MacBook Pro - internal USB headers?

[munky]

Does anyone happen to know if there are USB headers (even solder points) free on the MacBook Pro main logic board?

 

The reason I ask is that I was thinking it might be nice (if there's space, somewhere) to mount, say, an 8Gb usb flash stick inside a MacBook pro, and use it as a cheapo SSD for booting and launching apps.

 

The alternative i suppose would be replacing the superdrive (which is PATA) with a CompactFlash to PATA adapter and an 8Gb CF card. But then of course you lose the superdrive.

 

Any thoughts?

[SticMAC™]

You know the saying.

 

"Don't fix it if it ain't broke....."

 

Remember the 8Gb usb flash stick you want to put in will be extremely slow and it was not designed to be accessed constantly! For one you will have to turn spotlight off, and live with the speed loss. I got a new 8GB Transend yesterday and it took 2 hours to get 10.5.2 on it! both install and merely copying took that long!

 

A SSD although is a non turning drive uses buffer technology to speed up the processes and was designed to do that!

 

 

SticMAN

[munky]

yeah, i figured that might be the answer.

 

anyone know if hybrid hdd's work in leopard? these are normal sata drives but with large (eg 256Mb) buffers, but according to the internets, the OS has to have explicit support, and only Vista does at the moment.

 

if not, its back to waiting for SSDs to get cheap.... *sigh*

[RouteZeroDesign]

You might try looking at the maxtor 32gb ssd.

 

It has a read speed of 50 mbps but a poor writing speed.

its still faster than a raptor, but costs £224.

 

THe fastest of all the ssds, are the ones that use ram chips in a board that has battery, which keeps your data frmo becoming randomly accesed and gone.

 

Flash hhds are really good for media center type pcs where silence is the most important thing, but they are dreadfully so require a cut down os in order to get any sort of speed out of them.