Tuesday, May 12, 2009

One example of a nearly flawless execution of SSD as an upgrade is Imation's M-Class (2.5") and S-Class (3.5") SSD drives with capacities ranging from 32GB to 128GBs. Imation sent Storage Switzerland a unit for us to put through the SSD test paces. 

A personal unit that I purchase in February is the latest 17" Apple Macbook Pro with the unibody construction. The great thing about Apple's design of this product is how easy it is to get to the hard drive. At the time I ordered the unit the SSD options were not yet available and I am an impatient sort when it comes to technology, so I ordered the unit with a 320GB hard drive. Very rarely in life does being impatient actually work to your advantage; this is one of those times, switching to SSD could not have been easier.

Within minutes I had the Imation M Class SSD installed, and using the included cable to connect to my old drive via USB, then used Shirt Pocket Software's SuperDuper to move the drive image from my 320GB drive to the 128GB drive. Since this was a newer machine and I am a bit detailed about archiving data, I only had about 64GB of data on the original drive. For windows users the Imation upgrade kit includes Acronis to help move the drive image over. A quick reboot and I was ready to go.

I have had the unit installed now for one week, and how's it going? First I am one of those users who notices performance issues right away (see the impatience reference above) and I am also one of those users that hate noise coming out of my system. Also I purposely did not take any performance measurements prior to installing the unit. My reasoning for this is that when you are using your personal machine your experience of this type of an upgrade is going to be based more on feel than on numbers.

So how does it feel? Very snappy and VERY quite. Applications certainly launch faster, files open faster, and saves are somewhat faster. I also have a database that tracks and indexes all my blogs and articles, it is large and searches had been growing longer. Now, searches are essentially instant.

It is important to note that my laptop is the latest and greatest that Apple makes with fast processing and a decent original hard drive. The fact that I saw any improvement is significant, the fact that the improvement is so noticeable is amazing. My expectation is that if you install this in a system that is a year or two old, you will see a stunning performance improvement.

From a noise factor, there is none. Period. This is now the quietest computing experience I have ever had.

The Imation M-Class with its upgrade kit is well worth investigating. As the title says, this is an extended test so look for another update next week but as it stands now, Imation has nailed this offering.