Why SSD in my new Mac Pro?

[englishman]

reliability as in if the drive causes to the computer to freeze, or it fails entirely.

a disproportionate number of these freezes and failures are on SF-2200 drives, and it's been reproduced, just not consistently. right now people are working on reproducing it consistently so OCZ and others know exactly what to fix...so far they've just been releasing a bunch of firmware updates more or less hoping that it'll get fixed.

Anandtech has documented some these issues.

Oh - that's pretty horrible. Nothing worse than intermittent faults.

I'm hoping to get an SSD but if I had those errors would want to get my money back.

 

[derbothaus]

reliability as in if the drive causes to the computer to freeze, or it fails entirely.

a disproportionate number of these freezes and failures are on SF-2200 drives, and it's been reproduced, just not consistently. right now people are working on reproducing it consistently so OCZ and others know exactly what to fix...so far they've just been releasing a bunch of firmware updates more or less hoping that it'll get fixed.

Anandtech has documented some these issues.

No issue on OWC SF-2200

 

[phpmaven]

From what I can tell this is within my skill-set -- my only question at this point is that does this cloning method leave anything out? That is -- I don't need to "reinstall" any software in the applications folder, or anything in the library in this operation? I suppose "clone" means just that but I wonder if it makes sense to do this cloning before I install new software and/or migrate my stuff over from my old PowerPC that this computer will be replacing, or is it something that I can do at any point just as easily once I've got the new computer up and running?

Perhaps better for another thread, but at this point I'm leaning towards doing this once I have the budget, which means using the 1TB SATA drive for a while first, and then going to SSD. Any problems anyone can forsee using this method?

When you use a program like Carbon Copy Cloner, you get an exact copy of your HDD to the SSD. I've done it several times with Mac Pros and MacBook Pros and it works flawlessly. You mentioned in your original post that you didn't want to go through the "hassle" of upgrading to an SSD yourself, but it's really a no-brainer.

 

[Langdonboom]

When you use a program like Carbon Copy Cloner, you get an exact copy of your HDD to the SSD. I've done it several times with Mac Pros and MacBook Pros and it works flawlessly. You mentioned in your original post that you didn't want to go through the "hassle" of upgrading to an SSD yourself, but it's really a no-brainer.

Yeah, I think I get that now. I'm going to get my system up and running with the SATA for a bit, do my migration from my old Power PC and then upgrade to a SSD for my OS and budget permitting another big one to be that 'temporary home' for current projects. I like that idea.

Next question then -- I (possibly stupidly) got the two DVD drives (I still burn a good amount of DVDs for clients, though its lessening) so will I need some kind of chassis adapter to insert any SSD into the remaining dive slots? I'm thinking of taking one of the DVD drives out and making it external possibly, too.

Really appreciate all the great input here!

 

[wonderspark]

Yeah, I think I get that now. I'm going to get my system up and running with the SATA for a bit, do my migration from my old Power PC and then upgrade to a SSD for my OS and budget permitting another big one to be that 'temporary home' for current projects. I like that idea.

Next question then -- I (possibly stupidly) got the two DVD drives (I still burn a good amount of DVDs for clients, though its lessening) so will I need some kind of chassis adapter to insert any SSD into the remaining dive slots? I'm thinking of taking one of the DVD drives out and making it external possibly, too.

Really appreciate all the great input here!

I use the standard DVD drive and a Blu-ray burner in the second drive slot. My clients need BD-R copies.

 

[handheldgames]

No issue on OWC SF-2200

Really.. Same drive. Same Manufacture, Same board? Same Firmware.. No problems? Hmmmm. Where do I buy me some of that coolaid?

From AnandTech:

"There really shouldn't be any surprises here. Given the same controller, the same NAND and the same firmware there's no difference between SandForce SSDs. They may look different and they may be priced differently, but they are effectively the same. So how do you pick between otherwise identical drives?..."

"...The BSOD issue continues to be a significant blemish on SandForce's trackrecord. I don't have nearly enough systems deployed with SF-2281 hardware to really make any accurate statements of how widespread the issue is, but even if it is limited - it's a problem that should not exist. SandForce based drives continue to offer the best performance out of anything on the market today, not just in peak performance but in performance over time. For systems without TRIM support (e.g. Macs without the TRIM enabler) the hallmark SandForce resiliency is even more important. Unfortunately the unresolved BSOD issue makes all of these drives a risk if you don't know for sure that your system won't be affected.

The safest route without sacrificing significant performance continues to be Intel's SSD 510. "

 

[derbothaus]

Really.. Same drive. Same Manufacture, Same board? Same Firmware.. No problems? Hmmmm. Where do I buy me some of that coolaid?

How exactly is it "coolaid" when I just don't seem to have any issues. I'm not stating that I have zero issues as my computer burns to the ground just to save face or prove I'm some soft of OWC fanboi. The failures are exaggerated and OZC (the biggest and loudest) is behind most of them. They DO tinker with the firmware to get better test scores. I don't run my SSD in Windows so I would not have any insight into that problem.