Dedicated SSD for Bootcamp

[odinsride]

Hi, I would like to buy a dedicated SSD for bootcamp, and was wondering what brand would be good that has proper driver support on the 2010 Mac Pro running Bootcamp (Windows 7 Professional 64). Does anyone have experience with this? Any trouble getting things working? What kind of maintenance steps would I need to take in Windows to get the most out of an SSD?

I was looking at the Crucial line because it has such good reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-I...JKZI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319467930&sr=8-1

Thanks!

 

[badlydrawn]

Hi,

I have two SSDs in my 1,1 - an OCZ Vertex 2 for OSX boot and an Intel SSD for Win7 bootcamp drive. The intel is a little outdated but has TRIM, which Win7 supports, where as the OCZ has a onboard garbage collection for OSX (no native TRIM support). The only thing I remember, I had to make a copy of my win7 disc to make it work with the Mac, some sort of boot disc mode change. Other than that it was pretty much standard procedure from there (follow onscreen instructions and install bootcamp drivers, etc).

 

[tomllama]

I'm not convinced it matters much for most users. I have an OCZ Agility 2 (240 GB) in my 2010 MP, an OWC SSD in my MBP and an OCZ Vertex in my Windows Home Server.

Using an SSD partitioned for both OSX and Win7 works fine (I have my user files on HDDs).

 

[odinsride]

Thanks for the replies, I'll probably just go with the Crucial based on reviews

 

[xgman]

I have a vertex 3 stuffed up in my optical bay for win 7 only boot. Nice and fast boot compared to a pokey old hard drive. I use a OWC for my OSX drive. No problems with either

 

[canefanatic777]

Hello all, I am very interested in buying an SSD for my '10 Macbook Pro. I want to keep my stock HDD and put it into my optical bay for running OSX. Since i see some of you have had success with having a separate HD for Win7 and OSX i was wondering if you could help me out in doing so. I want the SSD to be for windows but i need to use bootcamp for it to function but i also want to utilize my stock drive for OSX. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! Feel free to email me at canefanatic777@yahoo.com God Bless!

 

[ActionableMango]

Just add the second drive and install windows on it. Bootcamp Assistant is only for preparing a partition for Windows on an existing OS X drive.

I do recommend removing the OS X drive before Windows installation so that neither you nor Windows screws up your OS X drive.

 

[canefanatic777]

Ah ok that makes sense. But will a nonbootcamped windows 7 drive work with my macbook, ie. drivers, hardware, etc? Thanks for the response!

 

[ActionableMango]

Ah ok that makes sense. But will a nonbootcamped windows 7 drive work with my macbook, ie. drivers, hardware, etc? Thanks for the response!

Uh, I'm not sure what you mean by "non-bootcamped", but yes, Windows will install and work fine on its own driver without having used Bootcamp Assistant. This is how my Mac Pro is set up.

 

[canefanatic777]

Ok thank you! So will i need to download all hardware drivesr manually or will windows 7 play nice with my MBP even though its an Apple compute and has not bootcamp assistance. Im assuming the answer is yes but just clarifying. And do you have any recommendations when it comes to SSDs? Thanks for your help!

 

[ORTOX]

You would not have to download the drivers manually. You would just need to open the bootcamp assistant and it will prompt you to download the drivers to a USB drive.

If you have the option to use the assistant I would recommend doing so, however.

I installed bootcamp without using the assistant on my SSD and now the Mac os system preferences don't recognize the windows disk as a bootable drive. I had to resort to using a 3rd party app to restart into my bootcamp install. It works but still it's annoying.

 

[ActionableMango]

Mine is recognized as bootable, so I wonder what the difference is.

Anyway, after you install the Apple Windows drivers I'd manually download and install the OEM video drivers. Undoubtedly they will be better.