As you probably know now, at Macbidouille/Hardmac we particularly like the SSD and their associated performance levels, bringing a new dimension of access time and boosting overall performance of our Macs. So, we did a small experiment with a MacBook Pro (2.4) with its default 250 GB Hitachi 5,400 rpm HD, offering max. 50 MB/s in reading/writing modes.
We then removed the original HD and the optical drive to install two Intel SSDs x25-m and created a software-based RAID0 volume with both of them. Results are below and speak by themselves:
Of course, having 500 MB/s in reading mode has a cost, and such RAID0 volume setting will come with some side effects: the Mac OS X software-based RAID0 is draining power from the battery, a defect or crash of one of the SSD will corrupt the entire volume. Of course, the same installation in a Mac Pro will not generate any problem with battery and only the limitations linked to the RAID0 will remain, but regular backup can make it a relatively secure system if this volume is reserved for system and applications, as larger files and data can be stored 3.5" disc-based HD via the other SATA ports available in the Mac Pro.
The best compromise for a MacBook Pro is to have the SSD for the system and applications, then remove the optical drive to install a 2.5" disc-based HD for storing data (500 GB for example).
