The first MacBook Pro with a 64GB SSD?
Yeah, I just couldn’t resist transplanting the Samsung 64GB solid state drive from my PC to my Mac after I finished most of my tests (which are now up over at Engadget). This is really how everyone’s laptop experience should be: free from worries about platter scratches or head crashes from bumps or drops; silent, cool drive operation; super fast access to your data. It’s just an early taste of what portable computing will be like in a few years, and it’s amazing. Install shots in my Flickr stream.
Update: Boot-up video hotness after the break, at the request of commenter Brad.
Also, to further clarify: Samsung SSDs are not available for purchase to end-users. I have one because I was sent it for review (see link above to Engadget).
To put that boot in context, it’s a fresh install of Leopard booting with a number of extensions / startup items in the back and foreground, including Quicksilver, TextExpander, Growl, and a few others. 20 seconds sure ain’t bad.
Co-founder of 
Great pics. I am drooling right now.
I am so excited for these in the future. I will have to wait for at least 128gb and under 500 though.
How much cooler does it run on the macbook pro? because mine runs hot as shit right now.
Please consider posting videos of performance aspects including boot and applications running.
Tyler, it runs pretty cool. It uses a lot less power and creates a lot less friction than a regular drive (obviously). It’s one of those things you feel absolutely zero guilt about running when you’re AFK for a while; with a 2m hour MBTF it’s not going to fail because you’ve been running it too long or hot, you know?
thanks i am a jealous guy. Are you going to keep it in there? I don’t think I could work with only 64gb. Maybe if it was my backup laptop or something.
I think so… I mean, it’d be great if it was 128GB-roomy, but got rid of a bunch of junk, did fresh, lean install of Leopard without the 15GB of printer drivers (ha!), and managed to get all my data on with about 19GB to spare (as of right now). Won’t be able to use it as a mobile movie station but it’ll definitely work for my needs.
How about your battery life now? Do you see a great improvement?
Excellent, looking forward to these!
Where did you get it and how much was it? I want one for my dual-core macbook right now!!!
[...] στο MacBook Pro του (χειρουργείο λέμε). Έχει ανεβάσει στο blog του εικόνες και βιντεάκι του υπολογιστή, ο οποίος είναι [...]
I also think that’s pretty cool, -and- I also think it would be cool to see more data regarding usage. I also think it would be cool to see a pair of drives running in striped raid. There is a kit that lets you do this:
http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
A HOWTO:
http://echeng.com/journal/2007/04/26/320gb-striped-array-raid-0-macbook-pro/
How bigger difference does it make to battery life?
Now to put Windows on it and see how fast XP/Vista boot!
Hahahahaha.
Matt
Considering that I’m anxiously awaiting production shipments of WD’s 320GB Scorpio drive, I’m pretty sure this would NOT work for me. (I’m already almost out of room on the 250GB drive currently installed.)
BTW, don’t you just LOVE how easy Apple makes it to install a new drive in the MBP?
wow thats really cool both metaphorically and literally.
lol u have an iphone too.hehe
but for the sake of this being a youtube video and the internet.. i will save other “l33t” people leaving their
fully “h4x0r” comments on a good page like this.
therefore im sorry to say “thats FAKE ! *insert 3000 exclamation marks* *insert random big words to make my ‘accurate” comment look smart, such as High Definition, *think bigger* ..urgh quad core processor 64 bit html php …terabyte…bill gates…windows..DOS..command prompt…photoshop *no bigger words*…expansion pack…dual layer dvd *much better* *insert how the author has ‘faked’ this event by pretending that hes photo shopped it then had the computer on standby or just something really lame* *insert cursing words in leet speak* ”
there i have saved all you flaming ‘uber-smart-hax0rs” the trouble of writing up a comment and ruining the site.
thank you all
good job buddy
TOSHIBA are the ones that should be crowing. Aren’t THEY the ones that actually make them, n’est-ce pas? You could pop one of these drives into practically ANY machine….
[...] Vía: Flickr, Engadget, Ryan Block [...]
I will admit that the technology is amazing, but I wouldn’t brag over a 20 second boot time. My 4 year old HP ZD7010US 17″ laptop cold boots in 16.5 seconds with a 7200rpm Hitachi Travelstar. Macs boot slow, it’s just a fact.
