen most people talk about tweaking the Windows environment in order to reduce writes to the disks, so that stuttering and freezing can be avoided. There is a whole list, including turning off the paging file to prevent writing to disk! Unfortunately I don't see a lot of feedback coming for Mac users - good or bad, so I'm not sure if things may be a little better for OS X users. It seems to me, though, that OS X users may suffer less from this than Windows users (that is at least how I perceive it after the reading I have done - I may be wrong, though).
I've read a lot of reviews on blogs, newegg, amazon and elsewhere and have become very discouraged by the feedback I am seeing. OCZ also has a pretty informative forum - and things don't look so good over there as well.
Now granted, I'm a pessimist when it comes to this kind of stuff. When I read the reviews, I immediately assume the good feedback is from new installs and the negative feedback is from users who have had a little more time using the disk - as it seems degradation comes after a little time. Right now, it seems the cheaper SSDs are for early adopters who like to play with new, expensive technology and don't mind getting burned or suffering a little.
I am hoping that we will see lots of positive SSD reviews from Mac users here, so I may begin to change my negative views of the cheaper SSDs (because without a doubt I definitely want one - if it is rock solid and reliable).
Just my opinion - as I continue to try to make sense of it all...
Thanks Bobba, that is great to hear. I am also starting to feel that some of the problems that are being encountered with SSDs must be Windows related (which your post is another indication of). Perhaps the key is trying to filter out the truly bad SSDs and the SSDs that are only bad on Windows.
By the same token, it is no doubt that Intel invested a lot of effort and expense in order to correct what many consider inherent problems with MLC SSDs. Now, whether or not Intel actually took Mac OS X into the equation, I'm not sure. It may be possible that many of the 'inherent' problems are in fact problems with Windows, like many in the industry are trying say. On the other hand, I take their blaming Windows to be scapegoating and avoiding the truth (and bad PR) that their is truly a problem with their MLC controllers.
Perhaps the manufacturers are responding quickly and the worst is behind us:
http://hothardware.com/News/Intel-Cuts-SSD-Prices/
All of this uncertainty has me sitting on the sideline - and probably missing out on a good thing!
I'm new here, but maybe someone can start a poll to find out who has an SSD, what brand, how long, and if they are working well from them. It would be useful information and interesting to follow.
For me, personally, I'm excited about the aspect of throwing a decent size SSD in a Mac mini - and getting better disk performance than servers running SAS arrays. To take it one step further, with the removal of the optical drive - having two SSDs in RAID 1 for redundancy in a Mac mini would be amazing!!