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Best SSD for Mac Pro

CIA said:
Thermal management? It's a SSD, they barely ever get warm.
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When mostly doing reading? Yes they run cool. If erasing lots of data, then no. Again it is the solution that comes with caveats.

If something in the lower thermal zone heats the metal plate the drive is resting you can get transfer of heat from outside the drive inside.

Is the drive automatically going to cook and fail quickly if rest it on the plate? No. Do drives that get decent treatment tend to last longer? Yes.


And the optical bay isn't exactly the hot spot in a mac pro to begin with either.
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Typically because it is unused the vast majority of the time.


If you have to move your macpro remember it's floating around and be gentile.
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If most computers a person handles have mounted drives and this Mac Pro is a special case, then the likelihood that folks will forget over time and just treat it as a normal computer goes up significantly. Sure 2 or even 30 days after slap it in there, you'll remember. But if the Mac Pro has been closed for 6-12 months?
 
How are people installing SSDs into their MP?

Sleds, icy dock, optical bay #2?
 
deconstruct60 said:
When mostly doing reading? Yes they run cool. If erasing lots of data, then no. Again it is the solution that comes with caveats.

If something in the lower thermal zone heats the metal plate the drive is resting you can get transfer of heat from outside the drive inside.

Is the drive automatically going to cook and fail quickly if rest it on the plate? No. Do drives that get decent treatment tend to last longer? Yes.




Typically because it is unused the vast majority of the time.




If most computers a person handles have mounted drives and this Mac Pro is a special case, then the likelihood that folks will forget over time and just treat it as a normal computer goes up significantly. Sure 2 or even 30 days after slap it in there, you'll remember. But if the Mac Pro has been closed for 6-12 months?
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I bought sleds, but if you're that concerned about it, stick a piece of velcro on it and call it a day - these things are very light and aren't going to shift around on you.
 
Do NOT buy a samsung SSD
Since their software to trim the disc doesn't support OSX.
I made the same stupid mistake so now I can't do any maintenance on the disk...:-(
 
Been following this thread closely. Just got new 2012 MacPro and am trying to work out what SSD solution to go for. I have to say.... between Crucial M4, Samsung and Intel I'm still confused!!

I read where the Intel 520 (which was winning) had crap 4k random writes? (
So maybe the crucial M4 is the way forward.

Just to be clear. I'll be using it for boot/apps/documents/photos drive and move all music to another 1T internal. with a Backup to another internal 2T HD.

I do have the need for speed tho!

So here's a solution I thought might be interesting....
I can get a PCi 2.0 RockeRaid SATA III 6.0gb/s for about €80 or so..... What if I strapped 2 x 256GB Crucial M4s into it ans set them for Raid 0 !?!

It would cost about the same as a 512GB M4.....

Or am I mad?
:)
 
Gr1f said:
Been following this thread closely. Just got new 2012 MacPro and am trying to work out what SSD solution to go for. I have to say.... between Crucial M4, Samsung and Intel I'm still confused!!

I read where the Intel 520 (which was winning) had crap 4k random writes? (
So maybe the crucial M4 is the way forward.

Just to be clear. I'll be using it for boot/apps/documents/photos drive and move all music to another 1T internal. with a Backup to another internal 2T HD.

I do have the need for speed tho!

So here's a solution I thought might be interesting....
I can get a PCi 2.0 RockeRaid SATA III 6.0gb/s for about €80 or so..... What if I strapped 2 x 256GB Crucial M4s into it ans set them for Raid 0 !?!

It would cost about the same as a 512GB M4.....

Or am I mad?
:)
Click to expand...

You won't be able to boot from the PCI card. Just buy the 512GB (or if you want speed, get 2 x 256 and RAID them. The jump from spinning HD to SSD is so huge you will be happy either way.
 
Gr1f said:
I read where the Intel 520 (which was winning) had crap 4k random writes?
Click to expand...

Nope. Intel 520 240GB has some really great random 4K writes. 38MB/s Read - 89MB/s Write. For reference a Vertex 4 gets 33MB/s Read - 92MB/s Write on their new Indilinx controller. They slow down a little at QD32 and others surge ahead but then again most users don't have practical reference for that.
 
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derbothaus said:
Nope. Intel 520 240GB has some really great random 4K writes. 38MB/s Read - 89MB/s Write. For reference a Vertex 4 gets 33MB/s Read - 92MB/s Write on their new Indilinx controller. They slow down a little at QD32 and others surge ahead but then again most users don't have practical reference for that.
Click to expand...

iirc the intel 240 performed completely differently than the 480GB?

