Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What is the fastest 2.5" SSD drive to date?

TheHerdForever

TheHerdForever

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2012
83
1
I just purchased 2 x Tempo SSD Pro Plus PCIe cards and now I am looking for the fastest SSD drives to put in them. Right now, I am leaning towards 512GB SSD drives, but 1 TB drives could be an option as well since SSD prices are declining. Does anyone one know what the fastest SSD drives to date are? My modified mid 2010 MP will be used for heavy video and photography editing.

Frank
 
I think the new Samsung 850 are one of the fastest. I'm not sure if they're shipping yet. They were only recently announced within the past few weeks.
 
They (850 Pros) should ship on the 21st of this month except the 1TB version which is set to ship on 31st. But be prepared to shell out considerable amount of money for these. 1TB version will cost you 699 USD. 840 Evos are pretty fast too, but obviously not faster. They care considerable cheaper though, 439 USD at Newegg. What kind of video editing are you doing? You might be better off using RAID0 with two slightly cheaper SSDs, such as 840 Evos than something like 850 Pros.
 
the FLA "YMMV" seems appropriate

The simple truth is that there are quite a few that basically read as fast as the 6 Gbps SATA channel will allow.

There's a bit of variation on the write speeds, especially if you look at sustained (write 100 GB in one action) vs burst (write 500 MB now and again).

The Samsung 840 EVO is an incredible value if you don't need absolute top sustained write speeds. I just bought a 1TB 840 EVO from Amazon for $420.

It reads at the SATA limit. For writes, it has a non-volatile 12 GB SLC write buffer that accepts writes at nearly the SATA limit. It can move the writes from the buffer to the main TLC store at about 240 MB/sec - so if your writes are bursty (or less than 250 MB/sec or so sustained) you can get a drive that's as fast as drives that cost much more per GB.

You probably don't want "THE FASTEST" in an absolute sense, you probably want "top end performance and best price/performance (and price/GB) for my workload". The solutions to those two questions can be quite different.

Don't pay twice the price for a drive that's half the size -- and that will perform the same for your workload.
 
Last edited:
I'm eagerly waiting for my Lacie little big disk2 to arrive on Monday.... So pumped for the speed :D

Sorry i know it's off topic but I had to relieve the pressure somehow ;)
 
you can raid stripe them..that would be the fastest....fast ssd drives are expensive but I believe if you can buy 2 to almost same price as one, then go with two if speed is your main priority...
 
The OP already told us is getting the Pro version of the Tempo card, hence Raid0 on each card. He can also Raid0 the two cards, and basically have a 2x2 Raid0 setup. For this he needs the fastest SSDs as otherwise they are the bottleneck.

If you can wait for the 850s, the by all means they are the fastest today. If not, or if you want to save yourself some dollars, get the 840 Pros.
 
not fastest I am sure but a good value-

I picked up 2 500 gig 840 Evos for 220.00 each. Put that in an Akitio Thunderbolt drive and just go 674 mb/s write and 780 read on more than half full drive.

Hope this helps and good luck!:)
 
I think two 500G (or above) 840 Evo in RAID 0 can easily hit the limit of the sonnet pro card, no need to pay more and get the fastest SSD but then bottleneck by the card.
 
Seems to me that most 2.5" drives are basically hitting the hard limits of SATA III 6Gbps interfaces.

The Samsung 850 Pro looks like it takes the overall crown based on some nice analysis from Anandtech, and would certainly be my top choice as it is available in 1TB capacities.

But if you have a Mac Pro, you could opt for a PCIe solution instead if you wanted even faster speeds. I think Samsung offers a PCIe solution now, if I'm not mistaken?
 
AidenShaw said:
The simple truth is that there are quite a few that basically read as fast as the 6 Gbps SATA channel will allow.

There's a bit of variation on the write speeds, especially if you look at sustained (write 100 GB in one action) vs burst (write 500 MB now and again).

The Samsung 840 EVO is an incredible value if you don't need absolute top sustained write speeds. I just bought a 1TB 840 EVO from Amazon for $420.

It reads at the SATA limit. For writes, it has a non-volatile 12 GB SLC write buffer that accepts writes at nearly the SATA limit. It can move the writes from the buffer to the main TLC store at about 240 MB/sec - so if your writes are bursty (or less than 250 MB/sec or so sustained) you can get a drive that's as fast as drives that cost much more per GB.

You probably don't want "THE FASTEST" in an absolute sense, you probably want "top end performance and best price/performance (and price/GB) for my workload". The solutions to those two questions can be quite different.

Don't pay twice the price for a drive that's half the size -- and that will perform the same for your workload.
Click to expand...

Agreed on all accounts. Found numerous articles on the web that stated the same thing you did and mentioned that until PCIe buses get faster, you are wasting your money on drives that exceed the SATA III spec. Therefore, I am now looking to purchase Samsung 840 EVO SSD drives that are 512GB or 1TB. Anyone know of any deals for the 1 TB version? :rolleyes:

----------
h9826790 said:
I think two 500G (or above) 840 Evo in RAID 0 can easily hit the limit of the sonnet pro card, no need to pay more and get the fastest SSD but then bottleneck by the card.
Click to expand...

