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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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buff
210 posts
 
I have been enjoying Adele's latest release "21" as of late.
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buff
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Ooooppps, meant to post that in the "best female vocalist thread" - my apologies.
4est
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Sonics aside, faster boot and silent operation!
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
03-07-11: Perrew
I thought regular HDDs did sequential (what most programs do) loadings faster than SSDs?
That was true in some cases a few years ago, but no longer. As a rough ballpark, I would expect a typical SATA2 SSD today to provide sustained read transfer rates of around 200 MB/sec. I'd be surprised if the stock HDD in the OP's several year old Mac Mini could do more than around 50 MB/sec, and perhaps even less.

And of course in terms of random access times, which are particularly important for an operating system drive, the SSD would probably be more than 100x faster.

Regards,
-- Al
prpixel
876 posts
 
No, SSD's are a lot faster the mechanical drives. A pair of velociraptors in a raid array might come close to a mid level SSD but your talking a lot more noise, heat and space. Right now I'm waiting for the new Sandforce 2000/SATA 6Gb based SSD's to start shipping. These will be as fast as Sandforce 1200 drives in a raid array. Hey, I'll be able to shave a few more seconds off of my boot times. I do a lot of photo editing, with very large files, and the SSd's make a world of difference with swapping data in and out of main memory

There's no reason to copy from the mechanical drives to an SSD to listen to a song. Everything gets buffered in memory no matter where your listening. Again, the big advantage is quicker access and less overhead for the CPU.

When I listen on my desktop I just use the standard power supply in the computer case. The desktop rig consists of a Bel Canto C5I integrated amp driving Gallo Reference Strada's with a custom subwoofer. Also, I have a Bolder Cable Modified Squeezebox touch with a modified Jerome Industries linear power supply for when I want to listen while the computer is off or if I just want to listen to Rhapsody or Pandora.

In my Main music system I have a heavily modified Squeezebox 2 with the Bolder Cable Ultimate Nirvana Linear power supply with the Bybee Music Rails.

I rip Cd's on my main computer and then use Synctoy to move them over to the music server and to backup.
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