[OFB Cafe] SSDs

[Timothy Butler]

Hey, everyone,
	Sorry, Jens, somehow I missed your really helpful post below. That's very interesting. I bit the bullet and bought a Crucial M4. So far, it is amazing how much faster it is (I think). I started up from a cold boot in 18 seconds this morning, for example. At one point during a file copy, it burst to over 1.2 GB/s, according to Activity Monitor. 

	Next question: other than the fact that the system information tool lists TRIM as being supported (after I followed the patch mentioned online), is there a good way to tell if TRIM is actually working? 

	Thanks,
		Tim

> 
> From: Jens Benecke <jens at spamfreemail.de>
> Subject: Re: [OFB Cafe] SSDs
> Date: November 29, 2011 2:21:00 PM CST
> To: "An Open Discussion Forum on Just About Everything, Especially for Techies." <cafe at ofb.biz>
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I don’t use the DVD drive often since it has problems with double layer DVDs.
> For that single reason (archiving old data on DVDs) I still use a PC with an LG drive which has never failed on any media I have thrown at it.
> 
> To backup (using Time Machine) I have a WD MyBook Live 3TB unit. It’s quite nice, it runs Debian (though you don’t see much of it if you don’t want to, it „just works“), uses 3W of power in stand-by mode and about 10W when active, is quite fast (I can get 40-50MB/s sustained throughput from the Macbook’s SSD over Gigabit Ethernet), and barely audible since it has only passive cooling. Plus, it was relatively cheap (around €160).
> 
> Here is an Xbench comparison between my previous (2,5“) hard disk (right side) and the new SSD. The SSD’s performance blows away anything the HDD can offer, even though it also can sustain >40MB/s data rate, which (I think) is pretty OK for a laptop drive. 
> 
> 
> <Bildschirmfoto 2011-11-29 um 21.10.09-1.png>
> 
> -- 
> Jens Benecke - jens at spamfreemail.de - www.jensbenecke.de
> Keine Lust auf Müll in ihrem Postfach? www.spamfreemail.de
> 
> 
> Am 28.11.2011 um 20:24 schrieb Timothy Butler:
> 
>> Hi, Jens,
>> 
>>> There are kits online which allow you to exchange the internal Macbook DVD drive for a 2,5“ enclosure which would fit a second HDD.
>> 
>> I thought about that, although I hate to dump the drive (I actually use it relatively often for ripping recorded audio for sites I manage). I saw a few companies are working on optical drives that also have an SSD within the unit, but I couldn't find one available yet...
>> 
>>> Then you could have a 256G SSD for the system and maybe your home directory and the 750GB HDD for your Documents, Movies, Pictures folders.
>> Alas my photo library has grown too large: 580 or so GB right now.
>> 
>>> My iPhoto library just about fits on the 256G SSD. I only had to remove the Movies folder, but that is no problem - at home, our 3TB NAS takes care of that; and on the road I only take a selection with me anyway.
>> 
>> What brand of NAS are you using, by the way?
> 
> 
> 
> From: cafe-request at ofb.biz
> Subject: confirm 2949e854bb4353c88e88d18f08efcabb4eab10d2
> Date: November 29, 2011 2:21:21 PM CST
> 
> 
> If you reply to this message, keeping the Subject: header intact,
> Mailman will discard the held message.  Do this if the message is
> spam.  If you reply to this message and include an Approved: header
> with the list password in it, the message will be approved for posting
> to the list.  The Approved: header can also appear in the first line
> of the body of the reply.
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ofb.biz/pipermail/cafe_ofb.biz/attachments/20111212/a07731c7/attachment.htm>