----------
derbothaus said:
Nope. Intel 520 240GB has some really great random 4K writes. 38MB/s Read - 89MB/s Write. For reference a Vertex 4 gets 33MB/s Read - 92MB/s Write on their new Indilinx controller. They slow down a little at QD32 and others surge ahead but then again most users don't have practical reference for that.
Click to expand...

OK, thought you could boot from a few of the HP RR. Hardly much point in Raid 0 on the internal sata...

Right so, forget the PCi idea for now. Which SSD? Intel 520 480GB, Crucial M4 512GB or a Samsung?

Thanks for the replies guys!
 
I have an Intel 320 80Gb SSD mounted in the 2nd ODD bay. It's on the 2.5" - 3.5" adapter it comes with, which is in turn mounted to a £3 3.5" - 5.25" adapter I got from OcUK, works beautifully on 10.8 :)
 
Gr1f said:
iirc the intel 240 performed completely differently than the 480GB?
Click to expand...


Not that dramatically different even though the 240GB's tend to beat the 480GB's in speed. Maybe you can post where you read how bad they were?
 
Usually small capacity SSD's like 64GB or 128GB drives will use a subset of the NAND channels available on the controller resulting in lower performance than the higher capacity drives that utilize all the NAND channels. However, it's unusual for the higher capacity drives to differ in performance because they all use the full set of NAND channels available and all that separates them is the capacity of each NAND chip.
 
MP Early 2008 Upgrade

Hello. I've been reading all these SSD posts with interest as my early-2008 Mac Pro is long overdue an upgrade. It's pretty much stock, so I've still got a single HD for everything. That mistake has now caught up with me, and I want to start over, re-install OSX and apps, and manually move files whilst filing them appropriately.

I'm interested by the size of the SSDs people are talking about. I'm a music producer using Logic amongst other things, and as far as I can tell a 128Gb SSD would be more than adequate for my boot drive (I think around 60Gb is 'enough', so I'm doubling that for better performance). I'm probably going for a Hitachi Deskstar 1TB for my data drive, no RAID).

Really I just wanted to check that I'm not missing something important. I understand that more capacity is generally better because you don't really want to be using more than about 70% of your capacity, but what's the reason for the massive boot drive? I should point out that, although I use Photoshop sometimes for basic work, I don't think I need a scratch volume). I also never use my home folder for file storage.

My choices so far are:

Samsung 128GB 830 SSD
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D 1TB

That probably seems a bit puny, but after 4 years I've only used 400Gb in total, including moving project files from my laptop to my desktop (my data management is pathetic, but that's another story). I will be archiving in future so don't expect to need more that 500Gb total storage.

Sorry for the long (first) post, but I'm very close to buying and am looking out for gotchas before I do...

Thanks everyone

+++EDIT: Now I've just read about AHCI and wondering whether I can even use that SSD in my SATA I Mac Pro. This is mighty confusing+++
 
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I just picked up a couple of 120 gig Intel 330's to use in my "new" 2009 quad (which will soon be updated to 6 core 3.33). Recent Intel price drop appreciated. Went with an OWC sled for one, and put the second in the optical bay. I relocated the optical drive from upper to lower bay so it makes a nice platform upon which I taped the SSD with double-sided foam tape. I have a SATA card in my Mac; any additional SSD's will be thrown into the optical bay. Lots of room there!

I wanted Sandforce-controlled SSDs, and picked Intel due to its proprietary, reportedly rock-solid, firmware. Time will tell, but both drives are working great so far.
 
unita_logica said:
Are there solutions to use SATA 3 on the boot drive on current quad-core Xeon Mac Pros?
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You can use the new Apricorn Velocity x2 card to run Sata 3 with a boot SSD.

One of the members on the last page of the thread below posted results, the read speeds were quick, but the write speeds were no quicker.

Link to thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1418445/
 

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CIA said:
You won't be able to boot from the PCI card. Just buy the 512GB (or if you want speed, get 2 x 256 and RAID them. The jump from spinning HD to SSD is so huge you will be happy either way.
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I have a card I will try, that cost $26 here in Australia, and has its said the correct chip set to boot from. It even says in its literature, that its Mac OS X compatible, from 10.5 I think, and forwards of course. Its chip set has been shown by users on this site, to be bootable, on post 2008 machines I think.

As far as strategy goes, I have left my original 1GB drive, and bought - for $109 - a 2GB Green drive. And the Intel 520 SSD (the 320 (or 330?) was cheaper, but it only had a three year warranty.

