Best way to boot 2009 mac pro 5.1?

[Ferio12]

Hello Everyone,

First of let me start that I did do a search and found a ton of topics regarding my question and in the end I still don't know what to choose.

I have a mac pro from 2009 with 5.1 firmware. Installed two X5690 and currently looking for a way to boot fast into High Sierra with a not so expensive option but with the speed of a SSD or faster, so I did learn here that I'm stuck with NVME or PCIE SSD.

Now my first thoughts were, since I'm a music producer, to go with Apricorn Velocity X2 and setup a raid. One drive with the OS and the other with the sample library. Since I do use bigger samples (Native instruments Kontakt) I thought the raid option would be the better one as it has higher speeds, however Velocity x2 has been discontinued and The Sonnet Tech Tempo SSD pro is a bit too expensive for me.

I'm not sure if I will use bootcamp as I do own a windows computer too.

What other options do I have?

It has been probably asked before, but I went through so many topics old and new that I'm lost what to choose, so if anyone can recommend a setup for me that's not so expensive..

thanks!

 

[leon771]

Fastest way to boot is SSD in SATAII slot.

You will not notice any boot speed differences between the SATAII and PCIe options.

In some cases the PCIe options are slower.

 

[bookemdano]

I'll leave specific recommendations to others who have more experience with them, but a couple of things:

You probably should define in Euros what your budget is. "Not so expensive" means different things to different people. Also, is there a minimum size you're looking for on the SSDs? a 128GB SSD is much cheaper than a 1TB SSD.

If you're going to set up a RAID then you wouldn't be using one drive for the OS and the other for samples. a RAID array by definition requires at least two drives. So if you RAID the disks then they become a de facto single disk. You can create multiple volumes on that disk (and maybe that's what you meant), but you can't put different stuff on one disk or another once they are in a RAID.

And have you already eliminated the cheapest option--buying a SATA3 SSD and putting it in one of your four SATA drive bays? Yes, with that you are limited to SATA2 speeds, but it's still much, much faster than a hard drive and depending on what your apps/workflows are you may not even feel the difference.

If Kontakt would benefit from PCIe speeds then you could still boot from a regular SATA3 SSD and then get a NVMe drive and a Lycom DT-120 for your sample library.

Would really need to know your budget to give you specific recommendations.

 

[Socket]

I'm looking for the same question...I've read that now it's possibile to boot with a NVME ssd, but I'd like to know if it's possibile to boot with a Lycom 120 and a 970 Evo (link)

 

[h9826790]

Fastest way to boot is SSD in SATAII slot.

You will not notice any boot speed differences between the SATAII and PCIe options.

In some cases the PCIe options are slower.

I agree. If only consider the SSD boot performance. There is virtually no difference between

1) 2.5” SSD connected to the SATA II port
2) 2.5” SSD installed on a SATA III PCIe card
3) any m.2 SSD on any PCIe card

However, when extra adaptor involve, the hardware initialisation time can be increased. That means the overall boot time increase.

Therefore, option 1 should be the fastest if only purely consider boot time. And that’s also the cheapest option.

 

[kohlson]

I have a 4/5,1 single CPU with 32GB. With the same SATA III SSD disk, boot times were within a couple seconds of each other when connected to either a SATA II port, or an Accelsior PCIe card.