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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

Showing 2 responses by rbstehno

rbstehno
1,531 posts
 
I don't agree with tvad. I think the future is now using a music server using a very good dac.
Before I would buy an ssd for the Mac, I would put in the maximum amount of memory in the mini then set pure music to use memory for playback.
I also agree with using a nas set of disks for your library. The disks can be located anywhere then.
rbstehno
1,531 posts
 
all the ssd devices that are in mac's and pc's are of the cheap kind. sure they are faster than mechanical disks, but again, they are very cheap. for a mac mini, i would use a hdd which i do. i am involved in this technology for a living and the normal price for a enterprise class ssd can be around $12,000 depending on configuration. these ssd devices vary quite a bit compared to the cheap ssd devices found in macs and pc's: they provide more fault tolerance by over-provisioning so they have a larger mttf compared to a hard drive.
also, music won't sound better by using an ssd vs. a cheap hdd. for playing music off a mac or pc, you don't need the speed that ssd provides. way over-kill. the benefit you will get is a more quiet pc and a more cooler running pc.
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