steveg
Making a new reply.
Registered: 04/19/02
Posts: 27445
Loc: D'OHio
So Jim just left a few minutes ago. He dropped by to install the SSD in my Mini. Lunch took longer than the install. But OH BABY is this thing fast now! A cold boot used to take a minute and 18 seconds to get the dock. Then waiting for Adobe CC and CrashPlan to load in the menu bar brought it to 2 min, 23 sec. Now, 18 sec to dock and 22 'til CC and CP load! InDesign is down from 53 sec to 10, and Word from just over 8 sec to 2!
Looks like when replacement time comes, I'll have to go with a Mini with the SSD already installed.
Maybe when you're ready to buy it will be different, but as of now the low end mini doesn't offer an SSD option, and the next step up is $200 more, plus $200 for the SSD.
You can find the 240G OWC SSD for $139 and put that into the low end mini. That would be $739 BYO vs $999 prebuilt. Plus you have a 2.5" drive left over that you can stick in a cheapie USB powered case for a backup drive.
The Crucial M500 SATA series is a good bang for the buck. You can get a 240G on Amazon for $149.
OWC sells slightly faster ones in their Mercury Extreme line, but for twice the price. It isn't worth the difference IMO, especially since going from an HDD to an SSD is such a big jump anyway.
Plus your MacPro has a SATA II bus with a maximum burst rate of 300 MB/s. The newer Macs have SATA III, 600 MB/s. The M500 series is something like 500MB/s read and 400 write.
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