How is the battery life of the 64GB SSD MBP? I’m thinking double the current 4-5hrs?
Ryan… How’s the battery life on the MacBook Pro compared to the old hard drive?
[...] quieres echarle un vistazo al futuro, pregúntale a Ryan Block, que en su aburrimiento decide conectar un disco SSD de Samsung (64 GB) a su MacBook Pro. La [...]
are they thick as a regular disk or thinner? there is no way to mount 2 of em in a striping configuration (in a laptop, i mean)?
I just got functional from a hard drive crash and was looking at SSDs as a replacement. I can’t afford one now, but you’re right. In a couple of years things will be sweet, unless software bloat keeps them from being practical.
[...] The first MacBook Pro with a 64GB SSD? » Ryan Block [...]
Hmm.. I could deal with this.. I have laptop with an 80GB Harddrive
Realisticaly 67GB after the formating and recovery took up space and for the most part i’m good to go.. the stuff that takes up the most space are my music and other media… I could always get a external drive or better yet when they come out with external versions of these in bigger sizes
Why only for laptops? This is so hot for RAID in desktops. Who needs storage if they have bleeding-edge performance? I’ll stick in a 500GB-drive for all those files i never use.
What’s battery life like?
I see it’s roughly $2k for a 64GB SSD at newegg. :-/
I would combine that with the Optibay from MCE and put two of those SSDs in there. Since u luckily anyway don’t need an optical drive these days :)
Really nice stuff !
Been wating for those AdTron drives to come out…
How is the weight on those Samsung ones?
Has your battery life been affected positively (or negatively) as a result?
Has your battery life been affected as a result?
Hi. I posted a similar comment in the Engadget review, but I thought I might be useful here as well.
I’ve been using a Sandisk 32 GB SSD on a Dell Latitude D630 running Vista for about 3 months now. That’s a lot of “real-world use”. This wasn’t cheap, and even with an early adopter mindset, this is a big disappointment; it does indeed reads much faster (about 30 times), but writes at least 3 times slower than the same D630 running a SATA.
Quiet is great, more battery is fine, and I hardly ever reboot using Vista almost-instantaneous “sleep” feature, but installing software or writing large files is *painful*. Plan for a lot of memory: you do *not* want to see your system paging for virtual memory.
Now maybe Vista is to blame, but the whole system will hang now and then for 10 secs or more. Is it indexing something, writing whatever system logs on disk, who knows, but a a few other users have reported the same issue with this SSD on Dell forums, and on XP as well. No driver update has been released either since the SSD option has been made available. Please do not start the usual “oh it’s not gonna happen here, it’s running MacOSX” war: I just want to report what I saw.
I for one will try to switch back to a SATA. This is not ready for prime time, at least for Windows, even if Samsung claims better write speed on its 64 GB.
Thanks for the pictures though. If you could give us your impression after, say, 3 weeks, that would be great. Start installing apps, playing with Photoshop, or running gcc, etc.
What did the ssd cost?
OH Man. I want that in my MBP ;)
It must feel great not to fear shocks, not to hear any noise and that damn bootup speed. its crazy
awesome! man I would run 65g right now just for the speed. if you need storage use an external. time for an upgrade.
Nice. But I expected it lot more faster.
My MBP boots up in about 28-30 secs typically, so although SSD is fast, not as fast as I expected.
But overall, definitely a step in the right direction. I can imaging Video editing to speed up a lot.
that’s pretty sweet. Paired with a nice little (large capacity) fw800 drive for when you need video work, this can be a nice mod to have.
Nice. So what was the boot-up time with the normal harddrive? And how does application starting times compare? Do you see the beach ball of death for shorter periods? And how much did you pay for the 64GB SSD?
Hey Ryan, care to comment on battery life at all? Any significant or even noticeable improvements?
Just curious – did you time it with the old hard drive? What was the difference?
You say that this uses less power. Could you give some info on battery life, etc?
This would be something nice for my MacBook, even though it’s only 64GB, It’s still larger than the 60 that came with my MacBook.
[...] | Digg Sitio Oficial | Ryan Block Video | Arranque de Mac OS X en disco duro Samsung SATA II [...]
Was it just a matter of swapping your HDD for an SSD, or did you have to do something fancy?
