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Which SSD tray for Mac Pro?

flowrider said:
^^^^Not True!!! My Solo x2 BlackMagic test with a Samsung 840 SSD is attached.

Lou
Click to expand...

So which card are you using?

Further, I have Sonnet Tempo & Mac Pro 5,1.
Option at boot does not work, from Sonnet support knowledge base:
"Tempo SSD and Tempo SSD Pro bootable drives show upon an option-boot in the Mac Pro 3,1 and 4,1, but do not show up in the Mac Pro 5,1. The recommended workaround in a Mac Pro 5,1 is to boot from another drive, and then select the Tempo SSD volume in the Startup Disk System Preferences and restart."
 
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ibarnett said:
So which card are you using?

Further, I have Sonnet Tempo & Mac Pro 5,1.
Option at boot does not work, from Sonnet support knowledge base:
"Tempo SSD and Tempo SSD Pro bootable drives show upon an option-boot in the Mac Pro 3,1 and 4,1, but do not show up in the Mac Pro 5,1. The recommended workaround in a Mac Pro 5,1 is to boot from another drive, and then select the Tempo SSD volume in the Startup Disk System Preferences and restart."
Click to expand...

I may have been partly responsible for that disclaimer as I was one of the first to contact Sonnet technical support when my option-bootmanager mysteriously stopped working. Tech support was eventually able to duplicate the issue and they posted that disclaimer and promised a firmware update when they figured it out. No firmware upgrade was forthcoming however.

In the months that followed, while doing many experiments and upgrades, my option-bootmanager mysteriously started working again and does so to this day.

Another poster here also had the "no boot manager" problem with that card, and was able to restore it with a multi-cycle PRAM reset ... however, it later reappeared again. Very strange! :confused:

So ... while some systems may have a issue with the option-key boot manager ... many do not. I currently am having no problems with my Sonnet Tempo Pro dual SSD card, and hope that continues.
 
hfg said:
In the months that followed, while doing many experiments and upgrades, my option-bootmanager mysteriously started working again and does so to this day.
[/B]
Click to expand...

How about Bootcamp?
I couldn't use BootChamp to boot into Windows on an internal drive, or boot back again from Windows?
 
ibarnett said:
How about Bootcamp?
I couldn't use BootChamp to boot into Windows on an internal drive, or boot back again from Windows?
Click to expand...

Ahh yes ... Bootcamp! :eek:

I guess I do still have a slight issue there ... I can easily switch from OS X to Windows using the "Startup Disk" menu, however, from within Windows the "Reboot to OS X" will simply reboot into Windows if I don't use the option-key boot disk manager.

This started happening when I moved my Windows boot SSD over to a Solo x2 card on the PCIe bus where it is an "external" drive. As I recall, the transition back to OS X wasn't a problem when the Windows SSD was on an "internal" drive bay sled. I simply decided that I could live with that little issue in order to get the increased speed advantage since doing the option-key boot wasn't that bothersome. I don't boot into Windows very often as most non-game programs work fine for me using VMware "Fusion" linked to the BootCamp installation.
 
hfg said:
Ahh yes ... Bootcamp! :eek:
I guess I do still have a slight issue there ... I can easily switch from OS X to Windows using the "Startup Disk" menu, however, from within Windows the "Reboot to OS X" will simply reboot into Windows if I don't use the option-key boot disk manager.
Click to expand...

Yes, life is full of compromises, however I have taken my card out.
I see Sonnet now have a "Tempo SSD Pro Plus" http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossdproplus.html
However I think it is too many $ just to see if it works without any compromises!
 
I put a 1TB Samsung SSD & PCIe card in my old Mac Pro 3.1 and it runs much faster.
14376806246_922eb83197.jpg


vs my new 6-core Mac Pro :
14743784700_174cefef91.jpg
 
ibarnett said:
Yes, life is full of compromises, however I have taken my card out.
I see Sonnet now have a "Tempo SSD Pro Plus" http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossdproplus.html
However I think it is too many $ just to see if it works without any compromises!
Click to expand...

Sorry the card isn't working out for you ... it seems to be one of the best cards available until the m.2 cards are more readily available.

