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Regular SSD versus NVMe Upgrade. Please help

M

Marcosmg

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 6, 2011
41
2
Hello,
I have a regular Samsung 960 pro 512 GB mounted on a Apricorn PCI card that works fine.
My question is.

Am I going to see a lot of difference in speed if I buy the Samsung 960 PRO Series - 1TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 mounted on the Lyncom DT-120?

I Have the 2009 Mac pro upgraded to one six core and running Mojave now.
I Think my mac is 5.1 now and I also have upgraded the video card
 
Unless you perform a lot of large, sequential file operations (and have an appropriate source / sink on the other end) I doubt you'll see any benefit to using NVMe solutions.
 
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You have confused the heck out of me. A Samsung 960 Pro on an Apricorn PCIe card 1387914497.gif Don't think so.

BTW, the 960 Pro has been superseded by the 970 Pro. If you go that route, I would not use the DT120, because it has no active cooling. An NVMe SSD puts out more heat than an AHCI SSD and requires a card with a heatsink.

I disagree with the above answer. My 5,1 cMP is snappier with my 970 Pro NVMe drive. I don't know which OS you are running, but if you do go NVMe you'll need to update your firmware to V140.0.0.0.0 and run at least High Sierra.

Lou
 
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I think you are running a SATA ssd on that card?
If so getting a a 970 NVMe and a diffent card like the px1 is faster, maybe 3x. Your real world experience may not notice it.
 
flowrider said:
You have confused the heck out of me. A Samsung 960 Pro on an Apricorn PCIe cardView attachment 817666 Don't think so.

BTW, the 960 Pro has been superseded by the 970 Pro. If you go that route, I would not use the DT120, because it has no active cooling. An NVMe SSD puts out more heat than an AHCI SSD and requires a card with a heatsink.

I disagree with the above answer. My 5,1 cMP is snappier with my 970 Pro NVMe drive. I don't know which OS you are running, but if you do go NVMe you'll need to update your firmware to V140.0.0.0.0 and run at least High Sierra.

Lou
Click to expand...

I am running a regular samsung 860Pro ssd mounted on an apricorn adaptor (dual). It sits above the graphic card.
I'm running Mojave without a problem.
[doublepost=1548356151][/doublepost]
aslowdodge said:
I think you are running a SATA ssd on that card?
If so getting a a 970 NVMe and a diffent card like the px1 is faster, maybe 3x. Your real world experience may not notice it.
Click to expand...
I think so.
The SSD is screwed onto this adaptor. Apricorn dual. Not sure if its called SATA adapter or PCI card adapter.
I followed the instructions here when I first upgraded couple years ago.
Some people used this adapter to also install two SSD's raid 0, which is not what I have.
I only have one SSD on it and the extra one is empty.
 
^^^^Yep, that's what I figured. The Apricorn is in slot 2. The rest of my comments apply. The Apricorn card is a PCIe adapter card. The 860 is an AHCI SATA SSD.

I've run Apricorn cards in the past.

Lou
 
I have used both Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 and Apricorn Velocity Duo X2.

When Apricorn Velocity Duo X2 is NOT in a RAID mode with two SATA SSDs attached, it achieves about 450-525 MB/s read and write as media drive (not system). Have this installed in slot 3 currently. Have used Samsung EVO 840, EVO 850, and EVO 860 SATA SSDs in this PCIe adapter.

Angelbird Wings PX1 with Samsung EVO 970 M.2 NVMe installed in slot 2 achieves anywhere from 1000-1400 MB/s read & write as system drive. Previously was using Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 for system drive.

Real world, I notice a big difference in application launch speed and many other tasks. Still in High Sierra (10.13.6 17G5019) with 140.0.0.0.0 firmware.
 
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flowrider said:
^^^^Yep, that's what I figured. The Apricorn is in slot 2. The rest of my comments apply. The Apricorn card is a PCIe adapter card. The 860 is an AHCI SATA SSD.

I've run Apricorn cards in the past.

Lou
Click to expand...
Right! If Im not mistaken I got some advices from you back then :)
Going back to the topic, now that you guys know what I have and since Im running Mojave just fine.
Is it worth the new investment to upgrade as I mentioned on my first post?
I could also throw a second SSD to the existing Apricorn card and have a raid 0 as my boot drive.
[doublepost=1548367514][/doublepost]
bsbeamer said:
I have used both Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 and Apricorn Velocity Duo X2.

When Apricorn Velocity Duo X2 is NOT in a RAID mode with two SATA SSDs attached, it achieves about 450-525 MB/s read and write as media drive (not system). Have this installed in slot 3 currently. Have used Samsung EVO 840, EVO 850, and EVO 860 SATA SSDs in this PCIe adapter.

Angelbird Wings PX1 with Samsung EVO 970 M.2 NVMe installed in slot 2 achieves anywhere from 1000-1400 MB/s read & write as system drive. Previously was using Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 for system drive.

