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jbcandkc

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 1, 2006
35
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Need some advice. I have a Mac Pro early 2008 and I want to put an internal SSD in it. I was thinking of getting a Samsung 850 EVO and a 2.5 to 3.5" adapter (NewerTech AdaptaDrive). I will be running El Capitan. I have read all kinds of confusing things about TRIM and whether it should be enabled or not and about Samsung 840s having problems with firmware. So is running El Capitan with a Samsung 850 EVO a good choice? And do I need to enable TRIM in El Capitan?
 
TRIM seems overrated, considering I've had an SSD in my own '08 for at least 2-3 years, and nothing seems to be degrading in OSX or Windows.

The only downside is you're not going to get the full SATA 3 speeds since you don't have SATA 3 connections. Not that a SATA 2 speed isn't fast enough, that is.
 
I have a 2010 Mac Pro running El Capitan with a 480GB OWC SSD and a 500GB Samsung 850 EVO. There are a lot of opinions and articles on this subject. All I know is I enabled TRIM and both drives jumped in speed and are working great.

As for the Samsung 850 EVO SSD - SSD choice is a matter of opinion. I use mine as an additional data drive and have had no issues with it. My main drive is an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6Gb/s because of the five year warrantee. Plus it was on sale so the price was comparable to others offering the same storage space.
 
@Pakaku - Getting SATA 2 speed doesn't bother me much. Just trying to get a few more years from this machine.

@Iclev - According to Samsung website the 850 EVOs have a 5 year warranty...

Product Capacity Product Warranty Policy (Period or TBW)
850 EVO Series 120GB/250GB 5 years or 75 TBW
500GB/1TB 5 years or 150 TBW
 
850 EVO will be fine, I've got a 512GB model in our '09 Mac Pro using Pro Tools and such. Works great! I did use an OWC Mount Pro instead of the adaptadrive, but it's basically the same thing. Plus with the '08 it wouldn't work anyway due to the mount change.

I've also got a Crucial BX100 in another Mac Pro and it works well too. They'll all get around 275-280 MB/s tops anyway due to SATA II unless you go with a PCIe card. But that's probably overkill if your HDD has been fine all these years.

TRIM was nice back in the day but El Capitan messed things up a bit with rootless and if you're on 10.11 already I wouldn't mess with it. I had it on with our Mavericks machines, but the one on 10.11 is just bone stock. Newer drives handle garbage collection on the controller fairly well from what I can tell compared to the ones of old. I've got an old OCZ model from 2011/12 that has dropped to 90-100 MB/s in my iMac but my OWC one from 2012 (Sandforce) with 10+ TB of writes and no TRIM is still hitting 280 in my SATA II '08 MacBook.
 
TRIM was nice back in the day but El Capitan messed things up a bit with rootless and if you're on 10.11 already I wouldn't mess with it.
There is absolutely no conflict between System Integrity Protection (rootless) of El Capitan and issuing a perfectly supported sudo trimforce enable command in El Capitan's Terminal.
 
Ok, that's news to me. Last I was using it (maybe it was Yosemite) it could cause the mac not to boot up due to kext signing I think. I really haven't messed with it since then. Good to know though!

Edit: Derp you're right. I was thinking of something completely different. It was this guy that caused all the commotion.
 
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Yeah, TRIM Enalber is a .kext patcher and something completely different from just enabling TRIM on any drive with the terminal command (available from Yosemite 10.10.5 and up).
 
I have used TRIM since day 1, first with Trim Enabler, then Disk Sensei and now with Apple's Trim Terminal command. All my disc are Samsung Branded. An SM951, an 840 Pro, 2 840 Evos and an original series 840 SSD. TRIM is necessary to keep the drive running at peak efficiency. Don't listen to the naysayers - They Are Wrong. The only issues with TRIM on a Samsung SSD were with The Unix OS, that that was an OS issue, not a Samsung problem. BTW, for the two SSDs that I have mounted in the drive bays I used adapters like these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Your-Best-D...150039?hash=item3aba076557:g:dqAAAOSw7ThUmDgs

I removed the HDD and replaced it with the SSD. Works GREAT:p

Lou
 
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