I have been curious about that new Tempo Pro "Plus" card as well, especially since it adds a couple of eSATA ports which I could use. During a discussion on these forms recently regarding this card, someone posted that it didn't resolve the problems with running Windows on the Tempo Pro with or without OS X on the same card. I emailed tech support asking them, but all I got back was a "boilerplate" response which didn't address the question, and my reply for specific information didn't get any response.

Hopefully, someone here will acquire the "Plus" card and let us know if it resolves the various issues which plague the original card.
 
ibarnett said:
Yes, life is full of compromises, however I have taken my card out.
I see Sonnet now have a "Tempo SSD Pro Plus" http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossdproplus.html
However I think it is too many $ just to see if it works without any compromises!
Click to expand...

I apologize if I have already suggested this to you previously ...

You might try removing the SSDs from the Tempo Pro card and replace the bare card in the PCIe slot. Then perform a PRAM reset (I let it cycle for 3 chimes before releasing). Then replace the SSDs and check to see if your option-key boot-manager is again working. You could even temporarily put your boot SSD in a backplane tray and verify that the option-key reset does display the boot-manager screen. Might not hurt to even boot it fully and shut it down just for good measure before restoring the SSDs back to the Tempo Pro card.

I discovered back when mine wasn't working, that either the bare card or one with non-bootable SSDs mounted did, in fact, show the boot-manager working properly. Only when the card contained a bootable SSD did it refuse to work correctly.


Good luck...
-howard
 
Sorry to hijack my thread back people, but I'm getting back onto SSD trays :D

h9826790 said:
For some SSD like the 840 Evo, you can lost more than 50% of it's max sequential speed.
Click to expand...

Hi again!
How come there's such a big loss in speed? Why does it vary from SSD to SSD also?
Also, is this just speed measured on paper, or in realistic situations?
It would suck to buy such a good SSD to then not even be able to use half of its performance.
But I'm also scared it will be tight in the PCIe bay. I'm still planning to put a pro audio interface in there, and if I also add an SSD, I'm scared they would be too close to each other. But I think someone said I could place it in the standard HD bay and then still connect it to PCIe somehow, or something like this?
Is there no way to attain such speeds with SATA?
 
Me? I just use a recycled heatsink from a Western Digital Raptor drive that bit the dust. Definitely don't have to worry about my SSD overheating in that thing. :D
 
Silencio said:
Me? I just use a recycled heatsink from a Western Digital Raptor drive that bit the dust. Definitely don't have to worry about my SSD overheating in that thing. :D
Click to expand...

I use those as well ... BTW, you can buy just the Raptor heatsinks on eBay if you don't have a Raptor drive to cannibalize.

----------
Sanchez25 said:
Do SSDs get hot at all? Probably a dumb question, but never seen or used one.
Click to expand...

Yes, they can get pretty warm if you are hitting them hard from the short but large power spikes.

These are cheap and nicely made and utilize your existing disk trays:
NewerTech AdaptaDrive
2.5" to 3.5" Drive Converter Bracket
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/ADPTADRV/

The OWC replacement trays are also well made, but a bit more expensive. There are 2 sizes depending on which Mac Pro you are fitting.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MMP35T25/
 
Yeah I've seen those, I thought that's quite cheap actually. Not sure how much shipping to Europe would cost, but if it isn't a lot, I believe it would be a good deal.
I'd still prefer to original Apple ones I think, but they seem to be impossible to find over here.

But anyway, I should perhaps first decide how I'd like to connect the SSD. If they get hot, then that's one more reason I wouldn't want them in the PCIe bay. Especially with a sound card and the graphic card in there as well, that's 3 components that heat up too much then.

What drives would there be that don't loose 50% of their potential speed like the Samsung 850 Pro when connected via SATA 3?
It's too bad because I've spent a lot of time researching and thought the 850 Pro would be *the* choice for me. Now I have to start this all over again.
 
Even though you can't achieve the max speed via SATA 2 connection, I personally still recommend you to buy the most up to date SSD (e.g. the 850 Pro). There are lots of different technology in SSD, buying an outdated SSD to match the SATA 2 speed is meaningless. It's not just giving you a slower sequential speed (even though you want to upgrade to SATA 3 later on), but less IOPS, shorter life span, less reliability, etc.

