Advice/Wisdom for 2010 5.1 Mac Pro SSD & HDD Upgrade w/ Bootcamp & Win 7

[rahaney]

Dear Gurus,

Having increased my Mac Pro's memory and swapped out the video card for a EVGA 680 Mac Edition, the only 'easy' upgrade left is the disks.

I've left it this late because there were problems with Mavericks and Bootcamp. I believe Yosemite was better and i've not heard of any issues with El Capitan. I use both MacOS & Win 7.

For this i've gone and got a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro and the new WD 6TB Black HDD which can average 220MB/s.

I was going to mount both in drive bays - limited to SATA 2 but thats still ~250MB/s? Up from the standard old HDD 70MB/s?

I've read about using an SSD in the PCIE slots but there are loads of threads about poor speed increases, not booting, no bootcamp etc.

Obviously i would like to get the most out of the hardware, so if anyone can reply with their experiences and wisdom of using various PCI cards and configurations, that would be really helpful.

As stated above i'd like both MacOS with bootcamp and the native bootcamp menu (rather than shutting down, changing drive preference etc).

Other questions spring to mind, for example: Should i get an addition small SSD for the Mac OS? 256GB? Can i get a PCI card that allows connection to both an SSD and a HDD?

Thanks in advance,
R

 

[h9826790]

Just plug the SSD into the optical bay's SATA 2 port, install OSX (or clone the existing one to there). Then Use bootcamp to make new partition and install Windows on the same SSD. Then you can enjoy the speed boost on both OS.

In general, 1T is good enough to hold both OS. No need an extra one, of course, it assume you only put the OSX and application in the SSD, not all data. And you do give reasonable size for each partition.

Some PCIe card can give you better speed for the 850, also support both OSX and bootcamp. However, in my own experience, there is not much real world difference for general use. I end up free up the slot and put another GPU in.

Especially if the 850 is the only high speed storage in the system. Further increase the read / write performance won't do much for copying files, because the other storage is slow (much slower than the SATA 2 max speed). For, booting, even a Quad SM951 system can only save you few seconds (at most) on every boot (compare to the 850 in SATA 2 port). For loading apps, 3s vs 1.5s sounds almost no real world difference.

Of course, if your work flow can benefit from high speed storage (e.g. as scratch disk), then the SATA 3 PCIe card will make the difference. But this will increase the chance of having booting problem. It should be OK if you pick the right card, but just more chance of having problem, not necessary will have it. But in this case, you should consider get a stand alone very high speed PCIe SSD as a scratch disk, but not put the OS onto it.

 

[rahaney]

Just plug the SSD into the optical bay's SATA 2 port, install OSX (or clone the existing one to there). Then Use bootcamp to make new partition and install Windows on the same SSD. Then you can enjoy the speed boost on both OS.

Many thanks for the response. I've got 2 DVDs in the optical drives. Can I put them both on the back bar then? Since the 300MBs is good enough in real life?

 

[h9826790]

You can install the 850 in any of the HDD bay, just plug it in and leave it there. The 850 is so light, the SATA 2 port itself is strong enough to hold it there. It you want a bit more protection, you can simply use a tape to secure the SSD at there. Of course, you can spend few more bugs to buy an adaptor.

The max speed will be 250MB/s (both read and write), and this is the sequential speed. For OS operation, high IOPS (low latency) is much more important than high sequential speed. The actual data transfer rate when loading small OS files seldom go over 200MB/s, that means the SATA 2 bandwidth is good enough.

I start with my 840 Evo in the optical bay, it make my 4,1 like a new computer. Then upgrade to the Tempo SSD (SATA 3 PCIe card), TBH, can't feel any difference in speed, but this config make me can't boot Windows from the SSD. And now back to SATA 2 connection only, which allow me to make a 100G partition to run Windows 10, and use the other 900G for OSX.

I use Photoshop and FCPX for fun, both software use the 830 Evo as scratch disk, and I can't feel any difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3. Of course, I am just a light user, and no way I can push my hardware to it's limit. So, I will say for normal real world usage, yes, 250MB/s is good enough.

 

[hfg]

I start with my 840 Evo in the optical bay, it make my 4,1 like a new computer. Then upgrade to the Tempo SSD (SATA 3 PCIe card), TBH, can't feel any difference in speed, but this config make me can't boot Windows from the SSD. And now back to SATA 2 connection only, which allow me to make a 100G partition to run Windows 10, and use the other 900G for OSX.

You may have already tried this ...

Unless the Tempo card is known to not boot Windows, you might boot your SSD Windows while in the optical bay or on a tray AND have the Tempo card installed in a PCIe slot such that Windows will see the card and load any drivers for it. Then move the SSD to the Tempo card and see if Windows will boot now that it has the drivers active.

 

[h9826790]

It's known, confirmed by Sonnet.

 

[hfg]

It's known, confirmed by Sonnet.

OK ... now I have had my coffee and am more awake ... I used to have a Sonnet Tempo Pro SSD in my 5,1 and it was great running OS X RAID-0 ... but it would not run Windows, as I also confirmed with Sonnet.

After switching to a Apple PCI SSD for OS X, I sold the Tempo Pro card and got a Velocity DUO card, which although tested not as fast in RAID-0, does allow for booting a Windows SSD and a OS X SSD from the same card. I am still using the DUO card in my cMP with Windows 10 and a bootable previous Yosemite version of OS X.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

The max speed will be 250MB/s (both read and write), and this is the sequential speed. For OS operation, high IOPS (low latency) is much more important than high sequential speed. The actual data transfer rate when loading small OS files seldom go over 200MB/s, that means the SATA 2 bandwidth is good enough.

Yes the IOPS make a noticeable real world difference. When I started the Windows 10 on cMP thread I mentioned how the Samsung 850 Evo could boot Windows in about 10 seconds after the chime. But that drive had an issue so I had to return it. I now boot Windows from an older OCZ drive on the same SATA2 port. Both drives have the same read/write speed in that bay, yet the OCZ takes around 20 seconds to boot Windows. But I don't care about boot times anyway. I would rather think about how well my apps run and how well I can work in them. I also have a Samsung 850 EVO on a Sonnet just for application and game installs.