I moved my graphics and video files from my boot drive to the Green drive, and any other large data folders. I then deleted those files (or the contents of their folders) from the 1GB boot drive, and emptied the trash.

I then booted the computer from an external USB drive, which had SuperDuper on it. That drive was running Snow Leopard, an OS my new machine had not experienced. It seemed to enjoy it quite a lot.

I then super duper'd the HD onto the Intel 240 HD (which is currently hiding away in the spare DVD slot and using the cable there too). Incidentally the 520 came with two sets of nice cables, and a steel cart and screws for placing the SSD into a 3.5 slot.

I then moved the big folders from the Green drive, back to the 1GB factory drive.

When I check I have not destroyed any data, I'll then turn the Green drive into a time machine drive.

Next stop after that is to think about Windoze I guess ... not sure to put XP onto it, or find an OEM, or use my son's Win 7. I think I'll put it onto the 1 GB data drive. And I'll put in the PCI card, after I've got the power cable for the SSD drive. I won't leave it in the spare DVD bay, as I will put a blue ray in there. Although with the DVD drive, maybe I could pull that out instead ...
 
Macbook Pro 17", late October 2011: SSD and Optical

Ok, so new here, excuse the stupidity. :)

I just picked up a referb 2011 Macbook Pro 17" to replace my wife's Late 2007 17" Macbook Pro before I couldn't find any more 17" models available. (Quad Core i7, 2.5 Ghz, will be 16GB as soon as I get it there).

Just ran across this thread and have read most of it, but trying to get my hands wrapped around the various components I need.

I'm looking to replace the internal DVD Drive with a harddrive, and bring the Internal DVD external while keeping the 750 as the "data" drive being worked off of.

The system has a 750G boot drive (5400 RPM, bleh). i'd like to change the boot drive over to SSD (somewhere around a 130, it's a boot drive, not a storage drive...that said, she is a graphics designer and in Photoshop and the rest of the Adobe Suite perpetually...I keep hearing "scratch disk"...am I wrong to be looking at 130G as a size for the SSD to boot off of?)

Here's what I struggle with.

RAM: Looking at Crucial at this point since they're about $50 cheaper than the OWA for the same 16G (CL9) chips ($96). Any reason I'd want to pay $50 more for the same chips from OWA?

SSD: Given that I'm already buying Crucial, figured I'd save on the shipping costs and go with the 128 SATA 6G/s M4 ($112), i've heard they're in the "top" list on this thread...anything changed on that? Looking on OWA's site, I do find that there's a "data doubler" kit that, I guess, includes a 5.25" mounting bracket for the 2.5" SSD that will lock it in place in the Optical Drive Bay? I assume this is considered a "necessity" for a laptop since it moves around a bit? Is there another product/better product than something like this?

QUESTION: Do I put the SSD in the place of the original 750 HD and put the 750 in the Optical Bay? Does it matter where the SSD is to boot off of or is the OS smart enough to allow me to chose which disk gets made "active" at Installation time? (I assume i'm going to have to totally re-install this thing to get it to where I want it for my wife).

Optical: So, I've yanked the optical drive and replaced it with an SSD (or the 750 original drive, see question above). What, now, do I do with the optical drive? I'm hearing there are boxes for the optical that can change it into an external USB Optical? Anyone point me at a product that will do so?

Thanks for any/all answers, i'm no computer newbie, but popping open macs is NOT my specialty.

--Doug

p.s. I know this is off topic, so I'll ask it as a PS, any tips for how to best abuse a multi-disk MAC system? Mac OSX seems to be very pecular in where it stores files (and wants to store EVERYTHING under certain places)...what's my best way to store programs and boot files under the SSD and keep all my data files over on the 750? (i'm a linux guy so symbolic links and other os schenanigans don't bother me, just don't know what the OS will support and what will cause it to choke and die on).
 
I went this direction

I bought this OCZ Vertex 4 SSD for just over $200. It comes with a metal bracket, but the screw holes don't line up with the MacPro sleds. No matter, I put it in the empty optical drive bay. I found some extra SATA data and power cables, tied into the power in the optical bay, ran the SATA cable to the motherboard SATA jacks (under the fan). I used a fairly small bit of two-sided VHB tape, and mounted the SSD on the metal bracket it came with, and stuck it to the bottom of the optical drive, so it's just hanging underneath it.

Did a clean install of Lion, and had the installer move my "applications" folder to the SSD.

Easily the best upgrade I've ever done on a mac. It goes from off to desktop in 20 seconds, apps open quickly as well.
 
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