This seems pretty lame. Solid state still isn’t as cheap as magnetic media and even if 64gig is enough for now, it still pales in comparison to the 750gig magnetic media drives that many media professionals need. No matter how cheap the largest of flash media becomes, there will always be cheaper magnetic media with far greater capacities. Not to mention that solid state still suffers from quicker wear and tear than most harddrives and it is pretty obvious harddrives are going to be around for quite a while longer.
If you aren’t in love with your superdrive, you could look into getting the mcetech mod that allows you to put in a 2nd drive in the mbp. You could have your 128gb drive and the 64gb ssd in there at the same time!
[...] The first MacBook Pro with a 64GB SSD? Utterly sweet, and definitely the future of portables. I’d love to see some figures on how much extra battery life you get out of this. (tags: macbookpro mac apple samsung) [...]
Are you saying that was one of the first startups after Leopard was installed? For whatever reason, it still has the Tiger background.
[...] posted here [...]
Hopefully Apple is on top of it. My next MacBook Pro needs 2 hard drives… one a 30gb solid state, and the other a 120 gig 4200 rpm for movies and music. It would be nice if it was internal, but external works too I guess. But for 3 grand for a MacBook Pro, come on Apple… make it happen.
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I understand that flash memory is limited in the number of reads and writes that are possible before it fails. Does anyone know if that is the case here?
[...] 「The first MacBook Pro with a 64GB SSD? » Ryan Block（英語）」によると、23秒で起動してしまう、おそらく世界最速のMac Book Proへのチューンが成功したとのこと。証拠は以下のムービー。 [...]
Oh man, neato. This is cool. But have you ever asked yourselves why we can’t boot up the good ol “ram disk” program and run apps like lightning? I mean, these complicated protected-mode memory schemes of modern OS’s is nice but WHY oh WHY can’t we have a modern ram disk?
(Maybe this is the reincarnation?)
We’ll see….Rock on Ryan!
[...] Ryan Block drops a 64GB SSD into his MacBook Pro. This is really how everyone’s laptop experience should be: free from worries about platter scratches or head crashes from bumps or drops; silent, cool drive operation; super fast access to your data. [...]
[...] 現在的 Mac 仍在使用硬碟作為儲存裝置，之前有說過會改用 SSD （ Solid State Drive ，類似「 USB 手指」或 iPod nano 等的不揮發性記憶體），但一至只聞樓梯響。其他公司例如華碩的姨姨 PC 或 Sony 的便攜 Notebook 已經開始採用 SSD ，無論在起動時間及電池壽命都有進步，唯現在價格仍未及硬碟便宜，也有容量的限制。有麥客將從其他 PC 拆下來的 Samsung a.k.a. 三叔 64G SSD 成功移植到 MacBook Pro 。暫時見到的，是起動時間加快，只需要 20 秒。 SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “MacBook Pro 改裝用 SSD”, url: “http://www.macgrass.com/permalink/1956″ }); [...]
[...] case you don’t speak Geeky Acronym, the gibberish above means that someone (in this case, Ryan Block of Engadget) has dropped a 64-gigabyte solid-state drive into a MacBook Pro. The incredible drives, which are [...]
[...] case you don’t speak Geeky Acronym, the gibberish above means that someone (in this case, Ryan Block of Engadget) has dropped a 64-gigabyte solid-state drive into a MacBook Pro. The incredible drives, which are [...]
i had to save up for a long time get my MBP … and now you tell me this …
i am jealous as hell …
gotta get me one of those …
bloody hell, there’s not even a fake loading progress bar
i really want to know the battery life in that MBP…
And how bout the overall performance Ryan..
Please tell us more..
One for sure…I want thing on my next laptop ;)
[...] it out here “64GB, SSD, solid state hard disk, hard disk, storage, samsung, macbook pro Posted in [...]
[...] Ryan Block from Engadge fame added a 64Gb SSD (solid state hard disk) to his Mac Book. Ryan includes lots of pictures of the whole process. This baby would probably be the quietest Mac yet. [...]
[...] The first MacBook Pro with a 64GB SSD? [Ryan Block] [...]
Awesome. Now imagine that with 1TB flash drive,
to be released soon!
