Your experience & thoughts on SSDs for MacMini


I have a 2007-2008 MacMini that I use exclusively as a music server on a third system with the stock HD. I am considering replacing the stock HD to an SSD. The stock HD makes noise that is audible often enough to draw unwanted attention to itself.

I'm looking for experience-based thoughts and commentary on the various SSDs that are available for this replacement. I'm using SnowLeopard and iTunes 10 with Pure Music for playback of AIFF files from a peripheral HD (which is silent).

So far, my research on this seems to get a bit confusing. For example, Other World Computing offers two levels of SSD, one over 50% more $ in price (and 25% larger 40 Gb vs 50 Gb than the other (offering a longer warranty, etc.) And I know there are several other manufacturers of SSDs out there with varying price points and related benefits.

This MacMini isn't used for anything else than serving music, ripping files, streaming audio, playing Netflix downloadable movies, and the occasional download from iTunes.

Your points of view are appreciated.

:) listening,

Ed
istanbulu
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Ed,

I couldn't imagine life without SSD's. They are so much quicker and quieter than mechanical drives. My desktop machine boots in 14 seconds before I'm on the internet. My laptop takes 20 seconds to do the same. I have 6 computers here and they are all running SSD's.

The drives that failed were all due to a bug with S3 sleep. It took almost a year before the manufacturer of the controller chip recognized that there was a problem. A firmware update to fix the problem should be out any day now. What's spooky is that they all failed within a few days of the four month mark. It was just an annoyance because I backup religiously and can do a clean install and turn around my machine in 2-3 hours.

Yes, SSD's do make a difference with sound quality. I imagine this is because of the speed of them and the operating system having to work less/faster to buffer data.

On another note, my music server is based an a FitPC2 which fits in the palm of my hand. It boots from an SSD and the music is kept on two external 2.5" drives. It runs 24/7 and I update it like once every 6 months. At idle it draws 4 watts; under load never more than 11 watts. It's 100% silent and air cooled. I have five squeezeboxes and multiple computer that access it and it's never had a problem serving multiple streams.
Prpixel,

I thought regular HDDs did sequential (what most programs do) loadings faster than SSDs?
Do you copy the music from the external to the internal when you want to listen a song? What type of power supplies do you run, battery or Linear PS?
Cheers P
Ooooppps, meant to post that in the "best female vocalist thread" - my apologies.