Need a new old MacPro

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frankf
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by frankf »

HCMarkus wrote:
I (sort of) hate to come off like an SSD evangelist,
I don't mind :). Buy as many and as big as you can afford and use for startup, streaming samples, and even recording. Not only faster booting, but DP projects and VIs load much faster.


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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by dix »

HCMarkus wrote:Not sure if you are comparing the computers or operating systems dix.
Neither exactly. I'm just trying to determine if this machine is sound before I get rid of the 2007. It seems fishy that those operations are slower, but maybe it's the difference in clock speed, RAM and OS that cause these symptoms, and not anything inherently wrong with this particular machine. …and yes, yes. An SSD is a high priority!

Thx!
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by HCMarkus »

dix wrote:
HCMarkus wrote:Not sure if you are comparing the computers or operating systems dix.
Neither exactly. I'm just trying to determine if this machine is sound before I get rid of the 2007. It seems fishy that those operations are slower, but maybe it's the difference in clock speed, RAM and OS that cause these symptoms, and not anything inherently wrong with this particular machine. …and yes, yes. An SSD is a high priority!

Thx!
My point is, unless you boot your two Macs from the same startup disk, you are comparing apples to oranges. Swap your Snow Leopard drive into your new Mac and see how it compares. And peruse the afore-mentioned Geekbench single threaded scores for the respective machines to get an idea how the per-core speed of your machines compares.

And I agree with Frank… SSD all the way. I run SSDs for boot, samples and DP data. Spinners are relegated to back up duty on my machine which, as a result, is uber responsive.
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by dix »

Swap your Snow Leopard drive into your new Mac and see how it compares. And peruse the afore-mentioned Geekbench single threaded scores for the respective machines to get an idea how the per-core speed of your machines compares.
A good idea, but for whatever reason the 2009 is no longer happy booting into 2007's drive. It was before, but not now (?) and I'm not sure I have the patience to trouble shoot just for this test. Apart from these anomalies everything seems solid so I'm probably okay. Thanks again.
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by dix »

HCMarkus wrote:Get an SSD or two if you can afford it for your boot and VI sample drives. If your HD bays are filled, you have room for one SSD or more in the optical bay. On 4,1 and 5,1 MPs the optical bay data ports are SATA.
Finally getting around to getting a SSD for my boot drive. Can I use the optical bay to boot into, or does it need to go into the #1 drive bay? If I can use the optical bay to boot into, what hardware adapter would I need (if any) Thanks!
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by dix »

Okay. I'm answering my own stupid question in case anyone else needs to know.

So according to the internet there is hardware you can buy to secure the SSD in the optical bay, but since there's no moving parts in a SSD it's safe to just set it in the optical bay. And yes (duh), you can specify in the Startup Disk Preference where the Mac should look for the boot drive.
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by mikehalloran »

dix wrote:Okay. I'm answering my own stupid question in case anyone else needs to know.

So according to the internet there is hardware you can buy to secure the SSD in the optical bay, but since there's no moving parts in a SSD it's safe to just set it in the optical bay. And yes (duh), you can specify in the Startup Disk Preference where the Mac should look for the boot drive.
If you think it might get bumped or will need to move it, Velcro with the sticky tape backing work great. A couple or three squares is all you need.

Yes, you can specify any SATA drive for startup. If you had it hooked up externally via eSATA, that works, too (even faster if your eSATA port is on a PCIe card that supports SATA 3).
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by dix »

Really? So SSDs don't get hot? Amazing! ...i know i'm late to the future.
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

No moving parts.
2013 Mac Pro 32GB RAM

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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by monkey man »

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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by dix »

Okay, I'm sold! As predicted the SSD dramtically sped everything on my OS. Boot time, app launching etc all much faster. In addition my lumbago has cleared up, I've lost weight and life in general has improved.

My next question is which drive should I move to SSD next, my project drive or my VI sample drives?

Right now I have roughly 2tb of VI samples spread over four FW and one Raptor SATA drive. If I moved most of what's on the FW drives to an internal SATA would I see better performance than having the samples on multiple FW drives. I'm certain load times would be faster, but I'm not sure about playback from multiple libraries all streaming from one drive.

It seems like the Project drive would see less of a bump where I believe read/write speed is lees of an issue, but I might be wrong.

Thanks!
monkey man wrote:Yeah, like me, Magilla.
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by James Steele »

mikehalloran wrote:
dix wrote:Okay. I'm answering my own stupid question in case anyone else needs to know.

So according to the internet there is hardware you can buy to secure the SSD in the optical bay, but since there's no moving parts in a SSD it's safe to just set it in the optical bay. And yes (duh), you can specify in the Startup Disk Preference where the Mac should look for the boot drive.
If you think it might get bumped or will need to move it, Velcro with the sticky tape backing work great. A couple or three squares is all you need.
What Mike said. I simply moved my optical drive to the lower bay, and then used it as a shelf for my Samsung 840EVO. The Samsung is light enough that I used a couple strips of velcro tape to hold it down. Short of me picking up the MacPro and giving it a really good shaking, it's not going to come loose.
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by HCMarkus »

dix wrote:My next question is which drive should I move to SSD next, my project drive or my VI sample drives?
I am intrigued by the idea of using a Fusion Drive in situations where budget is an issue. I am running a Fusion Drive (SSD and HD joined into one Fusion Drive, as supported under ML and later OSX) on my laptop and it seems to be working nicely. However, my studio Mac is all SSD already, so no need there.

If someone wants to give it a go, a Fusion Drive might be very effective for VI sample and/or project storage, in that the samples/audio files being used at any given time should theoretically be moved to the SSD and quickly accessible.

I would advise the Fusion Drive Pioneer do two things:

1. Use Trim; the SSD in a Fusion Drive is maintained by the OS in a nearly full state and necessarily being written to and erased constantly.
2. Back Up... if either part of the Fusion Drive (the SSD or HD) dies, so does your data.
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by dix »

However, my studio Mac is all SSD already, so no need there.
That's where I'm trying to get to. Do you use VIs HC? Any thoughts re my Multiple FW drives vs One SSD question?
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Re: Need a new old MacPro

Post by HCMarkus »

dix wrote:
However, my studio Mac is all SSD already, so no need there.
That's where I'm trying to get to. Do you use VIs HC? Any thoughts re my Multiple FW drives vs One SSD question?
I guess I misunderstood… if you can fit all your VI sample data on a single SSD, it will still probably be faster than several FW-connected spinners, especially if connected via SATA3. That said, SSDs excel at random access, because access time is so much faster. I haven't researched whether streaming rate or access speed is the limiting factor in VI use.

I have my VI data (Kontakt/Ivory/Stylus/Omnisphere/BFD) spread across multiple 120 and 240 GB SSDs, some connected via SATA2 and some via SATA3. I don't do huge virtual orchestra stuff, but the days of Ivory "Slow Disc" messages are long gone.
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