Yeap...agreed on that too. I was really temped to get the 850 Pro, but didn't want to over pay for something that will not get me that much faster than cheaper hardware. However, looking at the 840 pro vs Evo.....the Evo won because extensive testing of the drive proved that Evo was a more consistent drive than the Pro. In other words, it's read and write times were consistent via numerous benchmarks thrown it's way. If you Google 840 Pro vs Evo, you'll see what I am talking about.
 
chfilm said:
I'm eagerly waiting for my Lacie little big disk2 to arrive on Monday.... So pumped for the speed :D

Sorry i know it's off topic but I had to relieve the pressure somehow ;)
Click to expand...

Lucky. You should write a review when you get it. It would be much appreciated for those who have been watching it. :D Still around $1299 at B&H?
 
Sometimes they have good sales at Amazon ... $399.99 on June 20, 2014 for 1 TB 840 EVO

Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE1T0BW
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC

Condition: New
Amazon Prime: Two-Day Shipping is free
$399.99
 
MacProCard said:
Lucky. You should write a review when you get it. It would be much appreciated for those who have been watching it. :D Still around $1299 at B&H?
Click to expand...

It's here :) I got it for 1199 € VAT at apple
Sure I'd like to write a little review, what are you interested in?
 
Truthfulie said:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz7te1t0bw?history_days=180

Check out the prices at above link. This should give you some idea when (and where) to pull the trigger. They also send you an email notification if you setup a desired price point.
Click to expand...

Truthfulie (and hfg),

Thanks for providing this link. Looks like Amazon had the cheapest ones at $399. For whatever reason, Amazon only allows you to purchase 2 Samsung 840 EVO 1 TB drives at a time. Therefore, I called them, complained a WHOLE lot, and they were able to adjust the quantity from 2 to 4. God only knows why they have this limit!! :mad:

Can't wait to get them and place them into the 2 x Tempo SSD Pro Plus cards I have. Now for the million dollar question that I've been waiting to ask for a LONG time. Should I, would I, or do I have to place the OS on these fast drives that are on the Tempo's? Or will 2 SSD's (smaller sized ones ... say 500 GB) in RAID 0 suffice on the internal SATA II ports? If I go the later route, what will Mac Pro's software RAID 0 give me in terms of read and write speeds?
 
TheHerdForever said:
Truthfulie (and hfg),

Thanks for providing this link. Looks like Amazon had the cheapest ones at $399. For whatever reason, Amazon only allows you to purchase 2 Samsung 840 EVO 1 TB drives at a time. Therefore, I called them, complained a WHOLE lot, and they were able to adjust the quantity from 2 to 4. God only knows why they have this limit!! :mad:

Can't wait to get them and place them into the 2 x Tempo SSD Pro Plus cards I have. Now for the million dollar question that I've been waiting to ask for a LONG time. Should I, would I, or do I have to place the OS on these fast drives that are on the Tempo's? Or will 2 SSD's (smaller sized ones ... say 500 GB) in RAID 0 suffice on the internal SATA II ports? If I go the later route, what will Mac Pro's software RAID 0 give me in terms of read and write speeds?
Click to expand...

I believe the internal built in SATA II interface's TOTAL bandwidth is 600MB/sec or 800MB/sec. One or the other, I cannot recall. You SHOULD get around 400MB/sec using the latter of the two options.

Personally I would still run your OS off one of those fast 1TB EVO's :) I find RAID 0 using OSX software raid to have some strange behaviours sometimes. I have had files magically become corrupted over time. Like PSD files that will no longer open, or ones that will but they look awful with distortion and noise through them. It's happened to me, over time, with EVERY SINGLE RAID 0 setup I have had over the past 15 years. Go figure.

Hence why I no longer run my two 840 pros in RAID 0. They are now two separate drives.
 
TheHerdForever said:
Now for the million dollar question that I've been waiting to ask for a LONG time. Should I, would I, or do I have to place the OS on these fast drives that are on the Tempo's? Or will 2 SSD's (smaller sized ones ... say 500 GB) in RAID 0 suffice on the internal SATA II ports? If I go the later route, what will Mac Pro's software RAID 0 give me in terms of read and write speeds?
Click to expand...

I think you should have no problems installing on the Tempo Pro, with the two discs running in Raid0. Having run my OSX OS on Raid0 disks for years I can only recommend doing just that... Here is the link on how to do it, if you have problems during the installation of OSX: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1556095/

The Tempo Card will be MUCH faster than running the two SSDs of the backplane, especially in Raid0, even if the Raid0 is in SW.
 
The SATA II should give you only about 250MB/s in both read and write. For 2xSATA 3 SSD mount via the SATA II port in RAID 0. It's about the same speed as a single SSD on the Tempo Pro card.
 
Just get 840 Evo. They are a great deal right now. Anything faster than that won't be much faster but will be twice the price.
 
iBug2 said:
Just get 840 Evo. They are a great deal right now. Anything faster than that won't be much faster but will be twice the price.
Click to expand...

Agreed on the EVO. I've bought a handful of them recently - using them in RAID and standalone, on Windows and Linux. Solid drive and the Windows utilities are top drawer. It supports performance tuning and over provisioning on the fly.

----------
reyh said:
you can raid stripe them..that would be the fastest....fast ssd drives are expensive but I believe if you can buy 2 to almost same price as one, then go with two if speed is your main priority...
Click to expand...

Maybe, I did that on a Windows gaming machine. Previously it was a single SSD non RAID, so I saw it before and after. At any rate I didn't notice any real world speedup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back