General Advice SSD drives for MacBook Pro Ivy Bridge

[Drew Harty]

Hello,

I purchased a MacBook Pro Ivy Bridge, (mid 2012) with 16 GB RAM and will be setting it up for photo editing to use on a four month cross-county photographic project.  I will be shooting around 16 Gb of images daily, editing selected images every couple days, and storing master files and edited files as they accumulate on HDs.  I am looking for advice on using SSD drives and HDs to speed up transferring, editing, and archiving of files.  

I have been looking at OWC 6G Pro Extreme, Intel 520, or Crucial M4 drives around 240 Gb.  I was planning on using an SSD drive for the OSX and applications.  A second internal SSD drive in the optical bay as a scratch disk and for transferring daily image files for review and editing before transferring to the Cal Digit for archiving. I was thinking of standard 3.5 eSata drives in the Cal Digit.

Will this set up give me the fastest transfer rates into the computer from CF cards for editing and for transferring to external drives for archiving?  Is the second SSD drive going to offer any speed advantages in editing files with Photoshop? Will a SSD drive I am constantly writing large files to cause reliability problems?  Is there a specific brand of SSD drives that would work best for sequential large file transfers of photo files?  Currently I am thinking I would pay the price premium for the OWC 6G Pro drives because of their good tech support and fast turn around if a drive fails.

Thanks for any advice,
Drew Harty



 

[francois]

Drew,
There are some discussions here on the Luminous Landscape forum that might help you (link 1, link 2) but with the constant changes and improvements in the technology, the choice is difficult.

One thing that you might consider is that sone SSDs with Sandforce controllers don't seem to like compressed data (think JPEGs, compressed RAWs or TIFFs). AFAIK, OWC SSDS use Sandforce controllers. I have no experience with OWC SSDs but I've always been satisfied with the customer service they provide.

For my MBP, I decided to get a Crucial M4 but no local shop had it in stock so I went with a Samsung 830 and I very satisfied with it so far.

You might want to read AnandTech SSD benchmarks or if you read french, Hardware.fr published a good report, translated via Google here.

I can't help for the 2-SSD setup, though.

Hope this helps…

[Drew Harty]

Thanks for the reply Francois,

I agree that gathering accurate information is difficult because SSDs are improving so fast and there seems to be conflicting information.  I decided the best solution is just to buy a couple drives and see what improvements there will be in file handling and editing with Photoshop.  Although several other SSD drives offer comparable performance for less money, I purchased two OWC 6G Pro Extreme drives because of OWC's return policy, technical support, and 5 year warranty.

I will start first by replacing the system and application HDD, then placing a second SSD drive in the optical bay for file handling and editing.  I will run some basic editing and file handling test and post some times and Geekbench scores.

Drew

[francois]

Drew ,
I think you did well. OWC has an outstanding customer service and good products. Unfortunately, from outside the US (and possibly Canada), they become less attractive.

Good luck!

[Conner999]

Good choice. Other units may be as good or faster, etc., but I started with a pair of 120 6G units from OWC in my 2011 MBP. One for OS and personal files in the CD bay and one for a working library or files I'm processing in the main bay. Everything backed up to mechanical drives.  No issue sat all so far. I'd NEVER go back to a 'spinner' for file processing. They make working with large layered files a (comparative) doddle.

That main bay unit started out at 120GB and was just upgraded to 240GB. Unfortunately, I misjudged what capacity I really needed, so that 240GB unit is about to be sold for a 480 GB.  

If I were to give any advice, it would be to put the OS SSD in the CD bay vs. the file drive.  While placing a SSD in the CD bay is not complex, swapping out drives in the main bay on a MBP is a fraction of the effort needed to do so in the CD bay. If you find yourself swapping drives, it's a faster job on the main bay unit requiring fewer delicate parts to be shifted.