Question on Kingston SSD

I recently bought a new MBP 13 and would like to swap out the stock HD with one I took out of a windows 7 netbook I sold. Its a 128GB Kingston SSDNow V+ Series SNVP325-S2B. I have read a few threads on here regarding OSX and SSD's, and from what I gather it does not have the most desirable controller (sandforce or indilinx) for the non-trim supporting OSX, but since I already own it, I would like to put it to use. I have already formatted it and cloned the current boot drive via Disk Utility and SuperDuper so its ready to be installed.

So my question is basically if I should go ahead and install it, even with a less than desirable (or reliable as some people put it) controller. How long a life should I expect? To help with that question I will say that it will mostly be used for surfing the net and typing up papers with a few sessions of team fortress 2 spattered in here and there. It will not be used as a primary media drive as I have two externals to take care of that, so I dont see the drive getting more than 70% full. Thanks for any information!

 

I had my Kingston SSD (the 512GB version of the one you have) in my MBP 15 for about 8 months with no problem at all. The only reason I removed it about 3 weeks ago, is because I don't use the Mac very often, so I put it in my Windows 7 laptop I use all the time.

 

I dont understand why people assume that if they fill their SSD, it will run slower?!

You can fill your SSD as much as you like, it will still run the same. Remember it has no moving parts etc like a HDD.

In basic terms........
SSDs store data differently then HDD - they dont start overwriting data blocks that you have previously erased. They continue writing on fresh blocks until the drive is full. By full I mean all blocks have had at least one write operation performed on them.
HDDs will go back and write over previously erased blocks straight away, rather then writing across the entire disc then coming back to the erased areas later - hence why they get fragmented etc with data bits being written all over the place over time.

Therefore an SSD will write across the entire disc and leave empty blocks to come back to later, on its next 'sweep'. So all your IE borwsing, cached files, and so on get written to the entire disc over time - hence why these SSDs slow down over time and with heavy use, and not straight away.

When the drive is full it wil go back and write to the data blocks that had previously been marked as erased. This is where SSDs will slow down as it needs to physically clear these blocks before writing new data, hence taking slightly longer.

TRIM'ing is used by Windows 7 (OSX still doesnt support it yet) and runs when the system is idle.
Basically, this involves clearing all of the previously erased blocks on the SSD, so that when the system comes to write over the disc again, the blocks are already empty, like new, waiting for new data - hence keeping data write operations fast.

SSD's with the older Indilinx controllers need software support to TRIM. As I said above, currently its just Win7.
SSD's with the Sandforce controller are more expensive, but do not need software to TRIM. They TRIM themselves on-the-fly. Kind of like Hardware based TRIM you never know anything about. THis keeps the drive optimised and hence it continues to run fast over time and use.

The vertex 2 I use, for example (link to video in sig), is a SandForce based drive. Hence over time it shouldnt slow down even though OSX doesnt support TRIM, as the drive should do it itself on the fly.

 

Thanks for all the info, for the first time I understand what TRIM does on an SSD. I have a Kingston Flash-SSD 256GB SSDNow V-Series V+ SATA2 2.5 which works just fine with my MBP, don't know if I have TRIM hardware or not but it is much faster than the regular HDD from Apple. On the website (kingston) says it has the TRIM support for Windows ...

I have mine from April, so quite a few months, and no problems what so ever. And I do a lot of video editing on my MBP with Premiere Pro CS5 .. unfortunately 256GB is a little small in my case. But for what you said it should last a lifetime ..

 

Can you please give me some comment on the heat on the palm rest?
I am thinking of switching to ssd because my hdd runs hot sometimes and I dont feel comfortable with it.

 

My palm rest was noticably cooler with the SSD. Try it and find out. Worst case is you swap it back out for the original drive.

 

Much cooler with the SSD.
I also do the spot of video editing now and then. I have an external scratch disk connected via Firewire, so my SSD isnt heavily used while editing.
However, while encoding etc, the CPU is used quite heavily and the SSD stores my resulting video file. The palmrest does get warm, but never to the point of where it is ever uncomfortable. Far from it.

 

The Sandforce controller for SSD's are the only way to go for a MacBook...

However, you will not notice a difference unless you store large files on your laptop (which really isn't a good idea in the first, due to them be constantly moved - Externals...). This of course depends on the size of the SSD... if you are using a 30gb SSD it will fill up fast with just the OS + the few programs you use on a daily basis.