In part 1, I outlined the issues with using SSD drives on Mac OS X Yosemite and above and why you should not use TRIM on third party SSD drives. In part 2, I covered the installation of an Angelbird SSD wrk for Mac Pro drive into my Mid 2010 Mac Pro. Now in part 3 we move onto a different SSD drive from Angelbird....
Bring On The SSD2go Pocket Drive
In the third part of this review is I wanted to look at using an SSD drive as my portable location recording drive and to have an Angelbird drive with native Apple TRIM support seemed like a great idea so I asked Angelbird to send me a 256G SSD2go pocket drive.
One of the advantages of an SSD drive especially on the road is that they are so much more robust that a normal rotational drive. Watch this video from the guys at Angelbird as they do some extreme testing of a pocket drive, not just drop testing it from 2 metres but hurling it high into the air so it lands on tarmac and concrete before driving over it in a car. Enjoy...
Seeing them test the data rate of their drives after each test gave me the idea to use the AJA system test software to test the performance of the Angelbird drives and also compare them to other drives on my systems.
Drive | Read Speed MB/Sec | Write Speed MB/Sec | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
Angelbird SSD work for Mac Pro 512G | 254 | 266 | Installed in a SATA caddy in my Mid 2010 Mac Pro |
Crucial M4 512G | 243 | 269 | Installed in the top SATA slot above the DVD in my Mid 2010 Mac Pro |
Work Drive – 4TB Western Digital | 150 | 159 | Installed in a SATA caddy in my Mid 2010 Mac Pro |
Work Drive 3 – 250Gb Seagate Barracuda | 30 | 35 | Installed in an external Firewire 800 enclosure connected by FW800 to my Mid 2010 Mac Pro |
SATA Drive 2 – Seagate ST315003 1.5TB | 98 | 108 | Installed in an external SATA enclosure connected to a Sonnet ESATA pci-e card in my 20110 Mac Pro |
Angelbird SSD2go pocket drive 256G | 31 | 36 | Connected by USB2 into the front of my 2010 Mac Pro |
Angelbird SSD2go pocket drive 256G | 358 | 433 | Connected by USB3 to my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro |
Toshiba 500G system drive | 65 | 51 | The factory fitted Apple Toshiba drive connected by internal SATA inside my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro |
So you can see that the Angelbird wrk drive is just about the fastest drive on my mid 2010 Mac Pro, followed closely by the Crucial M4 SSD drive. The high spec Western Digital rotational drive also in a caddy like the Angelbird is around 2/3rds of the spec of the SSD drives and the FW800 drive which I have used for many many projects including high track count album projects is very very slow.
Moving onto the laptop, which has USB3 ports unlike my Mac Pro, we can see the real speed of the SSD2go pocket drive, which is even faster than my sata connected SSD drives in my Mac Pro. This is going to be an excellent portable media drive for my laptop rig.
Bundled Software
Another feature with Angelbird SSD drives is they come bundled with a range of software and files.
With each drive you get a code and a link and once you register your drive you get access to all this content.
On the software side you get a copy of Bitwig Studio with a serial number, a copy of Parallels Desktop For Mac. I was about to upgrade to v11 of Parallels so I can continue to run my QuickBooks accounts package which is only available with UK VAT support on Windows. This has saved me the £35 upgrade fee that I was actually going to have to spend.
There are also links to the latest drivers as well as a Windows only backup software package - Reflection.
In the Multimedia section there are some PureMix videos as well as some Angelbird icons for your drives if you are into that kind of the thing.
Angelbird have explained that this feature will be kept up to date and expanded and existing owners will get access to the new content as it becomes available.
Conclusions
This is a no brainer, neither of these drives are going back. To have the confidence of an SSD drive with native TRIM support gives me complete confidence that the Angelbird drive will keep on working to it's full potential, and won't slow down like my Crucial drive did. Angelbird offer a 5 year warranty on all their SSD drives which adds further to the confidence levels.
Moving onto the SSD2go pocket drive, the performance on my MacBook Pro is amazing and together with the bullet proof nature of the case and that there are no moving parts to go wrong, this will now be my portable media drive. A rotational drive wouldn't survive much more than a 1m drop test never mind being hurled up in the air so that it drops from 20m or so and survives with nothing more than a few scratches.
So I can do nothing else other than give Angelbird drives Editors Choice and advise everyone to buy Angelbird drives whenever you looking for an SSD drive. Its that clearcut and simple. The price difference is not that significant so why wouldn't you, especially if you are using the Mac platform.