SSD speed in Mac Pro 1,1

[SuperMatt]

I was wondering whether people have found a substantial speed increase from using an SSD as a boot disk in an original Mac Pro.

A 7200 RPM hard drive in mine gets between 175 and 200 MB/s on the BlackMagic speed test. If the max speed of any drive is 3Gbps due to the SATA II limitation, I would imagine an SSD can't get much above 300MB/s, if that...? Perhaps I'm wrong.

If you have an SSD in an original Mac Pro, would you mind letting me know what kind of speeds you're seeing?

 

[saulinpa]

SSD is about more than speed. You no longer have to factor in head/track seek times and waiting for the disk to spin around.

 

[h9826790]

I was wondering whether people have found a substantial speed increase from using an SSD as a boot disk in an original Mac Pro.

A 7200 RPM hard drive in mine gets between 175 and 200 MB/s on the BlackMagic speed test. If the max speed of any drive is 3Gbps due to the SATA II limitation, I would imagine an SSD can't get much above 300MB/s, if that...? Perhaps I'm wrong.

If you have an SSD in an original Mac Pro, would you mind letting me know what kind of speeds you're seeing?

You looked at the wrong speed. For OS operation (e.g. booting). You should check the 4k random read speed. The SSD is about 30x faster than a normal HDD (~30MB/s vs 1MB/s), and the SATA II bandwidth is not limiting anything for this kind of usage.

If that max sequential speed can represent OS operation responsiveness. Then a HDD RAID can fix the slow small files read / write long long time ago (but it doesn’t, because the 4k random speed won’t improve by RAID 0).

 

[VanneDC]

I have SSD as boot disk in both my kids cMP 1,2's , it's a world of difference.

 

[orph]

i have a SSD in my 5.1 & 3.1 as boot disc, they both boot a lot lot faster and yep in general it's a lot faster.

 

[djeeyore25]

Switching to an SSD drive in my original Mac Pro was like night and day. My boot time went down about 75%. It’s definitely worth the upgrade.

 

[pl1984]

What kind of speed increase are you referring to? For boot / application load times SSDs deliver. For application times SSDs only deliver if the application performs a lot of disk activity. Otherwise the results are fairly inconsequential.

 

[SuperMatt]

Thanks for all the replies. Sounds like an SSD boot drive will be a great boost to system responsiveness.

 

[JedNZ]

Boot time and everyday use was significantly enhanced by installing a SSD in my cMP 1,1>2,1 in one of the direct connect bays (SATA II). Putting the SSD into an Accelsior S PCIe SATA III card made it even slightly better again, more so for file transfers than boot-up times (took another 10 seconds for the PCIe SATA III card to be recognised/initialised on start-up), but worth the modest speed boost after that.

 

[SuperMatt]

Boot time and everyday use was significantly enhanced by installing a SSD in my cMP 1,1>2,1 in one of the direct connect bays (SATA II). Putting the SSD into an Accelsior S PCIe SATA III card made it even slightly better again, more so for file transfers than boot-up times (took another 10 seconds for the PCIe SATA III card to be recognised/initialised on start-up), but worth the modest speed boost after that.

I like it that you saw a speedup with the Accelsior card. I was under the impression that the Accelsior would be so limited by the slow PCIe speed that it wouldn't give any boost over plugging into the direct connect bay...

 

[orph]

anyway for general light use a 120GB/240GB SSD will make your 1.1 boot faster & apps on the SSD will open faster than a spinning drive. the SATA 2 speed limit on internal drive slots will not be a problem for a OS drive.

for me pci cards for SSD's are best as a scratch drive or something like storing 4K video/raw video files but not as a OS drive as there the gains are less needed over sata

 

[SuperMatt]

Thanks for all the great info.

I have one follow-up question: what are some currently available SSD drive adapters that work with the MP 1,1? Most of the solutions I found in these forums are many years old and the links no longer work or the item is no longer for sale.

 

[orph]

there's 2 easy ways to do it,
1. just plug it in the SSD is so light it just seems fine (i do that in the first slot of my 3.1)
2. take of the outer case of the SSD (so it's just a circuit board) and just plug it in (now no sag )

im at 1. at the mo and if i feel like it i may swap to 2.

 

[VanneDC]

I bought 2 pretty sturdy adaptor sleds that mount on the original sleds.

There are cheaper options, but I required mine to be solid. Kids using the 1,2 and such ebay has some good ones.

 

[orph]

i used elastic bands at first in my 5.1

 

[VanneDC]

lol I had similar Orph, on my 3,1 I had sticky tape holding it to the oem sled. lol

 

[h9826790]

there's 2 easy ways to do it,
1. just plug it in the SSD is so light it just seems fine (i do that in the first slot of my 3.1)
2. take of the outer case of the SSD (so it's just a circuit board) and just plug it in (now no sag )

im at 1. at the mo and if i feel like it i may swap to 2.

I tried both. Option 2 is better, clearly much less stress to the SATA port. But if don’t want to break warranty etc. Option 1 is definitely fine. My freind’s SSD pluged into the slot without any support for few years already. Still working flawlessly.

