2011 MBP ssd : raid 0

[kowalabearhugs]

I own a 15" MBP with a 128 gb Apple branded ssd. I am going to replace the super drive with another 128 gb drive and run a raid-0 array. Who manufactures the Apple ssd? Can I use a 128 gb Intel ssd?

* MODS: This would actually better served from the Memory and Storage forum. Make it so? Thank you.

 

[rugby]

I don't think the optical Sata port is 6GB so that might limit the speed somewhat.

 

[TheStu]

I: Apple sources from toshiba and samsung i believe, you might want to check the system profiler, see if it can reveal the model number
II: Crazy go nuts and good luck, I hope your data isn't irreplaceable or that you will be running good back ups.
III: intel makes a 128GB SSD? I thought they did base10 drives, not base2 (80GB, 160GB, etc instead of 64GB, 128GB...)
IV: Also, I think Rugby is right, the optical drive might not be SATAIII.

 

[Emulex]

yah and kiss your battery life away

 

[TheStu]

yah and kiss your battery life away

I wouldn't go that far, however I would imagine that any boosts he may have gotten from using an SSD will be dissolved by using 2 simultaneously.

 

[PCTC2]

1) Apple uses the equivalent of either the Kingston V+100 128GB (Toshiba-based) or the Samsung 470. It does NOT matter that the optical bay in the new MBP is only SATA 3Gb because both of theses drives are only capable of 3Gb/s operation.

2) You won't notice too much of a battery drain. It will be somewhere between having a single 5400/7200 RPM HDD and your current single SSD. I have both a 7200 RPM hard drive for User data and mass storage and a 60GB SSD for Applications and OS and my battery life is still adequate, though I have lost some life.

3) As TheStu points out, Intel drives use multiple of 10 for their NAND devices, so the closest would be 160GB. (See point 1)

Hope everything works out for you. If you want, just pop off the bottom, see what SSD you have, and then buy the equivalent Kingston or Toshiba. Make sure you get either the iFixit optical-to-HDD bay, the OWC DataDoubler, or the Optibay. They're all rather expensive, but I chose the cheaper route and bought a cheaper "compatible with Unibody" model, and it didn't fit properly. I had to shave it down and it still can't fit all the screw mounts.

 

[Emulex]

ssd's take more power than hard drives . osx is going to index that forever so good luck getting that thing to idle out.

ssd is off/on mostly - hard drives are off/spinup/idle spin(very little power)/read+write.

ssd is less efficient being ON than hard drives idle spinning. so as long as the SSD is on it will eat more power than hard drive. However many tasks will complete faster with ssd. however raid-0 may cause some sleep modes to not function the same.

 

[kowalabearhugs]

Thank you all for the feedback.

osx is going to index that forever so good luck getting that thing to idle out.

I have already disabled Spotlight Indexing.

If raid-0 would be too much of a battery drain, I may just run a standard 2 ssd setup. From what I've gathered on the macrumors.com forums, I should be able to unmount the 2nd drive when not in use, thus saving on battery power.

To conserve mobile battery power, I also run the gfxCardStatus, which allows for on demand switching between the MBP's low power Intel HD 3000 graphics and the discrete ATI 6750M.

 

[KeithP]

How about buying a bigger SSD to replace Apple's, then sell the Apple drive to offset some of the cost? Just a thought.

-KeithP

 

[kowalabearhugs]

Anybody wanna buy a 128gb Apple ssd? :thumbsup: March, 2011 MBP

 

[tno]

osx is going to index that forever so good luck getting that thing to idle out.

I don't see why this is true? I have an SSD in my MBP and I have Spotlight Indexing on and I'm not seeing any battery life issues since the upgrade. Why would moving to an SSD lead to changes in indexing behavior?

Also, the SSD benefits work the same as the Nehalem benefits. Because Nehalem IPC is so high it's "on" state uses more power. But it completes tasks faster, so it ends up spending more of its time in the "off" state. With HDDs it's compounded by the fact that you have a spin-up time and then an idle spin time. So an arbitrary action that takes 1 au (arbitrary unit) of time on an SSD at 1.5 au of power/au of time will take 10 au of time at 1 au of power/au of time. The result, SSD's more power efficient unless you're doing something particularly drive intensive.