By connecting the 850 Pro to a SATA 2 port, you will lost half of it's sequential speed (this is easily to prove by benchmark software, not just theoretical lost). However, most of the time, you won't notice anything. It's because you mainly benefit from the high IOPS of your SSD, but not it's sequential performance (the OS need to access lots of small files most of the time but not a single very large file). And this random read / write speed is not that limiting by the SATA 2 connection. e.g. I connect my 840 Evo to my Mac Pro's SATA 2 port, it's boot time is almost identical to when I connect it via the Tempo SSD (SATA 3). Of course, when I moving very large files to a RAID partition, a SATA 3 connected SSD may finish the job 2 times faster than the same SATA 2 connected SSD.
 
How do I know if I have SATA 2 or 3 in the first place? Does 3 in SATA 3 stand for 3 Gb/s? If yes, then I have SATA 3 I believe.

I'm not sure if what I'll be using are big or small files. I'll be using the SSD for OSX, Logic Pro, and third party plugin libraries for Logic. I think all of these three are small files? Also I guess read speed is more important for me than write speed, as I'll be reading mostly, not writing actually.
 
3Gb/s is the SATA 2 speed, SATA 3 has 6Gb/s.

All HDD bay and optical bay in your Mac Pro only have SATA 2 port.

Don't know about Logic Pro, but for the OSX itself, you should able to take almost full benefit from a SATA 2 connected 850 Pro for normal daily operation.
 
h9826790 said:
3Gb/s is the SATA 2 speed, SATA 3 has 6Gb/s.

All HDD bay and optical bay in your Mac Pro only have SATA 2 port.

Don't know about Logic Pro, but for the OSX itself, you should able to take almost full benefit from a SATA 2 connected 850 Pro for normal daily operation.
Click to expand...

Alright, I thought I had SATA 3. :)

Hmm, I should ask some people who use Logic too then. Good to know for OSX however.
I'll try to see if I can find benchmarks for Logic with the SSD and the 850 pro maybe, or things like this. You said it's a potential loss of more than 50% of its speed if used with SATA 2, but perhaps (and hopefully) I don't need anything faster for what I'll be doing.
 
hfg said:
I apologize if I have already suggested this to you previously ...

You might try removing the SSDs from the Tempo Pro card and replace the bare card in the PCIe slot. Then perform a PRAM reset (I let it cycle for 3 chimes before releasing). Then replace the SSDs and check to see if your option-key boot-manager is again working. You could even temporarily put your boot SSD in a backplane tray and verify that the option-key reset does display the boot-manager screen. Might not hurt to even boot it fully and shut it down just for good measure before restoring the SSDs back to the Tempo Pro card.

I discovered back when mine wasn't working, that either the bare card or one with non-bootable SSDs mounted did, in fact, show the boot-manager working properly. Only when the card contained a bootable SSD did it refuse to work correctly.


Good luck...
-howard
Click to expand...
Thanks, but I still worry about the BootChamp use.
Will file this away in case I try again!
 
For bootcamp, even though you fix the boot manager, I am quite sure you still can't boot Windows from the Tempo SSD card.

However, there is absolutely no problem to boot Windows from a native SATA 2 port disregard the boot manager working or not. I'd try it in 4,1 (with normal boot manager), 5,1 (no boot manager), and 5,1 (limited boot manager option after that bare card SMC reset).
 
Hi,

I heard that there can be boot issues and such when the SSD is connected with PCIe, what is this all about? Why do so many of these PCIe SSD cards mention that they work with Yosemite and that they're "bootable"?
 
I don't know I always read that they *are* bootable, but I find it funny that this has to be mentioned at all. It suggests there can be issues!

But I'll most likely connect the SSD with a simple 2"5 adapter. The PCIe solution is more than what I'd like to spend. Then again, I haven't thought about getting such a thing second hand. (You're too far away, just saying – and I need it for only one drive)

What I don't like also is that the Mac Edition of my HD 7950 has only one fan and I'd like to keep the space clear.
 
The NewerTech is good if you would like to keep your sled.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/ADPTADRV/

However, using the OWC Mount Pro (blue sled) is the best because the SSD goes directly into the Mac Pro drive controller. The NewerTech and Icydock both connect to a adapter which then connects to the Mac Pro controller. The additional adapter may slow bandwidth as you have an extra adapter in between. It's better to go straight.

Of course, if you can spend the $100, get the Apricorn Velocity Solo x2. On the sled, you get SATA2 3GB/s. On PCIe, you will get SATA3 6GB/s (given your SSD is SATA3).
 
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