Unduly Noted

First of all i recommend you going with a cheaper faster internal SSD than what I describe here. This was done solely for convenience/fun.

What: 17 inch MBP 3,1 and a 48GB FileMate SolidGO Express Card

Be careful when buying express card drives. Make sure they actually use the Express Card bus and not the USB.

Pop this baby in and it sits perfectly flush.

Installing OS X is a breeze (and rather quick). Boot from a USB/Firewire image or use a good old fashioned DVD. After you choose a language hop over to Utilities and Disk Utility from the menu bar. Go ahead and Partition your Express Card Mac OS X. Choose Extended (not journaled) and then click options and make sure you make it GUID (Intel). After formatting just quit disk utility and it will return you to the main installer. Go ahead and start/finish the install, nothing special.

*note. i did not enable journaling because I was concerned with it shortening the life of my drive for more than one reason.

Booting doesn’t seem all that faster. Of course I forgot to time the original drives performance.

The good: I can now use the internal drive that came with my computer for a time machine backup or MP3’s and Video’s.

This things is pretty fast. Their Benchmarks: 65MB Write - 115MB Read (Sequential). My benchmarks: 65MB Write - 89.6MB Read with a 128MB file. A little off on the read but still fast enough for me. With the same benchmarking software my original drive gets 23.3MB Write - 23.9MB Read. So you can see by the numbers how much faster it is. The standard drive till outperforms with sustained write. A 1GB file on the SSD 22.9MB Write - 77.9MB Read. Original drive 38.5MB Write - 38.4MB Read. You will only notice this slowdown if you work with large files. But that is why we left the original disk attached inside.

All applications open drastically faster. Photoshop uncached is a second or two. Safari 4 is open before the damn thing even bounces.

One good thing about this is that at a moments notice I can rip it out of the mac bringing all my files with me rendering it unable to boot. All that a thief will be left with are my videos and movies, no personal information.

The bad: If you work with the lid shut connected to an external display this puppy will get HOT! And when it does…Spinning Beach Ball of Death. This has happened twice in the 4 months of ownership. Also once in a rare while it will get hung up for about 5 seconds. Usually happens in Safari, so who knows if it’s even the drive.

Overall I am very happy with this drive. Bad price compared to the internals that are now out there and slower as well. But a good boost of storage and speed that won’t make you rip apart the pain in the ass MBP.