Real world, I notice a big difference in application launch speed and many other tasks. Still in High Sierra (10.13.6 17G5019) with 140.0.0.0.0 firmware.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input.
I only have one ssd on this card and it is my boot drive. Using one samsung 860 pro. I was wondering if I could use another samsung pro (850) on the same card as raid 0. Different models (850 and 860) both 512GB to improve the speed.
 
Marcosmg said:
I could also throw a second SSD to the existing Apricorn card and have a raid 0 as my boot drive.
Click to expand...
Mojave don’t support RAID for a boot drive unless you have a supported hardware RAID card, yours is not.

If you need a fast boot drive, or a fast scratch drive, PCIe blades are excellent and are getting cheaper everyday.
 
Marcosmg said:
I could also throw a second SSD to the existing Apricorn card and have a raid 0 as my boot drive.
Click to expand...

Mojave? If so, you may want to avoid software-based RAID for boot drive. There are a ton of RAID issues several users on this forum have reported. I've experienced them in testing with media drives and would not venture into software-based RAIDs. Hardware-based RAID that does not use Apple's RAID controller (and likely a few others) likely are OK.
[doublepost=1548367871][/doublepost]
Marcosmg said:
I only have one ssd on this card and it is my boot drive. Using one samsung 860 pro. I was wondering if I could use another samsung pro (850) on the same card as raid 0. Different models (850 and 860) both 512GB to improve the speed.
Click to expand...

Assume this is a Velocity Duo X2 unit?

https://www.apricorn.com/media/document/file/Apricorn Velocity duo x2 Datasheet.pdf

"To ensure optimal RAID 0 functionality, both of the SSDs on the VelocityDuo must be identical (same brand, same firmware revision and capacity) Additionally, prior to data cloning, each drive must be “zeroedout” using a disk utility such as Gparted, Parted Magic, or a utility native to your OS. Since RAID 0 is strictly a performance-enhancing array with data being striped across 2 drives, if one of those drives should fail, all data on both will be lost. When using Velocity Duo with RAID 0configuration, regular backup is recommended to minimize data loss."
 
bsbeamer said:
Mojave? If so, you may want to avoid software-based RAID for boot drive. There are a ton of RAID issues several users on this forum have reported. I've experienced them in testing with media drives and would not venture into software-based RAIDs. Hardware-based RAID that does not use Apple's RAID controller (and likely a few others) likely are OK.
[doublepost=1548367871][/doublepost]

Assume this is a Velocity Duo X2 unit?

https://www.apricorn.com/media/document/file/Apricorn Velocity duo x2 Datasheet.pdf

"To ensure optimal RAID 0 functionality, both of the SSDs on the VelocityDuo must be identical (same brand, same firmware revision and capacity) Additionally, prior to data cloning, each drive must be “zeroedout” using a disk utility such as Gparted, Parted Magic, or a utility native to your OS. Since RAID 0 is strictly a performance-enhancing array with data being striped across 2 drives, if one of those drives should fail, all data on both will be lost. When using Velocity Duo with RAID 0configuration, regular backup is recommended to minimize data loss."
Click to expand...
bsbeamer said:
Mojave? If so, you may want to avoid software-based RAID for boot drive. There are a ton of RAID issues several users on this forum have reported. I've experienced them in testing with media drives and would not venture into software-based RAIDs. Hardware-based RAID that does not use Apple's RAID controller (and likely a few others) likely are OK.
[doublepost=1548367871][/doublepost]

Assume this is a Velocity Duo X2 unit?

https://www.apricorn.com/media/document/file/Apricorn Velocity duo x2 Datasheet.pdf

"To ensure optimal RAID 0 functionality, both of the SSDs on the VelocityDuo must be identical (same brand, same firmware revision and capacity) Additionally, prior to data cloning, each drive must be “zeroedout” using a disk utility such as Gparted, Parted Magic, or a utility native to your OS. Since RAID 0 is strictly a performance-enhancing array with data being striped across 2 drives, if one of those drives should fail, all data on both will be lost. When using Velocity Duo with RAID 0configuration, regular backup is recommended to minimize data loss."
Click to expand...

Yes, it is the velocity duo. I'm glad you gave me this info because I wasn't aware of this problem (raid 0 on the boot drive using Mojave). However I have two 3TB seagates on bays 1 and 2 as raid 0 using Mojave. There are for data only and no problems so far
 
You may not experience the same issue with spinning HDDs units connected directly via SATA bays if those are HFS+ formatted and non-boot. Would suggest backing up your data to an external, just in case.
 
bsbeamer said:
You may not experience the same issue with spinning HDDs units connected directly via SATA bays if those are HFS+ formatted and non-boot. Would suggest backing up your data to an external, just in case.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion. I have two external time machines running.
 
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