My next Mac will have a Solid State Drive.

[onehandle]

Watch this video on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS2ZipMM2Oo

From this article.

'The video above was sent in by a reader. He filmed it on his 27" 3.4GHz Core i7, 16GB of RAM and the 256GB SSD option. He opens all the standard applications that come with the iMac simultaneously (though with Front Row and Dashboard deselected, because they're both full-screen apps) as a quick demo of the speed of his new SSD iMac.'

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/15/27-inch-imac-core-i7-with-ssd-is-fastest-mac-ever

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. heh.

I recall programming our school's IBM 360 (which took up a whole room, and had its own AC unit), with both IBM cards and yellow perforated tape. The tape was my speciality. I built a stats program, a game, and even a way to generate random numbers on those tapes.

I was so impressed by those guys who used machine language. My basic programs ran slow, and always kicked out a card. Their machine language cards zipped through in no time.

Now, I have an iPad 2, and a mac pro running many parts of my life. I haven't bothered to even try to program something for decades. Although, I must say, three things resulted from my early experiences.

1 My old lawfirm thought I was a computer expert, so I got to design our networked system, and I got the first 386, 486, XT and other computers. I even convinced them to use macs, which they mainly hated, until they started using them.

2 I learned that there were many ways to skin a beast. If the program did not work, try it a different way. No fear, just determination. That attitude still works these days, especially with DevonPro.

3 I love all things technology. I am curious and always trying to improve my skills. That will never end.

But SSD drives. Holy Batman, robin. If that is how fast they are, I am beginning to feel like a dinosaur.

[struggle4progress]

2. Does OSX support TRIM? I toyed with springing for a pcie ssd for one of my macs,

but flash memory is incredibly expensive, so I tried to research it some first and concluded I might ruin the memory on read/write cycles way before it justified its price. IIRC, one of the deciding facts for me at the time was that OSX did not support TRIM. After I thought about it some more, I built a box with a small ssd and a larger hdd, and put linux on it, with the more stable files on the ssd and the more volatile files on the hdd, so I'd get the benefit of fast launching from the ssd while most of the read/write cycling occurred on the hdd



... Except for the newest batch of MacBook Pros, Apple’s machines do not support TRIM out of the box, a move that has left many SSD users scratching their heads and shaking their fists ...
http://www.macgasm.net/2011/03/28/quick-tip-enable-trim-support-in-os-x/

[onehandle]

3. OS X Lion (coming in July) will have TRIM support. nt

[struggle4progress]

4. Thanks. I'd missed that

[onehandle]

5. I wasn't even familiar with the term. My impression of SSD up to now was 'fast, but...'

If I am reading it right, TRIM solves much of the 'but...' part.

Now suppliers need to work on the cost. Next year a redesign of MacBook Pros is expected. I am betting that they will be more like the Airs, with SSD as 'standard.'

My MBP will be three years old, which is when I start getting really itchy for a new machine.

[struggle4progress]

6. There are multiple issues: for me, price is one; but another is the fact that ssd writes

can be much slower than reads, if erasure is required; and a third is the small number of read/write cycles supported before failure

I'm fuzzy on some technical details here, but I think a "write" to a used portion of an ssd is actually two steps: first the old data is erased, then the new data is written. So if the two-step erase/write occurs at the time of writing, the operation will look slow to the user. For speed purposes, the OS needs to keep track of which sections of the ssd are no longer considered to hold data, so those sections can be erased in the background before being offered as places to write data; then the user, trying to write data, won't notice the erase (which was already done when the system had spare resources)

Avoiding failure due to read/write cycles is another issue. Again, I don't know technical details, but one strategy to handle it is "wear-leveling": the system tries to keep track of how many read/write cycles sections of the ssd have experienced, and tries to write to the less-used sections

I now reason as follows. If I don't write much to the ssd, I won't be burning my limited number of read/write cycles, I won't notice much whether TRIM works correctly, and I won't have to worry much about whether wear-leveling works correctly. Moreover, if I have a multicore machine then a good OS can use one core for writes to an hdd while the other cores remain available for other uses; of course, depending on the app, the app itself may still hang while writing a large data set. So the volatile stuff should be stored to my hdd and the stable stuff to my sdd; launching apps will be fast, though I won't see any improvement in ordinary work. Unless I'm writing really huge data sets, that shouldn't hurt much -- and to get the improvement in ordinary work, I'd be burning expensive ssd read/write cycles. And since I multitask, so I can usually do something else if writing a large data set

[NYC_SKP]

8. The new iMacs sport both a standard HDD and a SSD.

Best of both worlds, it seems.

I had no idea you were so computer savvy!

I might be bothering you for advice!

:P

[struggle4progress]

9. LOL!

[onehandle]

10. FYI, in 10.6.8 released this week, they added TRIM support.

It's probably the last release before Lion.

[struggle4progress]

11. Thanks!

[onehandle]

13. Oops. This update is just for Apple branded SSDs.

And now people are wondering if Lion TRIM will support third party SSDs.

Stay tuned...

[struggle4progress]

14. Mac OS X 10.6.8 Adds TRIM Support for Apple SSDs Leaves Third-Party SSDs Hanging

By David W. Martin (3:36 pm, Jun. 27, 2011)

... Mac OS X 10.6.8 .. added TRIM support to all Macs that have SSD drives installed ... Now everyone can enjoy TRIM on their Apple branded SSDs, but the joy of having TRIM support doesn’t extend to users with third-party SSDs according to a colleague of mine. Non-Apple drives are left hanging — no TRIM support for you in Mac OS X 10.6.8 ...

http://www.cultofmac.com/mac-os-x-10-6-8-adds-trim-support-for-apple-ssds-leaves-third-party-ssds-hanging/102603

Oh, well ... color me less-than-surprised

[onehandle]

15. And now I just found a hint about third party SSDs.

'Microsoft Windows 7 also supports the TRIM command, which prompted SSD manufacturers like Intel to add firmware upgrades to their products to take advantage of the command.'

http://www.macworld.com/article/160815/2011/06/osx1068_trim.html

I remember a few years back. I think it was 'Tiger,' so that was about 2005. Apple changed something about the data addressing and suddenly my two external 250 GB drives wouldn't mount. I contacted the manufacturer and they directed to a firmware update that I didn't know about. I applied it and then they mounted fine.

So I bet it will be up to the SSD manufacturers to update the firmware on future models and to supply an app to enable owners to do the same on past units.

[NYC_SKP]

7. Fantastic, I am typing on an air with SSD and have a powerbook with 512GB SSD

Thanks to work...they really packed it up with options.

From cold start to actually browsing in about 10 seconds.

You Will LOVE it!!!!

:hi:

[onehandle]

12. Probably won't be until 2012. They are predicting a replacement for the unibodys.

My 2009 17-inch Unibody is less than two years old and I usually wait until three.