64GB NAND Flash in einem MacBook Pro
Ryan Block, Autor von Engadget, hat sich ein 64GB NAND Flash von Samsung genommen un in sein MacBook Pro gepflanzt.Operation erfolgreich:- keine Sorge mehr um Head-Crashes- schnell, ruhig, geringe Wär…
I claim to have invented the solid-state disk concept in 1970. Monolithic Systems Inc. produced it as the “EMU – Extended Memory Unit” thru the ’70′s.
A Ph.D. thesis was done at CWRU on the EMU’s performance. The expected 17,000-fold performance increase didn’t happen, due to the overhead in the device driver (DEC, Unibus, PDP-11). Notable performance increases were measured.
The US Navy deployed at least one on a submarine … no rotational gyro effects.
A very high-speed data acquisition version (dual-ported) could suck data at incredible (for that time) rates and present a disk-full of data for analysis or transfer.
[...] [Ryan Block] Comment on this post | [...]
I tested one of the 32 GB models for a company I worked at in a Dell D430 ultra portable. I was disappointed to see that it was only a little bit quicker to boot, and much much slower to copy files from one partition to another (on the same SSD of course).
It was however quieter, assuredly more stable, and according to the specs used less battery power.
Overall however, I can’t say that it is worth the extreme cost for such a small drive unless the overall speed is improved.
@ 44 & 51, note that Ryan mentioned in post #4, “with a 2m hour MBTF it’s not going to fail because you’ve been running it too long or hot, you know?”
And regarding, “No matter how cheap the largest of flash media becomes, there will always be cheaper magnetic media with far greater capacities,” go back to your Economics 101 class and review “economies of scale”. If the demand is for SSD rather than magnetic drives, SSDs could come down in price below magnetics, if technology allows (and of course demand doesn’t outstrip supply). For example, consider this: look up the price of new EDO RAM on CDW. Then look up new memory currently in high production, say PC-5300 SODIMM. The EDO is $80 for 128MB ($0.63/MB), the PC-5300 is $30 for 512 MB ($0.06/MB). As the old technology falls out of favor, it can become more expensive, because fewer manufacturers are making it.
[...] Mais detalhes no artigo completo de Block, que também avalia o drive flash Samsung SSD 64 GB neste artigo do Engadget. [...]
[...] Homepage | Site [...]
[...] classic is clearly a transitional product – apple’s moving to solid state in a big way. With 64GB solid state hard drives on the market it’s only a matter of time before we see ipod touches with high capacity [...]
If the so called ultra portable is going to have a solid state hard drive that will boot in less than 30 seconds, I’ll say good bye to all competitors. Apple Rocks.
[...] Read [Ryan Block] [...]
@poster 11 and 28:
I don’t think that you can use the flashdrive with OptiBay as RAID0, because it uses ATA (not SATA!) :-)
[...] Many have been eagerly awaiting the emergence of affordable, high capacity Flash drives on the market.Enter the Samsung SSD (Solid State Drive) series of Flash drives.Samsung has posted a video revealing some impressive specs and vs. HDD benchmarks.Low capacity Flash thumb drives have been affordable for some time. They are very useful for usbooting a Linux OS, or transferring files. That said, some of us simply want more room to move, and a speed increase to boot.While Samsung has been shipping similar flash and hybrid-flash drives for some time now, it finally looks like they’re ready to enter the mainstream with the slick SSD series.My future solid state MacBook…Apple has a history of packing innovations like this into their Macs, though usually with a gradual phase-in, and/or a premium price tag.Update: Check out Ryan Blocks Samsung 64GB SSD transplanted MacBook Pro here.MacHappens [...]
[...] spiega come ha inserito 64 Giga di memoria flash e vi ha installato con successo Leopard. Qui i dettagli dell’operazione. Questo esperimento può essere la conferma che il Mac [...]
[...] Block, sul suo blog, ha pubblicato tutti i passi per trapiantare un disco Samsung Sata II, totalmente basato su memoria [...]
[...] spiega come ha inserito 64 Giga di memoria flash e vi ha installato con successo Leopard. Qui i dettagli dell’operazione. Questo esperimento può essere la conferma che il Mac [...]
I really also want to know the battery time of this SSd disc in a mbp?
[...] what happened when Ryan Block from Engadget decided to replace his macbook pro’s hard drive with a 64gb SSD [...]
[...] Click here to read his blog in it’s entirety [...]
[...] 64GB SSD Bootup Time In a MacBook Pro – RyanBlock.com [...]
