Mac Pro 2008 Raid 0 (Crucial M4)*2 Feasibility

[AntonWebern]

Can someone tell me if the following set-up is possible?

Mac Pro 2008 2.8 GHz 8-Core MA970LL/A
Snow Leopard 10.6.3 Retail DVD
2 x Crucial M4 512GB SSD (CT512M4SSD2)

Is it possible to set these 2 SSD's up in RAID 0 as the boot disk, and to do this at the same time that I am installing Snow Leopard from DVD?

Has anybody done this with substantially the same hardware?

Do I need to mess around with TRIM or can I just let the drives do their thing?

Are there any downsides to this setup?

Will this be lightning fast?

Thank you.

 

[bax2003]

Yes it is possible to boot OS X from stripe made on non system without RAID Card, however you cannot install Boot Camp on this array.

Boot your OS X Installation and make stripe array, make GUID partition(s) on that array and install. About performance, these shots speak for themselfs:

Single Kingston HX 3K 90GB:

RAID0:

This is tested on Mac Pro 3.1, which as you know has SATA 2 controller.

 

[yezza]

This is definitely possible. I used 2x OWC SSD's - you can check my thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/968143/.

 

[666sheep]

Will this be lightning fast?

It depends. If you'll be using it only for boot and apps, you'll don't notice any difference between 1 and 2 RAIDed SSDs. If you'll be using it for read/write bigger files, speed difference will be significant.

 

[mluters]

Mac OS X 10.7.4 boots from two Intel 520 SSD 240gb in RAID 0 connected via Areca 1882-IX-12 with these results:

 

[nanofrog]

IF you notice the speed differences between the RAID 0 on the ICH (on-board SATA ports) vs. the RAID 0 on the ARC-1882, you'll see quite a bit of a discrepancy.

This is the result of the ICH itself, which has it's throughput capped (~660MB/s) to keep it from consuming all of the bandwidth that connects the SB to the NB in the 2008 (other things on the interconnect as well, such as USB, Audio, and Ethernet ports).

 

[AntonWebern]

Outstanding. Thank you everyone. I bought one Crucial M4 days before the current M4 firesale, so instead of getting angry, I bought another one.

I'll be using the machine for Logic Pro work so I'll be reading and writing a lot of large files. I like to work in 24-bit 96khz.
I'm currently working on a Mac Mini with a single 7200 RPM drive, so I should see some improvement (understatement).

A snafu with the first machine, but now I have a 2008 3.0 GHz 8-core on the way with 12GB RAM.

Too bad about Boot Camp, but I'd rather have Mac OS X hauling @$$ than a windows partition.

 

[nanofrog]

Too bad about Boot Camp, but I'd rather have Mac OS X hauling @$$ than a windows partition.

Just run a separate disk for Windows if you need it (internal or on a bootable PCIe card if there aren't any more HDD bays available; the ODD_SATA ports won't boot Windows).

Fortunately, there are inexpensive cards that will boot in a MP (search MR, as it's in here somewhere).

 

[mfletcher]

Just run a separate disk for Windows if you need it (internal or on a bootable PCIe card if there aren't any more HDD bays available; the ODD_SATA ports won't boot Windows).

Fortunately, there are inexpensive cards that will boot in a MP (search MR, as it's in here somewhere).

This is exactly what Ive done. I took advantage off the sale on Crucial M4's to upgrade my Mac Pro.

1x 256GB M4 SSD - Bootcamp Windows 7
2x 256GB M4 SSD in RAID 0 - OSX 10.7.4

Works like a charm. I havent tried to use TRIM enabler on the OSX SSD's however.