SSD in 2008 Mac Pro

[irishgrizzly]

Giving my '08 Mac Pro a new lease of life with a SSD. 3'5 (so I won't have to worry about sleds etc.) I'm going for a clean install, but is there any special considerations regarding formatting I should be aware of?

This is the drive;
OCZ Vertex 2E Bigfoot 120GB 3.5" SATA-II

Should I install in windows first to update firmware?

EDII read this post which has got me thinking it going to be difficult

http://joshuablount.com/posts/2011/clean-installing-snow-leopard-on-your-ssd-considered-harmful/

 

[ActionableMango]

Giving my '08 Mac Pro a new lease of life with a SSD. 3'5 (so I won't have to worry about sleds etc.) I'm going for a clean install, but is there any special considerations regarding formatting I should be aware of?

This is the drive;
OCZ Vertex 2E Bigfoot 120GB 3.5" SATA-II

Should I install in windows first to update firmware?

EDII read this post which has got me thinking it going to be difficult

http://joshuablount.com/posts/2011/clean-installing-snow-leopard-on-your-ssd-considered-harmful/

I installed directly from the disc onto an OCZ Vertex 2 3.5" 120GB. However, I did not use the retail Snow Leopard disc, I used the 2010 Mac Pro disc that came with the computer. It might have newer drivers than the retail disc. Heck, newer retail discs might have newer drivers than older retail discs.

I don't update the firmware. I don't like to mess with things that work to my satisfaction.

However, as I recall to update OCZ firmware, you need to have Windows to do firmware updates and you cannot update an SSD that you booted from, so there are certainly some challenges to overcome.

 

[Vereina]

I have done almost exactly the same (a Vertex 2 120Gb in a 2008 Mac Pro).

I ordered the 3.5" SSD for exactly that reason, to simplify fitting in one of the two spare disk bays. However, I actually had some difficulty fitting; see this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1134200/

The way I ended up fitting the SSD seems to have worked fine, and I subsequently ordered a 240Gb SSD which I installed in the same way. Neither of the SSDs came with their own screws, so I used the ones in the Mac's own sleds; if your SSD has suitable screws supplied with it, you may find the fitting rather easier.

As for installing OS X:

I simply used Disk Utility to copy the original boot drive to the SSD. Prior to doing this, I moved my home folder to a separate data volume (so that I can still boot from the original HD and use the same home directories), but it obviously isn't necessary to do that. This all worked fine.

(I realise that some people advise using different tools to clone the boot volume. I have no experience of this, so all I can say is that Disk Utility worked fine. Cloning is presumably a lot quicker than reinstalling everything from scratch.)

I also applied the TRIM patch, which seems to have worked fine, with no ill effects.

 

[ActionableMango]

I'm starting to think maybe my memory is faulty and I used the sled screws. Perhaps I should check tonight.