[...] de hecho ya hay alguien que ha instalado una joya de estas en su MacBook Pro, os dejo un link a su blog, podemos ver fotos y ver cómo arranca en tan solo 20 segundos, habrá que esperar un poco ya que [...]
Ah, sorry to say you’re not the first Ryan! Vincent Nguyen over at SlashGear beat you to the punch by one day. ;o)
And why wasn’t this linked at Engadget? I had to find it out from MacDailyNews!
But I will say that he only posted photos and video of the transplant and not the bootup time or any other benchmarks. He also hasn’t followed up as promised yet.
http://www.slashgear.com/slashgear-exclusive-look-at-the-samsung-64gb-ssd-in-macbook-pro-098426.php
This is so cool, exactly what I want. I saw today that Dell XPS M1703 these days can ship with two SDDs of 64 MB installed. Would Apple allow me this as well?
[...] Block de Engadget no pudo esperar. El instaló uno de los nuevos drives Samsung en una MacBook Pro. Su reporte: [...]
[...] The first MacBook Pro with a 64GB SSD? [...]
[...] the ultimate geek hack and put an SSD out of his toshiba in a MacBook Pro – post of the experience here . Below is a vid of the 20 second boot [...]
[...] Block is the first to install a SSD into a MacBook Pro. I think I’ll stick with regular drives for the time being, [...]
64GB would’t work for me… 128GB maybe, i’m on 250GB right now… and ia have 90GB free…
[...] a memory-chip-only (flash memory) computer. If you haven’t already seen it, you should go here to see a regular MacBook Pro that’s been converted by replacing the hard drive with a Samsung [...]
Wow! Wow! I see the future! I… I see that one day… let me look in my crystal ball… Oh yes! I see that one day we’ll all have a solid state hard drive in our Macbook Pro! SCREW PLATTERS! WE ARE FREE! Now… Let me rest. I’ve… I’ve tired myself out. lol
I was waiting to see some benchmark tests for the MacBook Air before commenting on this. Now that it’s pretty much obvious that the SSD isn’t worth the money at this point–I really don’t think it would be smart for Apple to add the option for pay an extra $1,000 bucks.
– Karim Baz
[...] aivan varmasti. Lisäksi ainakin vaihtoehtona SSD levyt perinteisten HDD levyjen rinnalle. Ensimmäinen MacBook Pro SSD levyllä on rakennettu jo aikaa sitten, mutta tavalliselle kuluttajalle moisen omistaminen ei ole ollut [...]
[...] 1st macbook with SSD [...]
[...] couple of months ago, I read about the first MacBook Pro with a SSD drive installed, and then saw a video of a MacBook Pro launching 17 apps at once. I instantely became intrigued [...]
Hi Ryan
I have the first MacBook Pro too.
Now is kind of awkward that I want to use wireless N.
But it doesn’t support with this model.
I am wondering is there anyway I can change my motherboard and the wireless card also?
thank you!
Justin
[...] quieres echarle un vistazo al futuro, pregúntale a Ryan Block, que en su aburrimiento decide conectar un disco SSD de Samsung (64 GB) a su MacBook Pro. La [...]
Amazing! I did some research and it looksl like these 64gb drives can be found for around $500. I wonder how easy it would be to swap a normal pc based laptop hd with one of these?
[...] Blog de Ryan Block // [...]
[...] a MacBook Air with 64GB solid state disk (SSD), but what about upgrading a MacBook Pro? Ryan Block put one in his MBP and got a 20 second startup. Ridata released a 128MB 2.5“ SATA SSD in January that looks [...]
I looked into getting one of these but the price/performance just isn’t there yet.
Some of you have asked for benchmarks on having two SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration in a MacBook Pro. I just set one up and have published benchmarks.
http://echeng.com/journal/2008/09/28/striped-ocz-120gb-ssds-raid-0-in-a-macbook-pro/
lol now the macbook pros come with 128mb SSD for $500 extra lol
Ok we get it, SSDs have great read performance. Why do people keep testing the boot times?
The interesting test is multiple simultaneous writes, which tend to choke the system. Some SSDs choke, others don’t.
Show a test of multiple writes at once while using a browser.
hi there apple at http://www.apple.com/store has the 128 gb ssd option listed at only $350 and a 256 gb ssd at $600 and a 512 gb ssd for like $1,500