“While SSDs may never quite reach parity with HDDs when it comes to price per gigabyte, they have become sufficiently less expensive to make the combination of a small SDD (for the OS and apps) and an HDD (storing everything else) a lot more attractive than it was even six months ago,” Simon Crisp reports for The Register.
“Crucial’s latest drive range, the M500 series, includes a drive which could be a real game changer in the high-capacity SSD segment and also, as it turns out, pushes the Pound-per-gigabyte envelope further towards that of HDDs,” Crisp reports. “The 960GB M500 costs just under the £500 mark, including VAT, which works out to be an astonishing 48p per gigabyte, and is the first terabyte (ish) SSD aimed at ordinary users.”
Crisp reports, “Crucial’s M500 SSD series has some interesting and forward-thinking technology built in, and it’s the first family of solid-state drives that uses the latest 128Gb NAND chip technology. The flagship 960GB drive is the real star of the family. It’s one of the most important drives launched for quite some time: a large capacity drive which, while still expensive relative to HDDs, could usher in cheaper and larger capacity SSDs in the near future”
Much more in the full review here.
Related articles:
Apple adds new 256 GB and 512 GB flash storage options to iMac – May 2, 2013
New 27-inch iMac benchmarks: Fusion Drive vs SSD vs HDD – January 15, 2013
Apple’s new iMac’s Fusion Drive a turning point for hybrid drives – December 13, 2012
Please stop the madness: Apple Mac’s Fusion Drive is not about caching – November 29, 2012
Apple’s new Fusion Drive technology also works on older Macs – October 31, 2012
Apple’s new patented Fusion Drive is more advanced than you might think – October 24, 2012
Don’t buy a new Mac without an SSD or you’ll regret it – April 9, 2012
Elgato’s external Thunderbolt SSD drives are lightning-fast – March 26, 2012
Benchmark porn star: OWC’s scorchingly fast Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G 480GB SSD – March 26, 2012
SSD Shootout: OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD vs. the rest – April 13, 2011
I think Crucial makes the best RAM for the Mac. I ordered mine (8GB) online from their website and installed it in my MBP without a single problem. That’s what I love about the MBP – you can do your own upgrades without resorting to prising the battery away from the casing or deal with non-standard RAM or HDD/SSD and there’s enough space in the housing so you can install them yourself without needing special tools like a spreader. Just a magnetised screwdriver (so the screws don’t fall into the cracks) and a pair of tweezers and you’re done.
I’d seriously look at the Crucial SSD. They’re cheap for what they do and the amount of storage they offer. I’m thinking of buying one as the price has dropped significantly since the first SSD’s were introduced in the market. I’d retain my HDD, and house that in a sled in the DVD drive as I hardly use the DVD drive any more. Combine the two and voila! a homemade Fusion Drive.
I do love the design of the MBP. I don’t really mind the weight penalty in relation to the MBA or rMBP because it offers so much more in terms of upgradability. The only thing I would change is the screen – if the Retina option was offered, I’d be on to that in a heartbeat.
Hope it will finally be shipped, I ordered two of them weeks ago when it was available for preorder the first day. Will nicely fit into my MacPro and raise it from 2 x 512 GB SSD plus 4 x 3 TB HD to 2 x 960 GB SSD plus 4 x 4 TB HD.
May be I should mention that I already ordered those 4 GB HDs as well. For video editing hard drive space can’t be enough. And some other team members will be pleased when they get my “old” stuff to upgrade their machines.
(Tim, by the way do you read this? We all are awaiting the new MacPro.)
They are unable to give a native mac installer for their products. So i’ll advise not to buy them.
An installer for what? You install the drive (physically) and format/reinstall the OS and restore your backup. It’s just like changing an HDD out.
Now, if you’re referring to firmware updates, that’s a different animal – but Crucial does have an OS-independent ISO image it produces that you simply burn to a disc and boot off of (and before you say it, consider that an external USB DVD burner goes for something like $35).
I’ve had a Crucial M4/256GB in my MacBook Pro for about 2 years now and it’s hands down the best upgrade I’ve ever made to any computer I’ve owned. To deprive yourself of this kind of performance and bang for the buck over a lousy firmware updater is sheer hard-headedness.
i am effectively referring to firmware update, as i have got a problem with getting my macpro out of sleep. I did burn the CD, but it gives me an error when booting. And I did try the method involving a usb drive with (again) errors to make it with terminal commands…
I tried the Help system on the crucial site & got an answer like this one :
Hi JBOB,
The firmware update unfortunately is not compatible with Mac systems. You can connect the V4 to a windows system and do the upgrade from their but unfortunately it will not work on a Mac.
Junket, Crucial Moderator UK
The writing is on the wall. HDD will soon go the way of CD’s & DVD’s!
Soon is relative as much as I would LOVE to agree with you. Video editing, etc. still requires tons of storage and it’ll still be another few years before this is financially feasible. For the average user though yeah, if they haven’t already just moved on to iPads and Cloud storage.
I think we’ll reach a point where SSD is the premiere storage on consumer based machines but with the price per gig of HDs I think they will always find life somewhere.
Of course if SSDs reach price per gig of HDs then it will be a real game changer and HDs will drop off the map.
I’ll keep one around with my C64 tape drive to show my kids someday. haha
Looks like Apples long-term goal is to eliminate all rotation components. If they ever move into automobiles, look out ? (used to be Detroit, but now, not so much).
automobiles … guess it will be hover-vehicles if you eliminate the rotating components!
That was my vision. Shades of Tatooine.
“While SSDs may never quite reach parity with HDDs when it comes to price per gigabyte, they have become sufficiently less expensive to make the combination of a small SDD (for the OS and apps) and an HDD (storing everything else) a lot more attractive than it was even six months ago,” Simon Crisp reports for The Register.
About 20 years ago Seagate offered the breakthrough drive of a 5 /14 full height drive with 9 GB storage for a then unheard of price of $4,500.00. This was the first LARGE drive at the time that came at $0.50 per MB ($500 per GB).
While HDDs have gotten down below the $0.10 per GB range (a drop of over a factor of 5,000 (~ 10,000 if you include inflation) in the last 20 years), a further drop of another factor of three or four in HDD price per GB is probably about the floor. (Manufacturing prices can only go just so low and areal densities are starting to stagnate.)
SSDs are just getting going in the density space. Multi level cells are pushing to more and more bits per cell and feature sizes are shrinking almost every year. It would be unwise to believe that in the next 10 years that SSDs will not reach parity with the price per GB (TB?) with HDDs. In the long run (20+ years — and maybe sooner) SSDs will definitely be more voluminous *and* less costly than HDDs.
Nah.
It’s a waste of money right now. I believe in the hybrid drives that finally are showing up. There is no need to store things like movies and pictures on fast SSD when you are not going to move them around and load time is not crusial. Only for a small number of applications and operations makes good use of SSD. There is no need to rush out and waste money on this now. Let others be stupid and by first. It will move the technology forward and prices downward. I will not switch over to SSD before it reaches the price of conventional HDDs or close. And there is still the issue with life time. A recommendation would to go with big brands instead when they are becoming available like Seagate.