Solid State Drives cost more per gigabyte than standard hard drives but promise better performance, durability, and more. Just how much more? Macworld tested a couple of MacBook Pros (one with typical HDD and the other upgraded with SSD) to find out.
The Drives are available in Sizes from 60GB to 480Gb ( Kingston ) and can cost up to € 500.00 + Vat
So, is it worth the extra cost? In their testing of several MacBook Pro configurations (one 13-inch with the upgraded 128GB SSD, one with a standard 5400-rpm drive, and a couple of others), Macworld found that:
- The SSD upgrade made the 13-inch MacBook Pro boot faster, in 20 seconds versus 38 seconds (of note, the 13-inch MacBook Air with flash storage booted in 15 seconds)
- The MacBook with the SSD upgrade was also 20% faster in Speedmark tests—taking less than half the time to copy a file and significantly faster in other file operations.
- SSD also enabled the MacBook Pro to outperform a model with a faster processor, at least in disk-intensive tests: the 13-inch 2.3GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro with SSD was 8% faster than the 2.7GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro with a 500GB 5400-rpm HDD.
There you have some concrete measurements, and something to consider particularly if you’re looking at MacBook Pro configurations. Coupled with the speed boosts, SSD’s greater impact resistance, noiseless operation, battery life, and durability may very well make it worth the upgrade for you—if you can live with the smaller drive capacity.
If you have a Mac Pro, you can of course install an SSD Drive and add a 1Tb or 2Tb 7200rpm Normal drive for data storage, giving you the best of both worlds. That’s what we have done here at Maxamise and it works a treat.
