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Experience w/ OWC Accelsior?
- Thread starter relbbircs
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I've been using a 480GB model for about a week now and it IS noticeably faster than the 3.5" Vertex 2 I was using before. Everything is faster, booting, app launch and operation. There have been no disadvantages that I can see.
My Mac Pro is used mainly for crunching databases, using variable data software with InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator CS 5.5 and Aperture 3.3.
I appreciate your answering! Thanks! I'll get one. Just pulled the trigger on a new 2012 hexcore w/ Radeon 5870. Will add 24G OWC ram plus the Accelsior (not sure what size yet).
Better this than waiting another year and a half or so for who knows what!!
I don't think you'll be disappointed. I've had this Pro for just over a year and I've been tweaking it with upgrades along the way. It is hands down the best workhorse I've ever owned. I can see owning this box for the next four years regardless of what Apple does with the Mac Pro.
My next and probably final upgrade will be to a newer GPU if Apple upgrades the GPU in the 2013 Mac Pro. If nothing is forthcoming then I'm satisfied with the 5870.
I had to turn on automatic log in to check. I rebooted three times and the average from chime to logged in is 10.4 seconds. I do have quite a few startup items; Moom, Fantastical, Launchbar, FontExplorer, etc.
Hope that helps you.
Got the 240 today and it has problems. Only showed up as a 120GB drive (most likely one of the blades is bad).
I called OWC--their customer service is excellent--and a replacement will be shipped in 1-3 days since they are out of stock.
They seemed surprised by my incident and said this is a isolated case. I'll follow this up with a report and a review of it.
I called OWC--their customer service is excellent--and a replacement will be shipped in 1-3 days since they are out of stock.
They seemed surprised by my incident and said this is a isolated case. I'll follow this up with a report and a review of it.
Their pricing is ridiculous. $849 for 480GB?
You can get a TB of Crucial M4's for that.
It's about raw speed. This thing is faster than a 3x SSD striped raid over SATA II.
I agree it's fast and elegant but it's not worth the price premium they are charging. The thing is essentially dual SSD's on sticks attached to a cheap SATA3 to PCIe card, so that premium is all money in their pants. You can easily get 600+ MB/s from 3xSSD in RAID0 off the MP backplane and that's about what this thing can do. Considering 3x 256MB Crucial M4's are around $600 total... that's over 50% more storage for about 25% less money with the same performance.
Very quick and reliable. Very satisfied. My Mac Pro literally has no bottlenecks holding it back now.
However, you can't use it for Boot Camp because the Mac sees the card as an "external" volume. (to my knowledge)
However, you can't use it for Boot Camp because the Mac sees the card as an "external" volume. (to my knowledge)
Isn't the card more than a SATAIII controller since it can also do RAID 0 because it has a Marvell 88SE9230 RAID controller? Granted, it doesn't have back-up RAM and a battery as a high-end RAID card, but since this is a PCIE card for flash memory anyways, the user is not exposed to a mechanical disk failure on any of 8 drives, while having the same speed.
Now, I was also under the impression that a neat trick you could do is RAID TWO of these cards (RAID 0+0) for the daring and you would be well past the 600MBs+ the back pane is capable of handling, all the while you did NOT have to buy a RAID card AND you still have 4 internal SATA ports.
I am not saying this Accelsior card is cheap, but for achieving 800MBs+ with two cards and still have all 4 bays in your mac free and an additional PCIE card slot free, I think it does cover a niche.
Also, it is my understanding that the current design had also space on the board for 2 additional mPCIE connectors for more SSD "blades". While OWC did not put them in there, I thought it was not that far off to actually put 4 of these connectors in their design and then have 4 blades that would be able to be RAIDED by the chip.
2 cards with 4 RAID-0 SSDs each would be very nice if you ask me, pricey, but I think very close to achieving 1GBs+
2 cards with 4 RAID-0 SSDs each would be very nice if you ask me, pricey, but I think very close to achieving 1GBs+
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD-OWC-Mercury-Accelsior-speed-vs-SATA6G.html
Scroll down to "RAID-0 stripe speed" and you'll see you can already achieve 1100MBps+ with two accelsiors.
Also, it is my understanding that the current design had also space on the board for 2 additional mPCIE connectors for more SSD "blades".
There is only room for two blades, not four. I held one yesterday.
I meant that the card could have been designed to have 4 sockets, as the chip supports them and the underside of the card has 2 spaces for mPCIE connectors even though it doesn't have them soldered in:
Pic of the top
Pic of the underside.
I.E. it has the same number of solderable points on the underside for mPCIE connectors on the same location as the top side (almost in the middle of the card).
I installed mine a couple weeks ago, zero problems so far. Blazing fast, noticeable improvement over my previous Vertex2 SSD. Interested to see how the 'upgrade' path/pricing is on these things moving forward, I think OWC mentions that the blades could be swapped out in the future.
While there is a slight price premium, it's a dead simple solution for a nice convenient speed boost for those of us already using the 4 drive bays for a RAID setup. I'm using my optical bays for an SSD for the CS6 disc cache, and a time machine drive.
While there is a slight price premium, it's a dead simple solution for a nice convenient speed boost for those of us already using the 4 drive bays for a RAID setup. I'm using my optical bays for an SSD for the CS6 disc cache, and a time machine drive.
I'm using a 120GB as my boot -- for only a day now -- and love it. I had ordered another 240GB, with the intention of returning the 120GB.
I'm going to keep both and run the majority of my system on SSD. It's an expensive way to go, but I like that I can upgrade later.
I understand these drive appear as volumes to the OS, which is fine. But the 240, which doesn't store the OS or Applications, appears as an unmountable volume. I have the option of ejecting it. It there anyway to disable the eject button in the finder, so that I can avoid accidentally unmounting it? I figure restarting would remount it. Or, is there a better way of mounting with out a restart?
I'm going to keep both and run the majority of my system on SSD. It's an expensive way to go, but I like that I can upgrade later.
I understand these drive appear as volumes to the OS, which is fine. But the 240, which doesn't store the OS or Applications, appears as an unmountable volume. I have the option of ejecting it. It there anyway to disable the eject button in the finder, so that I can avoid accidentally unmounting it? I figure restarting would remount it. Or, is there a better way of mounting with out a restart?
Have you tried using Disk Utility for that? Could probably do it that way and keep you from having to restart. Launch DU, DU should see it, then select it and click the Mount button.
Just got the 480 GB one today. AJA test shows >500 MB/s read and write, about 2x faster than my previous Corsair F120 SSD. However, boot up time doesn't change at all from F120 to Accelsior. Will use it more to tell whether there is really a practical difference.
Here is a question. I am using it as the boot disk and avoid frequent writing to it. On the other hand, I think this drive will be very powerful as a swap volume for Photoshop. People always say SSDs have limited read/write cycles. Is it a good idea to let Photoshop swap this drive?
Here is a question. I am using it as the boot disk and avoid frequent writing to it. On the other hand, I think this drive will be very powerful as a swap volume for Photoshop. People always say SSDs have limited read/write cycles. Is it a good idea to let Photoshop swap this drive?
Everyone needs to stop worrying about read write cycles. You'll want something else in 5+ years right? So if you are worried at all find the best synchronous NAND and spend the extra cash for it and you'll have the best. Otherwise reap the benefits of the cheaper stuff and fear not. You made a small compromise that you'll most likely never see bite you.
Just got the replacement Accelsior 240 AND IT HAS EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM. Only shows up as 120. I just called their tech support--they've received my first one, are testing it and will call me back with a plan.
I'm impressed with their tech support but I'm starting to get nervous about this product. I'll keep you all informed.