SSD for Boot Drive...?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I have to check and make sure my machine can handle a 5th drive but that would be totally awesome! Thanks.

[cbergm7210]

I have to chaco and make sure my machine can handle a 5th drive but that would be totally awesome! Thanks.

If you have an open PCIe slot you're golden. I actually yanked my dedicated firewire card that was being used for Liquid Mix (which I purposefully abandoned a year ago) to free up a slot.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Chaco? What was my spell checker thinking... ok, here's the scoop.

On a 2008 MP (which is what i have) if the SSD card is inserted into the extended PCIe slot next to the graphics card, you get the full throughput of the SSD as well as that same throughput for the two eSATA ports.

OTOH, if you place it in ANY OTHER PCIe slot on the machine, the throughput drops to below SATA (so don't do that!)

2008 Mac Pro
These models have two x16 PCIe 2.0 slots, which enable Acceslsior to deliver full throughput up to 688MB/s. Installing Accelsior_E2 into one of the two x4 PCIe 1.0 slots will result in Accelsior_E2 being addressed as a gen one, one-lane card with performance limited to real world 190-200MB/s data rates.

Still, a $1,000 is a lot of clams for a drive but the other drives do seem like distinct possibilities now. Thanks again for the info, guys. Here's the OWC item:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe ... lsior/RAID

[cbergm7210]

Chaco? What was my spell checker thinking... ok, here's the scoop.

On a 2008 MP (which is what i have) if the SSD card is inserted into the extended PCIe slot next to the graphics card, you get the full throughput of the SSD as well as that same throughput for the two eSATA ports.

OTOH, if you place it in ANY OTHER PCIe slot on the machine, the throughput drops to below SATA (so don't do that!)

2008 Mac Pro
These models have two x16 PCIe 2.0 slots, which enable Acceslsior to deliver full throughput up to 688MB/s. Installing Accelsior_E2 into one of the two x4 PCIe 1.0 slots will result in Accelsior_E2 being addressed as a gen one, one-lane card with performance limited to real world 190-200MB/s data rates.

Still, a $1,000 is a lot of clams for a drive but the other drives do seem like distinct possibilities now. Thanks again for the info, guys. Here's the OWC item:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe ... lsior/RAID

Lots of good options for sure. I was going to do the PCIe for my VI's then swap out my SATA boot drive for an SSD as well, but my late 2009 MP would have maxed out at the 3G SSD for the boot drive, which is not just a little slower than the Mercury Accelsior_PCIe option. So I went ahead and sprang for max speed and put everything on the PCIe super car. In for a dime...

[jloeb]

There's another option that gets you essentially the same or better speed for half the price per gb:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossd.html
and
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossdpro.html

These get you 6Gb/sec, full speed of the drives and when configured as raid up to 960mb/sec.

I suspect for our (multitrack, vi) purposes, JBOD will do anyway, and the Sonnet tech guys said if that's your choice the small card is all you need.

[ghobish]

Just a heads up, I installed the 960GB card in a 2009 MacPro 4,1 and it was great as far as spped went but it was not long before it developed a problem that prevented booting from the card. It's been returned to OWC for warranty replacement; we will see what we will see.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

FWIW (and you probably know this) but in my 2008 MP I was told that the card had to be in the skit next to the graphics card to have the specified performance. Maybe not true in the later MPs. Then again, at least worth mentioning.

Stay dry this week.

[ghobish]

FWIW (and you probably know this) but in my 2008 MP I was told that the card had to be in the skit next to the graphics card to have the specified performance. Maybe not true in the later MPs. Then again, at least worth mentioning.

Stay dry this week.

I think that's where I had it. Plus it worked fine for a month or so. I also had a 480gb standard SATA-3 SSD of theirs completely die (stopped showing up on the bus) after a few months (a different client). Fortunately I had redundant backups in both cases. But I'm a bit skittish on relying on SSDs at the moment. We'll see how the replacements play out.

[tonomud]

FWIW (and you probably know this) but in my 2008 MP I was told that the card had to be in the skit next to the graphics card to have the specified performance. Maybe not true in the later MPs. Then again, at least worth mentioning.

