MP 1,1-5,1 I would like some advice on buying an SSD

I have a Samsung 870 EVO (4TB SATA) that works without issue. Though I've read of people who experience problems with an 870 EVO. Perhaps I bought from one of the 'good' batches.

Also use Muskin Enhanced SATA SSDs. Also an older Crucial MX500.

Also Silicon Power A55 (2TB SATA). Note that the A55 is listed as QLC today, but was claimed to be TLC when I bought my drives. SP makes the E55 today which is specifically TLC, but I haven't used one yet.

All of the drives are TLC (except a couple older Mushkins are MLC). They have all worked fine for me. I avoid QLC drives.
 
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Yes, the 870 Series is a SATA 2½" form factor SSD. I should mention I also have three Samsung 840 2½" in a cage in my 14,8 Mac Pro. And yes, you can mount four SATA SSDs in the sleds in a 5,1 Mac Pro.

Lou
 
foo2 said:
Will it run slow-er than an internal? Sure.
Would you notice it, night and day? No.
A big advantage of SSD is the vastly faster access times, in addition to just the maximum transfer speeds everyone likes to focus on. Even a 500MB/s max 3.5" SATA SSD is massively, massively faster than even a great 200MB/s HDD, far more so than that 2.5x difference would imply. And whether it's USB3 or SATA internal won't matter. This bears repeating: USB3 or internal SATA, the speed's pretty close to the same. The big architectural improvement was the jump to NVME, which gets far higher speeds.

Are NVME 5.0 12,000MB/s drives faster than the 500MB/s USB3 SATA drives? Absolutely. But it's a question of degrees at that point, rather than the insanity of slowdowns that is an old fashioned mechanical HDD.
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Why even suggest USB3 drives for a user that want a boot drive for a MacPro5,1 which does not support USB3 from factory nor boot from one when installed?!? Seems you missed this crucial fact…
 
foo2 said:
I think we’re way beyond what a 5,1 can do from the factory. https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....2207814/page-483?post=31788122#post-31788122 - boots just fine with a little work.
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Nice quoting my own post about chainloading a USB3 drive with a FL100 USB card via OpenCore - btw, the only USB3 controller that is capable of booting a Mac Pro without the chainloading is the FL100 (once you heavily modify the Mac Pro BootROM).

Back to the real life where Mac Pros are used for work, seems you forgot asking the OP if he owns a USB3 controller or if the OP workflow would be acceptable with the monstrous USB3 latency and the paltry IOPs?

Even with a fairly undemanding workflow, I wouldn't rely on a primary/boot USB3 SSD or even a scratch disk for my Mac Pro. I don't need another weak link about to fail threatening the completion of my work.
 
tsialex said:
You should rethink that. There are several adapters that work and are inexpensive, just follow the main PCIe thread.



I recently found a 2nd hand 1TB Samsung 850 with less than 900 hours of usage.



Zero knowledge about the Hyper X, but in general SSDs bades on the Phison controller does not have a good track record with Macs, some work, some not.
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I found a 100/100 1TB SSD but it's some kind of QVO I don't know if it's compatible with the Mac Pro

Samsung 860 QVO​

Could you help me with this?
 
 
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tsialex said:
Nice quoting my own post about chainloading a USB3 drive with a FL100 USB card via OpenCore - btw, the only USB3 controller that is capable of booting a Mac Pro without the chainloading is the FL100 (once you heavily modify the Mac Pro BootROM).

Back to the real life where Mac Pros are used for work, seems you forgot asking the OP if he owns a USB3 controller or if the OP workflow would be acceptable with the monstrous USB3 latency and the paltry IOPs?

Even with a fairly undemanding workflow, I wouldn't rely on a primary/boot USB3 SSD or even a scratch disk for my Mac Pro. I don't need another weak link about to fail threatening the completion of my work.
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I have a Sonnet Allegro Pro USB-A 3.2 on my computer
I tried the legacy patcher and it was able to boot from the USB3 port but when I use the Patcher Windows disappears from the boot menu so I had to go back to Open Core
But it's irrelevant because I don't want to use an external drive, just for data storage.
 
flowrider said:
Yes, the 870 Series is a SATA 2½" form factor SSD. I should mention I also have three Samsung 840 2½" in a cage in my 14,8 Mac Pro. And yes, you can mount four SATA SSDs in the sleds in a 5,1 Mac Pro.

Lou
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I read here on the forum that the Samsung 870 is not compatible with the Mac Pro
 
Krisz said:
I found a 100/100 1TB SSD but it's some kind of QVO I don't know if it's compatible with the Mac Pro

Samsung 860 QVO​

Could you help me with this?
Click to expand...

Samsung QVO line are QLC disks focused on high capacity with lower cost, not designed be used as the main disk.

QVO is the Samsung model with the lowest endurance and performance, less than 1/4 endurance of the PRO models, 1/2 of EVOs.

These are primarily designed for archival / long storage, think it as a library disk, where you write once, read many.
 
tsialex said:
Samsung QVO line are QLC disks focused on high capacity with lower cost, not designed be used as the main disk.

QVO is the Samsung model with the lowest endurance and performance, less than 1/4 endurance of the PRO models, 1/2 of EVOs.

These are primarily designed for archival / long storage, think it as a library disk, where you write once, read many.
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I understand
Thanks for the detailed answer
then I'll keep looking
 
Krisz said:
NVMe adapters are too expensive and many of them are not compatible with the MacPro
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Have you looked recently and what you considering expensive? A standard single card should be pretty cheap. Even if you have to go to a more expensive card, should still be $150 or less?

