Fast and ample storage in a MacBook Pro with 480GB SSD and 1TB HDD

I recently worked with a consulting client who needed both a lot of storage as well as high performance in a new MacBook Pro Core i7, essentially an MPG Pro Laptop variant.

We went over a variety of options, and in the end we ended up with the following configuration:

• 8GB memory
• Internal OWC Mercury Extreme 480GB solid state drive (SSD) for system, applications, Lightroom catalogs, previews, caches, etc— all stuff that will help responsiveness.
• Internal 1TB hard drive;
• Dual external OWC Mini Elite AL-Pro hard drives for backup and extra storage.
• The OWC Slim eSATA ExpressCard/34 for attaching external drives at high speed.
• External optical drive (since the internal one is removed for the 2nd drive).

In other words, an MPG Pro Laptop tailored to his needs. What a great setup! No more lugging a bulky external 1TB hard drive around, and the internal 480GB drive makes the system awesomely fast.

While we considered using dual 400GB solid state drives in a RAID-0 stripe volume with 800GB capacity, the SSD+HDD setup yields almost 1.5TB at lower cost, perfect for my client’s needs.