[msarro]

Hey everyone. I've noticed that as I approach 500 movies, and about 150 tv series, that XBMC is starting to get slower and slower. I am using a mac mini with the stock 5400 rpm, 500gb hard disk. I'm considering upgrading it to a 60GB SSD (most likely an intel 520 SATA3 HDD). Has anyone else encountered this? Did the SSD help?

Outside of XBMC I've also noticed the OS starting to operate very slowly when I have multiple programs running (I usually run XBMC on the first desktop, fullscreen safari on the second with a netflix tab, a hulu tab, an amazon prime tab, an xfinity tv tab, a hbo go tab, and a cinemax go tab). Throw in other normal programs like transmission, and the system starts to get very bogged down. I know it isn't processing power since none of these things use a lot of juice, so I am guessing that hard disk speed is the real limiter here.

Thoughts?

[Bub4]

Hi msarro,

Sometimes a RAM upgrade could also be of benefit - but I do not know your hardware...

I've a Mac Mini 2010 with 8GB RAM and Crucial C300 120GB and I'm very (very) happy with it!

So you will have two drives, hard drive for the "mass" storage and SSD for OS and XBMC data base?

If you chose capacity, please keep in mind that a SSDs should always have free space and should never be stored fully.
Not sure but, at least 25% should be free, sometimes more... Otherwise SSD performance could be limited.

Power Loss Data Protection could be very important!
intel 520 doesn't have this, I'm afraid. But if you run TimeMachine Backups in proper way - no need...

http://thessdreview.com could be of interest for more professional information

[msarro]

Hi!
As of now here is my setup: internal 500GB drive is used solely for OS, emulator software, transmission and XBMC. There shouldn't be much more installed at any point.
All media is on an external 3TB hard drive (more to be added in the future as media grows).

I am backing up the system disk via time machine to one external disk.
I am also backing up EVERYTHING (OS and media disk) via crashplan to the internet.
All XBMC configs are being backed up to dropbox along thanks to XBMCBackup.

I think I'm ok on backups, if not a little obsessive

So far I seem to be OK on ram, I'm using a late 2012 mac mini which came with 4GB RAM, with everything open I run around a max of 500MB in use, so I don't think that's a huge issue.

My major reason for wanting to go with the intel 520 is because it has slightly better quality memory than the 330. Also, it has a little bit of overprovisioning which I like. It falls into a sweet spot pricewise for performance and quality. I don't think you can really get power loss data protection on a consumer SSD, only enterprise AFAIK. I do have plenty of backups, so I'm not too worried about it.

The SSD will be used to replace the OS and software disk. I never plan to store media outside of external hard disks.

I want to upgrade because with just xbmc, safari, and transmission running it seems like everything I click causes a spinning beachball. It feels slow and clunky. The CPU is barely being touched, same with RAM, which points to the slow hard disk.

[Bub4]

You are going to love SSD driven OS, I guess
I just can tell you that I do. And I have a fairly old-gerneration SSD and C2D CPU.

If you don't have much write cycles, you can go for 320 as well. We have sold a view hundred of them without customers complains.

http://ark.intel.com/products/56563/Inte...s-25nm-MLC

-> and look at the enhanced power loss ...

Buy one, if you get one - there is heavy allocation at the moment ^^

have fun

Edit:
uff - 320 is EOL already:
so you can consider 330 without PLDP
http://ark.intel.com/products/67287/Inte...s-25nm-MLC

I don't expect you to have more than one full drive write per day...