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Fastest way to run SSD

Silly John Fatty

Silly John Fatty

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 6, 2012
1,812
520
Hey guys,

years ago I bought a Samsung 850 Pro, but it's sadly full now. So I will most likely buy a second one now. I connected mine with an OWC tray in the optical bay at the time. I think I could need some more speed as I work with big music software libraries which, to my taste, load to slowly.

What's the best and cheapest way to connect my SSDs to PCIe? I've read about the Velocity Solo X2, but if I've got to spend 100 Euros for each SSD, that's a bit too much I think. I've read about people saying they connected their SSDs with some cables, all while leaving them in the optical bay. Can someone tell me more about that?

What about a RAID-0 configuration? How do you set this up? Does it take up more space when you install something, like, does it save it twice (and therefore take up twice as much space on the drive), or does it just install parts of it on different "places" of the drive? Can it be backup up normally?

I think RAID-0 would almost be the most interesting system… but I guess this is just something in addition to the PCIe way, right?

Thanks!
 
I have used 2 samsung 250GB SSD's in a raid0 configuration in my MP1,1.
This gives me a total 500GB of very fast storage, which works just fine with Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner for backup purposes.
Warning... make sure your backups are regular and good, in raid0 your data is kaput if either of the 2 SSDs fail.
I have had no problems with this setup since I set it up in Mavericks almost a year ago.
DiskSpeedTest-new.png
 
jbarley said:
I have used 2 samsung 250GB SSD's in a raid0 configuration in my MP1,1.
This gives me a total 500GB of very fast storage, which works just fine with Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner for backup purposes.
Warning... make sure your backups are regular and good, in raid0 your data is kaput if either of the 2 SSDs fail.
I have had no problems with this setup since I set it up in Mavericks almost a year ago.
View attachment 662835
Click to expand...

Yeah I did hear that it's in fact kaputt if one of the drives fails. I'd be using Time Machine so I would have a backup from every hour. It would be backed up to an external HDD.

And how did you connect your SSDs?
 
jbarley said:
I have used 2 samsung 250GB SSD's in a raid0 configuration in my MP1,1.
This gives me a total 500GB of very fast storage, which works just fine with Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner for backup purposes.
Warning... make sure your backups are regular and good, in raid0 your data is kaput if either of the 2 SSDs fail.
I have had no problems with this setup since I set it up in Mavericks almost a year ago.
View attachment 662835
Click to expand...

Isn't this basically the speed of any one of those single drives on a SATA III bus (500MB/s-550MB/s read/write?)
 
Jardins de Vin said:
And how did you connect your SSDs?
Click to expand...
In my Mac pro drive bays using iceydock adapters.

bent christian said:
Isn't this basically the speed of any one of those single drives on a SATA III bus (500MB/s-550MB/s read/write?)
Click to expand...
Which is exactly what I was trying to achieve with my MacPro1,1 and its Sata II bus.

A similar raid0 setup on a SATA III bus should see even better results.
 
jbarley said:
In my Mac pro drive bays using iceydock adapters.


Which is exactly what I was trying to achieve with my MacPro1,1 and its Sata II bus.

A similar raid0 setup on a SATA III bus should see even better results.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, your results are rather good for SATA II. That makes me want to have my SSDs in the optical bay and have a RAID-0 configuration. Do you think it will be much faster than my current setup?

Also, if I have two SSDs in a RAID-0 config, can I use these SSDs as my boot drive?
 
If your Mac is SATA II I would think the results would be close if not the same as mine.
Not knowing your current setup I can't say if it would be faster or not.
Finally my raid0 setup was created using Mavericks Disk Utility raid function, and it was my boot drive, worked like a charm.
 
jbarley said:
If your Mac is SATA II I would think the results would be close if not the same as mine.
Not knowing your current setup I can't say if it would be faster or not.
Finally my raid0 setup was created using Mavericks Disk Utility raid function, and it was my boot drive, worked like a charm.
Click to expand...

I have the Mac Pro 5,1 therefore I believe my optical bay is SATA II. Aren't all 5,1s only SATA II?
 
Jardins de Vin said:
I have the Mac Pro 5,1 therefore I believe my optical bay is SATA II. Aren't all 5,1s only SATA II?
Click to expand...
Yes, all Mac Pro's are SATA II, both for the optical drives and the four main HD slots. There are oddball ways to get it to SATA III involving a PCIE SATA II controller with a cable connecting to the Motherboard's SATA controller, but I've never actually seen anyone do it.

Plug your pair of SSDs into any of the main HD slots, or the optical, put them in RAID-0, enjoy your ~500mb speeds, and backup regularly. Or get one PCIE SSD adapter, put your current SSD on it, sort your files out so that you can stash files you don't need all the time on a slower HDD, and enjoy around the same speeds with room for expansion if you ever wanted to get a second SSD and put those in RAID 0
 
whartung said:
Yes, all Mac Pro's are SATA II, both for the optical drives and the four main HD slots. There are oddball ways to get it to SATA III involving a PCIE SATA II controller with a cable connecting to the Motherboard's SATA controller, but I've never actually seen anyone do it.

Plug your pair of SSDs into any of the main HD slots, or the optical, put them in RAID-0, enjoy your ~500mb speeds, and backup regularly. Or get one PCIE SSD adapter, put your current SSD on it, sort your files out so that you can stash files you don't need all the time on a slower HDD, and enjoy around the same speeds with room for expansion if you ever wanted to get a second SSD and put those in RAID 0
Click to expand...

I think I'll go with the RAID-0 configuration. The max speed of my SSD is around 550 MB anyway, if I can reach those speeds with SATA II and RAID-0, I'm saving the money of having a PCIe Adapter for every SSD each time. It's a cheaper solution, leaves the PCIe bay empty and has the same results in speed. And if I ever add more SSDs to my other left optical bays, I can still make them RAID-0 with my other SSDs as well :)
 
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