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Optibay, SSD Combo Setup

gan6660

gan6660

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 18, 2008
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I am thinking about getting an optibay like device from ebay for $200 which includes a 500gb seagate 7200rpm hard drive. I would also get a 64gb intel ssd. The ssd would be in the current hard drives spot and would have the os on it. Would this increase speed?
 
gan6660 said:
I am thinking about getting an optibay like device from ebay for $200 which includes a 500gb seagate 7200rpm hard drive. I would also get a 64gb intel ssd. The ssd would be in the current hard drives spot and would have the os on it. Would this increase speed?
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That is my current setup. Works great and it is super fast.
 
Depends what you mean by speed, your apps would load faster and the system would seem far more responsive, but rendering times and stuff like that would not see any real change.
 
fpar said:
Depends what you mean by speed, your apps would load faster and the system would seem far more responsive, but rendering times and stuff like that would not see any real change.
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By speed I mean like opening safari, mail, itunes adn just general surfing the web. Also what are "rendering times?"
 
gan6660 said:
By speed I mean like opening safari, mail, itunes adn just general surfing the web.
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The gain in speed may not be apparent. Those tasks should open and operate rather quickly on a stock machine, so there is not much more you can squeeze out of faster disk access.

gan6660 said:
Also what are "rendering times?"
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Rendering usually refers to things like processing video to a different format/codec or mixing down and dithering multichannel audio or using some of the heavy filters in Photoshop. Generally things that task the CPU/GPU and require a lot of disk access/bandwidth. You notice the difference appreciably with these types of tasks.
 
So I owuld see a speed increase in ripping dvds to itunes?
 
gan6660 said:
So I owuld see a speed increase in ripping dvds to itunes?
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Er..., doesn't the optibay hard drive repalce your DVD drive? You won't be ripping any DVDs :)

But, assuming you were using an external optical drive, you probably wouldn't see a speed increase in ripping DVDs to iTunes. You're usually transcoding the video (i.e., encoding in a different format) and the processor(s) are usually the bottleneck for that, not drive access.
 
gan6660 said:
By speed I mean like opening safari, mail, itunes adn just general surfing the web. Also what are "rendering times?"
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You will see a large increase in speed in these general tasks simply due to the very fast SSD. There are many reviews of the Intel SSD out there, all of them concur on this issue.

Battery life, noise, heat etc have not been an issue for me. I dont perceive a difference.
 
Forgive my ignorance, but is the optibay hazardous to your computer's health?

For instance, would it raise the temperature of the laptop significantly?

Battery life?

Any other damage I may not be able to think of?
 
Can you spin down the platter HD in the optibay when it's not needed? I have a 256GB SSD in my MBP for now but was thinking that down the road when 1TB laptop drives are available I might want to Optibay away my DVD drive and put a 1TB platter HD in it for mass storage.

Ruahrc
 
If you're moving your boot drive to a SSD there's really need to go with a 7200rpm SATA HDD but then again the power savings with a 5400rpm drive wouldn't be all that substantial so I'd say you'd probably not notice much of a drop off.
 
nuckinfutz said:
If you're moving your boot drive to a SSD there's really need to go with a 7200rpm SATA HDD but then again the power savings with a 5400rpm drive wouldn't be all that substantial so I'd say you'd probably not notice much of a drop off.
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Well the 7200 drive comes with the optibay device I might buy.
 
yawn....here is my setup

2xintel's

better battery life, external slot load samsung w/lightscribe usb powered :D
 

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Is the intel any better than this drive? OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD I know the intel is bigger but it also costs alot more and I could get this for ~$100.
 
My question is, will the hard drive be spinning constantly or only when files on the hard drive are accessed? I plan on using an X-25 80GB just for my OS and programs, and use a 500GB 7200RPM drive in the optibay for time machine backups and storing large files(videos, etc.).
 
The intel is way on top (The extremes first, and the m's not too far behind).

For boot times I really don't see any difference as the read times are almost all the same in high end drives (240 - 250mb/s) its where the write times come in that makes a difference.
 

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