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What to put on SSD

honeycombz

honeycombz

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 6, 2013
588
154
Hi, I've got a Mac Pro 3,1. Probably going to get an OWC 480GB SSD so I don't have to deal with Trim and Yosemite. My question is... I'm running an HD with 928gb of stuff on it. Do I just put the system install on the SSD? And then leave the existing drive as is and use it for all my document/photo/music storage? My Applications are 230gb... I could probably widdle that down some. Really don't know here. If I was just doing the system on the SSD I could probably run a smaller drive but shouldnt I be running applications off the SSD?
 
Hi Honeycombz,
I only have a 256Gb SSD and use 2 HHD's (untill I can afford another SSD). The idea which cames from my windows experiancies, it that you DO NOT put all your work files on the same drive as the OS, if it fails and being the most active, it could, you lose everything!!

256Gb holds my OS and all Applications, I need, boots up in 27 secs.. I need more ram as I only have 8Gb and would like to double it, I hear about ex server 667 ram going cheap but where??

Thanks again, regards.

Mel.

PS. I had an OWC/OCZ SSD fail on me, it just died one day and that was it, that was running windows-7 and was a 120Gb.
 
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Samsung 850 EVO $189 500GB $105 250GB

Only 5GB of user account should be fine.
 
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Yea, the only reason I was looking at OWC was because of the trim issues and Yosemite but it sounds like that could still be a problem. The Samsung EVOs look nice but I don't want to monkey with kext signing crap turning on and off. Is that still the only option for this?
 
flowrider said:
And other forum members have posted that no matter what OWC says, all SSDs need TRIM.
Click to expand...
Except those that don't like all modern SSDs that have efficient low level garbage collection built in. Real life application performance is unaffected by whether you run with TRIM or not. Nobody ever produces evidence that TRIM is worthwhile just that there is a theoretical performance hit if you don't use it.

BTW The OWC drives are overpriced. I just checked on Amazon & the OP could purchase a Crucial M500 960GB drive for under $300 & then wouldn't have to bother with what to leave off the SSD as he could just clone his existing drive then go through & do some housekeeping.
 
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i give up. this is too complicated. maybe i'm just not techie enough to bother with the mac pro 3,1 anymore. i simply do not understand what the deal is with these SSDs and Yosemite and Trim. everyone says something different. those crucial m500s look amazing... price and size. but. from what i read garbage collection isn't the same as trim. i dont know.
 
honeycombz said:
i give up. this is too complicated. maybe i'm just not techie enough to bother with the mac pro 3,1 anymore. i simply do not understand what the deal is with these SSDs and Yosemite and Trim. everyone says something different. those crucial m500s look amazing... price and size. but. from what i read garbage collection isn't the same as trim. i dont know.
Click to expand...

Apple chose to lock the kernel, has never supported 3rd party SSDs properly. Much talked about on MacIntouch reader reports: Hard Drives.

Keep a small system for maintenance, you should behave one already to replace and supplement Recovery partition, which is poor substitute being on same boot drive usually, and cMP lacks the same firmware based ability to do a clean network install.

An SSD makes a substantial difference. 500GB $189 850 EVO, or only $65 128GB.
 
IowaLynn said:
Keep a small system for maintenance, you should behave one already to replace and supplement Recovery partition, which is poor substitute being on same boot drive usually, and cMP lacks the same firmware based ability to do a clean network install.

An SSD makes a substantial difference. 500GB $189 850 EVO, or only $65 128GB.
Click to expand...

I didn't entirely understand what you are suggesting. That I should just get a smaller SSD strictly for the system and boot off of that?
 
For those averse to trimming under Yosemite but who still want to trim their SSDs, a strategy that works well and is pretty foolproof is to keep the afore-mentioned "maintenance system" using ML or Mavericks on a separate drive (any old drive) and enable trim using Cindori's Trim Enabler (and leave it enabled) on that system.

To trim your Yosemite system drive, boot from the maintenance system drive and run Disc Utility "repair"disc" on your Yosemite system drive. You will note Disc Utility will say "repaired and trimmed" when finished.

Then boot back into your regular system drive and proceed as normal. Perform the above occasionally, more often if your SSD is running pretty full.

Regardless of what anyone says about anything, at the very least buy any SSD, connect it via SATA2 and throw it in your optical bay on top of your optical drive, install your OS on it and marvel at the responsiveness of your Mac Pro.
 
^^^^I know of no one who has an Angelbird. I would luv to see first hand experience with these SSDs. And I still wonder why Apple has not taken legal action against them?