 

[vworks]

If you put in the first on the left SATA bay, you can add something below and it holds between the sata bay and the fan cage...
Also you could use the 5 and 6th sata ports and put it in the DVD chamber

 

[jbarley]

I tried both. Option 2 is better, clearly much less stress to the SATA port. But if don’t want to break warranty etc. Option 1 is definitely fine. My freind’s SSD pluged into the slot without any support for few years already. Still working flawlessly.

Rubber bands do a decent job of supporting the back ends of your SSD's.
Sorry for the photo quality, or rather lack thereof.

 

[judino28]

I have one follow-up question: what are some currently available SSD drive adapters that work with the MP 1,1? Most of the solutions I found in these forums are many years old and the links no longer work or the item is no longer for sale.

Here is what I used; it is great, solid, and affordable: NewerTech AdaptaDrive 2.5" to 3.5" Drive Converter Bracket: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005PZDVF6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_dp_tqbtAbD89BSDT

This also seems to be just as good: Sabrent 2.5" SSD & SATA Hard Drive to Desktop 3.5" SATA Bay Converter Mounting Kit (BK-PCBS): https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Desktop-Converter-Mounting-BK-PCBS/dp/B00UN550AC

 

[foliovision]

Rubber bands do a decent job of supporting the back ends of your SSD's.
Sorry for the photo quality, or rather lack thereof.
View attachment 744901

Nice pic, never tried the rubber bands. I've used gaffer tape, the Newer Adapter and the dedicated OWC trays in 1,1's, 3,1's and 4,1's (now all upgraded via firmware to 5,1). Silver gaffer tape worked brilliantly for years (those OWC trays were something like $40/each at one point!). My Mac Pro didn't get faster when I added the OWC trays. I prefer the OWC trays as there are no electronics or connectors involved. It just a mechanical replacement. Plus you get extra trays for backup 3.5" spinning drives when you add an OWC blue tray. The blue trays also flag that it's probably a boot drive. You can pick up the OWC trays for $10 to $20 these days which is much more enticing than the original pricing.

When you have your Mac Pro on its side for work (just did a huge round of Apple Hardware Testing and an upgrade to High Sierra), you can just plug in an SSD with zero support (gravity pushing it down). I'm counting here on the relatively light Samsung SSD series and not crazy heavy Kingston or OWC all metal drives. I'm not a fan of plastic, but SSD casing is one place that plastic is the right material.

If you decide to put an SSD or two under or in place of the optical drive (there are two unused SATA ports in an Mac Pro 1,1 btw, down near the PCI front fan, so you only need a power splitter to add two drives), gaffer tape or nothing are probably the easiest and most cost efficient method. You don't ever see those drives and most people are not shaking their Mac Pro's upside down or even transporting them at all. Just the power cables are almost enough to hold two SSD in place in the optical drive cage.

 

[SuperMatt]

I finally put an SSD in there now - got a 500GB Crucial for $65. Using the rubber band method for now - works well and getting 250MB/s read and write! Might order a sled adapter soon for peace-of-mind. I saw a cheap Angelbird one, but it only claims to fit in 3,1 or later. Anybody using one in a 1,1? I'm guessing maybe the screw holes are in slightly different places or something.

 

[foliovision]

Anybody using one in a 1,1? I'm guessing maybe the screw holes are in slightly different places or something.

1.1 and 2.1 trays are completely different. If I recollect correctly they are longer and narrower than the later ones. I believe 3.1 trays differ from both 1.1,2.1 and 4.1, 5.1.

The cheapest, easiest and most flexible way to handle standard SSD is gaffer tape. Just a single small strip down from the roof of the MacPro to the front of the SSD. With this in place, your SSD won't go anywhere.

If you require a bracket solution, you can use your existing Mac Pro brackets with inexpensive conversion brackets for 2.5 inch drives to 3.5 inch drives, some of which fit well on a Mac Pro.

 

[seoulcomp]

Hey does anyone know if it is worth adding a SATA PCIe card to a 1,1 Mac Pro especially for enhancing the boot drive speed? Since it is PCIe 1.0, will that make it faster than the SATA bus in the Machine? I think the PCIe bus is limited to 350mb/s. How does that compare to the built in SATA speed in the 1,1?

 

[Amethyst1]

Hey does anyone know if it is worth adding a SATA PCIe card to a 1,1 Mac Pro especially for enhancing the boot drive speed?

You can add either a SATA 6 Gbps PCIe card or a native PCIe SSD.

However, a native PCIe SSD has to use the AHCI protocol (not NVMe!) to work in the 1,1, and there are very few AHCI PCIe SSDs. I have compiled a list of these elusive SSDs here.

Since it is PCIe 1.0, will that make it faster than the SATA bus in the Machine?

PCIe 1.0 is ≈250 MB/s per lane, minus overhead. With overhead, I’d say it’s around 200 MB/s per lane.

If you get a two-lane PCIe SATA 6 Gbps card (don't get a single-lane one — that isn't worth it in the 1,1), you can expect speeds in the 350≈400 MB/s range. The 1,1's internal SATA bus is 300 MB/s (3 Gbps) minus overhead, which usually results in 250≈270 MB/s.

But the fastest option, by far, is to get an AHCI PCIe SSD that uses four lanes. With one of these, you can expect speeds in the 700≈800 MB/s range. And it will be bootable as well.

I think the PCIe bus is limited to 350mb/s.

No. The maximum speed you can get depends on the number of PCIe lanes your controller uses.