Krisz said:
The Samsung 850 860s sold second-hand are no longer in such good condition and are expensive
There are several 870s for sale, but they are not compatible with Macs either.
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Agree, I would avoid used SSD.

Krisz said:
I found a 100/100 Kingston HyperX Savage SSD. I've read a lot of good things about it and it's a reliable brand!
The only question is how compatible is it?
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I second the previous poster's suggestion -- I would really try to go NVMe with an M.2 or U.3 drive if at all possible. Honestly I would rather do the TB3 to external NVMe enclosure thing than put more money into SATA.

Among M.2 NVMe drives, the WD SN850X generally works well across all versions of macOS. I would avoid Samsung 980 - 990 drives with macOS Monterey and later. The Samsung 9100 Pro might be good under macOS but I have neither tested it nor heard reports from others either way.
 
@Krisz

You are getting so much advice that is completely not applicable to your MacPro5,1 that you probably should edit the title of the thread to something like "I would like some advice on buying a main SATA SSD for a 2009 Mac Pro" or "I would like some advice on buying a main SATA SSD for a MacPro5,1".

Seems that people does not notice the model tag when the message is showed on the latest posts of the main page of the forum list and also does not help that signatures are not showed when reading from mobile.
 
bzgnyc2 said:
Have you looked recently and what you considering expensive? A standard single card should be pretty cheap. Even if you have to go to a more expensive card, should still be $150 or less?



Agree, I would avoid used SSD.



I second the previous poster's suggestion -- I would really try to go NVMe with an M.2 or U.3 drive if at all possible. Honestly I would rather do the TB3 to external NVMe enclosure thing than put more money into SATA.

Among M.2 NVMe drives, the WD SN850X generally works well across all versions of macOS. I would avoid Samsung 980 - 990 drives with macOS Monterey and later. The Samsung 9100 Pro might be good under macOS but I have neither tested it nor heard reports from others either way.
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I used to think about buying an nvme adapter, but the ones I read about that were compatible with the Mac Pro 5.1 were very expensive.
I'm using 2 drives, one with Monterey and the other with Windows 10, so I definitely need that supports 2 drives.
And only one that supports booting would be good
It's also a question of how long I'll be able to use the Mac Pro
Monterey is the last system I installed! If I want a newer system than Monterey, I'd have to get rid of the rx6600xt and go back to the much weaker rx580
Windows 10 won't be usable for long and Windows 11 can no longer be installed on 5.1
And unfortunately, more and more applications will require AVX, so in my opinion, it's no longer worth developing this machine.
 
tsialex said:
@Krisz

You are getting so much advice that is completely not applicable to your MacPro5,1 that you probably should edit the title of the thread to something like "I would like some advice on buying a main SATA SSD for a 2009 Mac Pro" or "I would like some advice on buying a main SATA SSD for a MacPro5,1".

Seems that people does not notice the model tag when the message is showed on the latest posts of the main page of the forum list and also does not help that signatures are not showed when reading from mobile.
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Thanks for the advice, but I don't think there's much point in changing the title
You've already said almost everything about SSDs, and I don't think anyone can help you any further.
I can't do anything
if I'm lucky I'll find an 850 or 860 SSD and I can use the machine for a few more years or if not I'll have to switch to a PC because I can't afford to buy a newer Mac Pro right now
 
Krisz said:
I used to think about buying an nvme adapter, but the ones I read about that were compatible with the Mac Pro 5.1 were very expensive.
I'm using 2 drives, one with Monterey and the other with Windows 10, so I definitely need that supports 2 drives.
And only one that supports booting would be good
It's also a question of how long I'll be able to use the Mac Pro
Monterey is the last system I installed! If I want a newer system than Monterey, I'd have to get rid of the rx6600xt and go back to the much weaker rx580
Windows 10 won't be usable for long and Windows 11 can no longer be installed on 5.1
And unfortunately, more and more applications will require AVX, so in my opinion, it's no longer worth developing this machine.
Click to expand...

Yes I understand your hesitancy to put more money into this machine. I have a soft spot for the Intel-based Macs but even the Mac Pro 2019's future is relatively limited.

That's actually why I was encouraging the NMVe -- you could take it with you to your next machine and it would still work well there. I take it you've already done the cost/value calculation -- premium for old technology and expected life versus adapter cost and expected life of new technology?
 
bzgnyc2 said:
Yes I understand your hesitancy to put more money into this machine. I have a soft spot for the Intel-based Macs but even the Mac Pro 2019's future is relatively limited.

That's actually why I was encouraging the NMVe -- you could take it with you to your next machine and it would still work well there. I take it you've already done the cost/value calculation -- premium for old technology and expected life versus adapter cost and expected life of new technology?
Click to expand...
Apple released the Intel Mac Pro in 2019 and it took them maybe 2 years to figure out that they would release the new machines with a completely new chip. This was not a good move from Apple.
Those who bought the Intel Mac at a gold price can now switch to the even more expensive M2 Mac

On machines with M2 chips, you may only be able to use Windows via a virtual machine
I prefer it when I can install it directly and use the entire resources of the machine for Windows and the programs running on it

So for me, the 2019 Mac Pro would be the best option, or I'll switch to a much cheaper PC.

Unfortunately, there is no point in spending money on 5.1 anymore
and not all NVME adapters are compatible with 5.1 either!
I don't want to spend any more unnecessary money

Unfortunately, I'm not skilled enough to buy a good adapter the first time, unless I'm lucky.
 
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