Best Large Laptop-Drive Upgrade?

[jdc]

1TB SSDs are $300, and have been as low as $280.

Id be interested to hear how it seems after the swap -- cause my feeling is that its not gonna "feel" that much faster with another HDD or even hybrid.

But the cost... I hear ya.

[GGD]

jdc wrote:
1TB SSDs are $300, and have been as low as $280.

Id be interested to hear how it seems after the swap -- cause my feeling is that its not gonna "feel" that much faster with another HDD or even hybrid.

But the cost... I hear ya.

But it seems that the motivation for this swap is capacity, not performance. I'd be willing to bet that a large percentage of the 320GB on that drive may only get accessed once or less during the lifetime of the replacement drive, hard to justify high $/GB for what's essentially archive storage.

[RAMd®d]

cause my feeling is that its not gonna "feel" that much faster with another HDD or even hybrid.

But the cost... I hear ya.

This.


hard to justify high $/GB for what's essentially archive storage.

And this.

Two very valid points.

Yes, if money is no object, a 1T SSD is definitely the answer. But I suspect that the more storage space Number Two son has, the more he will store, leading to slower speeds, even on SSDs.

And carrying around a *lot* of data on a big HDD/SSD... I assume there is or will be an appropriate back up plan?

[Gareth]

Fry's might still have the WD 1TB HD + 120GB SSD Combo drive available for store pick-up for $140 ($200 normally): http://www.frys.com/search?search_type=regular&sqxts=1&cat=&query_string=WD1001X06XDTL

Only works with 10.9 and above though.

[jdc]

Gareth wrote:
Fry's might still have the WD 1TB HD + 120GB SSD Combo drive available for store pick-up for $140 ($200 normally): http://www.frys.com/search?search_type=regular&sqxts=1&cat=&query_string=WD1001X06XDTL

Only works with 10.9 and above though.

That looks awesome if it works right.

Problem with the hybrid drives is that they only have a tiny (8 GB?) SSD/.

[sekker]

What are your longer-term plans for this machine?

1) If 2+ years, I would get an SSD. 500GB is likely the sweet spot for you now; spend ~$150 on that, you might run out of space in a couple years, then you can get a 1TB for less than the 500GB (better than spending $300 now if you are not going to use more than 500GB)..

2) If 0-2 years, then a good 7200rpm or hybrid drive would be fine.

RE: Hybrid drives. a) I've used four; they have a history of poorer reliability than standard drives, though I have one in daily service that's well out of warranty and works great.b) Their speed enhancement depends on your usage. IF you only boot into a few apps (and they all live under 8GB with the Mac OS launch), THEN it feels like an SSD. I have a SL media center that basically launches Mac OS X and iTunes; runs super fast and I have 750 GB of media storage. But that same hybrid drive is no faster than a good 7200 rpm hard drive for either my wife or I as we both use more than 8GB-worth of apps we regularly launch.

Final thoughts - whatever you do, be sure to INCREASE THE BACKUP STORAGE SOLUTION accordingly.

[mrlynn]

What are your longer-term plans for this machine?

I think eventually Nathan would want to upgrade and pass this MBP to his wife, who is currently using a white MacBook (year?). But I assume with a new HD that will be at least a year or two. I have sent a link to this thread to him. Thanks for the informative discussion.

He was complaining about slow speed, too, but I think that was mostly because he was using Google Docs.

/Mr Lynn

[jdc]

Assuming the wife doesnt use a ton of storage (since the white MBs shipped 80 GB?) -- then a 240 GB SSD ($80sih) would give it a huge boost.

Ive done SSDs in a couple and its made them feel new. A 2008 and 2009. And the install is super simple.

Assuming his 2011 MPB is the 2.3 i5 model, there should be *plenty* of kick left in it. Adding a SSD and 8 GB (or even 16 GB) should make it fly. I want to say that its benchmarks are pretty good, even compared to some of the newer 13" MBPs. Yeah, just numbers, but still. I looked at getting one a couple of years ago, I think I remember the comparisons.

[Yoyodyne ArtWorks]

jdc wrote:
[quote=Gareth]
Fry's might still have the WD 1TB HD + 120GB SSD Combo drive available for store pick-up for $140 ($200 normally): http://www.frys.com/search?search_type=regular&sqxts=1&cat=&query_string=WD1001X06XDTL

Only works with 10.9 and above though.

That looks awesome if it works right.

Problem with the hybrid drives is that they only have a tiny (8 GB?) SSD/.
Not for long...ssshhhh.