Stay dry this week.

I think that's where I had it. Plus it worked fine for a month or so. I also had a 480gb standard SATA-3 SSD of theirs completely die (stopped showing up on the bus) after a few months (a different client). Fortunately I had redundant backups in both cases. But I'm a bit skittish on relying on SSDs at the moment. We'll see how the replacements play out.

I've had 2 OWC SSD's die on me in the past...so I decided to try a couple other trusted brands, and I've not had any issues since. Not sure if I just got unlucky with the OWC ones, or whether I was on the 'bleeding edge' of tech, but between that and a couple of other sour experiences with OWC gear flaking out on me, I'm starting to see past the "OWC quality" marketing machine, and looking to other brands when I can. For SSD's, I've had a very good track record with Intel, Samsung and Sandisk, though I'll probably stick with Intel in the future due to their 5-year warranties (vs the normal 3 yr). When they work, SSDs are just about the best upgrade that you can put in a computer in terms of the before/after feel. Just make sure to have a reliable system in place to backup your data...

[cbergm7210]

FWIW (and you probably know this) but in my 2008 MP I was told that the card had to be in the skit next to the graphics card to have the specified performance. Maybe not true in the later MPs. Then again, at least worth mentioning.

Stay dry this week.

I think that's where I had it. Plus it worked fine for a month or so. I also had a 480gb standard SATA-3 SSD of theirs completely die (stopped showing up on the bus) after a few months (a different client). Fortunately I had redundant backups in both cases. But I'm a bit skittish on relying on SSDs at the moment. We'll see how the replacements play out.

I've had 2 OWC SSD's die on me in the past...so I decided to try a couple other trusted brands, and I've not had any issues since. Not sure if I just got unlucky with the OWC ones, or whether I was on the 'bleeding edge' of tech, but between that and a couple of other sour experiences with OWC gear flaking out on me, I'm starting to see past the "OWC quality" marketing machine, and looking to other brands when I can. For SSD's, I've had a very good track record with Intel, Samsung and Sandisk, though I'll probably stick with Intel in the future due to their 5-year warranties (vs the normal 3 yr). When they work, SSDs are just about the best upgrade that you can put in a computer in terms of the before/after feel. Just make sure to have a reliable system in place to backup your data...

Kinda scary stuff. If it wasn't for the owner of LASS and his cronies recommending this particular OWC product I'd have looked elsewhere.

[frankf]

3 OWC SSDs fine here, including 1 boot, 2 samples.

[bralston]

Kinda scary stuff. If it wasn't for the owner of LASS and his cronies recommending this particular OWC product I'd have looked elsewhere.

Now…that is not a very nice thing to say. Andrew and his Audiobro team are probably amongst the most ethical, technically talented and upstanding people I know in Los Angeles.

[cbergm7210]

Kinda scary stuff. If it wasn't for the owner of LASS and his cronies recommending this particular OWC product I'd have looked elsewhere.

Now…that is not a very nice thing to say. Andrew and his Audiobro team are probably amongst the most ethical, technically talented and upstanding people I know in Los Angeles.

Please excuse my miscommunication, brother. This was in no way derogatory toward Andrew. Indeed, because of my respect for the LASS team I purchased the drives and will continue to do so regardless of failure reports from folks on this forum regarding OWC drives.

[Bennie Sims]

I finally was able to install the Crucial SSD M500 on my Mac pro!! Took forever for the Mac to recognize the hard drive no matter how much support I got from Crucial Tech support. Quite the process, but through true diligence and research I figured it out!! Now that it is working I absolutely love the feel of this new computer. That's what it feels like a new computer!! When I get the money I plan on changing all my drives!!!

[frankf]

I finally was able to install the Crucial SSD M500 on my Mac pro!! Took forever for the Mac to recognize the hard drive no matter how much support I got from Crucial Tech support. Quite the process, but through true diligence and research I figured it out!! Now that it is working I absolutely love the feel of this new computer. That's what it feels like a new computer!! When I get the money I plan on changing all my drives!!!

Care to share your solution?


Frank Ferrucci