Lou
 
Ah, thanks DP User for clarifying. Maybe I will get the Crucial MX500 and then some mount for the optical drive bay and put the system install on there. And then spend some time trying to pare down the applications and games on my main drive. Already chucked 7 gigs just scanning for 5 min. I have one of those external ide/sata cable connectors so I could just have mavericks on some crummy old 15 gig drive or somethin for trim and run it once a week or once a month or something. What kind of mount would people recommend. Would it be better in one of the main drive bays and put one of the mechanical drives in the optical bay? Also, what's the difference between the MX and BX version... BX 500gb seems cheaper than MX 480gb.
 
honeycombz said:
I didn't entirely understand what you are suggesting. That I should just get a smaller SSD strictly for the system and boot off of that?
Click to expand...

Yes. Been doing that when and since 15K SCSI and those were pricey way, and to avoid "disk drive contention" - you want the OS drive to do just that.

You want your large media files on slower cheaper drives that don't need to be on an SSD. Some apps like an SSD, audio or graphic library but again even there it can help to use separate device.

My "maintenance system" can and would be Yosemite, but I would only update it "as needed" knowing how TE and kernel signing will affect it. I do not believe in using DU from an older OS and trust that it knows how to deal with the partition and drive characteristics. Also that maintenance system is the only place - if ever - that I would install 3rd party utilities like Disk Warrior, DRive Genius or TechTool Pro and others.

If ML is safe to use DU against 10.10 and has been proven (if that is possible) but has not always been the case - can't use 10.3.9 on 10.4 formatted disks anyone? like that.
 
honeycombz said:
Ah, thanks DP User for clarifying. Maybe I will get the Crucial MX500 and then some mount for the optical drive bay
Click to expand...

Unless you move your Mac Pro around, no need to mount SSDs in optical bay. Simply move optical drive to lower bay, then use it as a shelf for SSDs, which can be stuck in place with double sided foam tape or just rest there.

Also, for boot drive use, it is my understanding SATA2 vs SATA3 make little difference, given the small random reads inherent to OS use. Streaming content, especially video, and writing disc to disc will make better use of the higher speeds SATA3 provides.

I cannot comment as to concerns expressed by IowaLynn, but one could certainly use Yosemite with Trim Enabler for the maintenance drive OS. The key to the repair and trim via Disc Utility is to boot from a drive other than the drive to be repaired/trimmed.
 
Foam Tape. Brilliant! DPUser are you saying that there is little point to using the Apricorn Velocity Card?
 
^^^^Maybe he's saying that, but I'm not. The card is not that expensive and you get SATA 3 speeds. It's a Mac Pro for god sakes, why go on the cheap?

Lou
 
If you're going for performance, you may as well get the Apricorn card. It is faster. SSD's are usually bought to increase performance, so I wouldn't Kneecap it with the SATAII buss of the cMP.
 
I did not feel that much difference with EVO 840 500GB between SATA II and III. I did notice a native SATA III motherboard was better than a PCIe card somewhat.

The huge difference in boot drive is the random I/O and IO per seconds, the nearly zero latency and seeks.

But when it came to performance, and my own feeling about RAID0 for boot devices and having tried and tested dual 15K drives too, is no.

But I would spend the extra amount for an Apple/Samsung M.2 Bootable NGFF PCIE SSD device or XP941 $240 + $19 adapter (not a controller).

Sequential Read: 1080MB/s, Sequential Write: 800 MB/s, Random Read (QD=32): 120K IOPS, Random Write (QD=32): 60K IOPS slightly better than two SATA III units, though of course 2 x 250GB may be what you want. (Why not all three? the system on NGFF and data or scratch on Velocity Duo.

... and that from 256GB unit. There are higher capacity and good deals on ebay for OEM Apple units or units that look and act the same (not sure in the fine print if all the ones being used are OEM but appear to be the same or compatible parts and SKU).
 
flowrider said:
^^^^Maybe he's saying that, but I'm not. The card is not that expensive and you get SATA 3 speeds. It's a Mac Pro for god sakes, why go on the cheap?

Lou
Click to expand...

For goodness sake, then why not simply buy a nMP Lou? ;)

We each choose how we will vote with our dollars.

All I'm saying is "Live better; try SSD." I boot from SATA2 and my cMP is a rocket.
 
DPUser said:
For goodness sake, then why not simply buy a nMP Lou? ;)
Click to expand...

Because the nMP is not a real Mac Pro in my eyes. The darn thing is not expandable. And as of today, a cMP can be made to run as fast as a nMP.

I've got 8 drives sitting inside my 5,1. 4 SSDs (on 2 Duos), 1 SSHD and 3 HDDs. My Video card is an accelerated GTX 780 with an EFI, and I have UsB 3.0. I also have two X5877s. I do not want or need a nMP.

Lou
 
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