SSD for Boot Drive...?

[HCMarkus]

DEFINITELY: Google, install and activate "Trim Enabler" before writing to your new Samsung SSD for best long-term results. The time to enable Trim is sooner rather than later.

The OWC drives use SandForce controllers. As long as the drives are not over-filled, Trim is less important, but still generally recommended.

OWC and Lloyd Chambers at Mac Performance Guide advise against trim for their drives. See Frank's earlier post in this thread with links to OWC blog posts, one of which includes a link to this 13-page article 'Real World SSD Performance' at the MPG site:

http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld.html

I've researched the issue extensively. You left this out of my quoted text:

Apple enables Trim on Macs that ship with SandForce drives.

OWC drives use SandForce controllers. Lloyd Chambers testing showed that SandForce based SSDs do better without Trim than other drives (four years ago, when this testing was performed). But note the following comes from LSI, (aka SandForce):

http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/ ... sd-primer/

"(T)he SSD with TRIM support knows what data is invalid and it can be considered free space during GC (Garbage Collection) and prevents having to move the invalid data to another block.
This produces three key benefits:
Lower write amplification. Less data is re-written and more free space is available during GC (more space to write equals fewer writes needed);

Higher throughput. With the TRIM command, there is less data to move during GC and the drive runs faster. Throughput is bottlenecked at the flash an SSD is only as fast as it can write to the flash memory. During the time it is doing GC, the drive has to stop some of the data transfer from the host while it moves data around. This is why it’s beneficial for the SSD to know which data is invalid so it doesn’t have to be moved during GC.

Improved endurance, because the drive is writing less to the flash by not rewriting invalid data.

DuraWrite, found in LSI® SandForce® Flash Storage Processors, produces similar benefits to the TRIM command whether or not TRIM is present. And when TRIM is present, DuraWrite creates more free space on the SSD than would be possible otherwise."

So, as I noted previously, as long as the SandForce based SSDs are not over-filled, Trim is less important for sustained performance, but still recommended.

I should point out that SandForce controllers work great with compressible data, but don't offer the same level of performance for incompressible data. I think the Samsung drives are probably a better buy these days. OTOH, my four SSDs are SandForce based Intel SSDs.

Bottom Line for me: SSDs, no matter what brand, offer great performance compared to spinning HDs. Buy an SSD. Use and enjoy it.

[BobK]

Just replaced my System drive with a 480 GB OWC Mercury Electra (copied using Carbon Copy Cloner).

Wow! It sure lives up to the buzz. For general usage (email, web, launching apps), it's like a new machine.

Now I want one for my sample libraries and VIs, though I can't afford it right now. Might consider moving some of my most-frequently-used libraries to the SSD, which is just a little more than half-full.