Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Running Yosemite?

Since I've installed it I've had a constant issue with wifi, where it'll drop the connection or slow rrrriiiggggghhhhtttt down. Received wisdom seems to be there's contention between wifi and Bluetooth, so turning off the later helps. Presumably Apple will fix it fairly quickly.

Yeah i'm sure I read somewhere that the standard SSD now would still take more cycles or whatever before the controller fails than a HDD would. Plus once it does, doesn't it just freeze? The data remains afaik

Presumably Apple will fix it fairly quickly.

I had horrendous wifi issues for the entire lifetime of Mavericks; I believe @photoben and one or two other forumers did too. It was never fixed.

Yeah i'm sure I read somewhere that the standard SSD now would still take more cycles or whatever before the controller fails than a HDD would. Plus once it does, doesn't it just freeze? The data remains afaik

As blocks reach their wear limit the SSD will mark them as 'bad' and not reuse them, it effectively slowly reduces the spare capacity of the SSD. Existing data is safe (unless there's some other catastrophic failure).

As for endurance:-

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

Today's commodity 2D MLC flash has raw wear-out in the 2,000 to 3,000 write cycle range.

So, if you have a 512GB SSD you can effectively write about 2500*512GB before the SSD would be spent.

To do that in a 5 year period you'd need to write 2500*512GB/(5*365) =~ 700GB a day to it, every day for 5 years. Unlikely in normal usage.

Even if you write ~100GB a day (still a lot) then it should last for 35 years, easily past the date it will be obsolete.

good post!

Even if you write ~100GB a day (still a lot) then it should last for 35 years, easily past the date it will be obsolete.

Excellent, the longest I managed to keep a HD going is 10 years, so the SSD advantage is already way ahead.

If only you can translate that into your audax...

Yup, the problem was so bad I had to return my laptop. I take it they fixed the problem with yosemite @Dom ?

I take it they fixed the problem with yosemite @Dom ?

So far, so good.

OK, prolly gonna pull the trigger on this cheap 500GB SSD in the next day or two... Who knows what caddy I'm gonna need to chuck my old drive into the Superdrive slot? Linky please, I'm useless at this stuff... Late 2011 15" MBP 2.5GHz i7, thanks in advance!

We got cheap ones from Amazon for I think £9. Just search for it on Amazon, our ones are in those unbranded brown boxes. Work fine.

I used this one

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005K7KYF4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

I think I may get one of these kits, seems a shame to bin the SuperDrive...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amonfineshop-External-Enclosure-Superdrive-Optical/dp/B00KRANO5Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1417609726&sr=1-4&keywords=superdrive+enclosure

Right, I need help and I'm hoping someone on here can provide it.

I've an older Mac Book that, for reasons that I can't remember now, I wiped OS X and installed Ubuntu on. I know want to re-install OS X but this is proving impossible. I've a USB stick with the Mavericks Install app on, but when I reboot with the option key held down, it boots up to display the hard drive and the USB drive as expected. If I then click on the USB drive instead of getting the OS X Utilities screen, it boots straight into Ubuntu.

Is there any way other I can reinstall it? I'm thinking I could try and create a dual boot machine, and install it that way, then wipe Ubuntu from OS X once it's installed but am not sure that's possible?

If you've the means to take out the HDD and put it in a caddy, you could install it from another computer.

Wipe the HDD so it wont have a OS to boot to?

Got a feeling you need to create a bootable image onto the USB stick - there's a tutorial floating around. Although I could be thinking about mountain lion...

Got a feeling you need to create a bootable image onto the USB stick

Indeed. @andyp is the USB drive you're trying bootable?

http://www.macworld.com/article/2367748/how-to-make-a-bootable-os-x-10-10-yosemite-install-drive.html

What's the preferred tool for fan control once the HD has been replaced with SSD in the iMac? Mines running at full speed and sounds like its about to take off!

/cc @amey @Soul @alasdairw

I use this http://exirion.net/ssdfanctrl/

Just ordered the caddy and Superdrive enclosure, gonna nip out and buy the SSD now... Good stuff...

Will be back here to ask how I configure the SSD correctly... TTYL...

Seems perfect, thanks.

Will be back here to ask how I configure the SSD correctly... TTYL...

I literally just finished installing a Samsung 840 EVO SSD in an iMac. I used TRIM enabler to enable TRIM and SSD Fan Control (set to SMART) to set the fan to a sane level. Both tools are free. Nothing more is required AFAIK.

It's lovely how fast stuff runs when booting off an SSD.

I have two SSDs in my home ESXi box (32GB RAM, 2x120GB SSD, 2x2TB HDD). An Ubuntu VM boots in about 6 seconds on that. Shame you can't get Hackintosh working (reliably) on ESXi.

I meant configuring my drives, that stuff seems pretty straightforward... I wanna run system and application stuff on the SSD and then keep everything else on the drive that's going in the Superdrive slot... I'm sure it's just a case of changing prefs in the application...