A couple tricks and fastest options for SSDs out now.

[Michael Canavan]

Since I haven't been able to afford to upgrade my hard drives to SSDs in my Mac Pro I've done a lot of reading on it. Thought some of you might get some use out of it.

First off, the hard drive bays in the Mac Pro run at SATA 3, this is half the speed of SATA 6 and effectively cuts the speed of an SSD that can read at 550mbs to about 300mbs. If you have a later SATA 6 SSD that can read at 400-600mbs buying a PCIe SSD adaptor will speed up your drives; PCIe runs at the system bus speed of around 6Gps. They go for less than $100, usually around $30.

There are new SSD types on the market, OEM sales for the most part but a few companies offer them to us regular users. The M.2 PCIe format breaks the SATA 6 bottleneck of around 600mbs and companies like RAM City are claiming speeds of over 1000mbs for Mac pros!
So roughly 3 times faster than using an SSD in a hard drive slot.
Scroll to the bottom of this page where the comparisons are.
https://www.ramcity.com.au/buy/samsung- ... HCGL-00000

To top that off, there is a new type of M.2 on the market available from a US based company that goes to around 1600mbs! Most older Mac Pros have a 6Gps bus that can handle this sort of thing, so if you're using an SSD on a hard drive bay and go to this latest model, it's possible you will be seeing speeds of up to 5 times faster than what you get now. Here are the links on this new SSD:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8236/sams ... me-support


http://forums.evga.com/Samsung-SM951-Av ... 61684.aspx

Looking like it's seriously out of stock, but the specs are pretty insane.

[HCMarkus]

Great stuff Mr. Canavan. Along with CPU and GPU upgrades another way in which owners of older Mac Pros can make their cheese graters every "bit" as fast as a 6,1. Downside is cost is considerably higher than "old-school" SATA SSDs which, even if connected to the MP's SATA2 ports, leave older-school spinning HDs in the dust!

Having bought a bunch of SATA SSDs over the last several years, and being very happy with the performance I"m getting, PCIe SSD is gonna' have to wait for me. But for those seeking the ultimate performance in older MPs, PCIe SSDs are definitely worth a look. And for those with newer Thunderbolt-equpped Macs, there are external TB-PCIe enclosures that will deliver these blazing speeds.

Barefeats.com is another great resource for the interested. There is also a lot of GPU upgrade and comparative Mac testing there.

[Michael Canavan]

HCMarkus, I don't think I was clear enough? Getting a PCIe adaptor for your regular SSD will increase the speed if the SSD is faster than 300mbs! You can pick one up for roughly $40! http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemn ... 1JM1194254

the hard drive bays, including the optical drive slot are bottle necked at SATA 3G or 300mbs

[HCMarkus]

HCMarkus, I don't think I was clear enough? Getting a PCIe adaptor for your regular SSD will increase the speed if the SSD is faster than 300mbs! You can pick one up for roughly $40! http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemn ... 1JM1194254

the hard drive bays, including the optical drive slot are bottle necked at SATA 3G or 300mbs

Thanks Mike... I understand, and I have a SATA3 PCIe card in my MP with two SSDs attached to it. But I have other SSDs connected via SATA2, and they still blaze!

It seems that for system drives, SATA2 performa just about as well as SATA3, as the reads and writes are very small and limited by the SSD's internal speed. As I understand things, for fast streaming data, like 4k video, the extra speed offered by SATA3 becomes more important.

[Gravity Jim]

HC is correct. Even with the buss limitation of SATA, the performance improvement over 7200rpm HDDs is astonishing, and is more than fast enough for audio.

[HCMarkus]

PS: http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-Express-S ... 564bcb4721

If you are Jonesing for SATA3 on the cheap, the above may be right up your alley. The ASM1061 chip this card (and many others) use is a single-lane controller, so max speed for is a tad shy of full SATA3, and if you connect two drives, the combined speed won't be any greater, but we're talking $14.00, with free shipping. Same card direct from China is about $10.00.

Mac Bootable. Just sayin'.

[mikehalloran]

HC is correct. Even with the buss limitation of SATA, the performance improvement over 7200rpm HDDs is astonishing, and is more than fast enough for audio.

My iMac is limited to SATA-2 and my SSD is connected via eSATA. Astonishing is barely adequate.

The other day I tried bounce to disk for the first time since moving my system and DP to my SSD. I was also converting to mp3 which takes a bit longer. The first time I tried it, the window blinked out as soon as I clicked start ... so I tried it again... Cursing, I went through the settings to see what I was doing wrong. The third time, I finally checked the Bounces Folder to see it completed perfectly all three times.

Damn!

[Michael Canavan]

PS: http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-Express-S ... 564bcb4721

If you are Jonesing for SATA3 on the cheap, the above may be right up your alley. The ASM1061 chip this card (and many others) use is a single-lane controller, so max speed for is a tad shy of full SATA3, and if you connect two drives, the combined speed won't be any greater, but we're talking $14.00, with free shipping. Same card direct from China is about $10.00.

Mac Bootable. Just sayin'.

I wouldn't go that route. eSATA is pretty good, but it adds a layer of chips etc. to the equation, and it is slower than your system bus which PCIe accesses, much easier and faster connection to just use the PCIe card IMO. Good idea for your external HDs though, eSATA is faster than FW800 even.

[HCMarkus]

PS: http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-Express-S ... 564bcb4721

If you are Jonesing for SATA3 on the cheap, the above may be right up your alley. The ASM1061 chip this card (and many others) use is a single-lane controller, so max speed for is a tad shy of full SATA3, and if you connect two drives, the combined speed won't be any greater, but we're talking $14.00, with free shipping. Same card direct from China is about $10.00.

Mac Bootable. Just sayin'.

I wouldn't go that route. eSATA is pretty good, but it adds a layer of chips etc. to the equation, and it is slower than your system bus which PCIe accesses, much easier and faster connection to just use the PCIe card IMO. Good idea for your external HDs though, eSATA is faster than FW800 even.

MIke, the linked card is a PCIe card, and provides either internal or e-SATA via jumpers. For a long time, I had one set up with one internal SATA and one eSATA port enabled. No difference in speed either way. It is very possible the card you referred to in an earlier post uses the same ASMedia SATA controller chip; I couldn't tell, 'cause the link just took me to NewEgg.

BTW, you could run eSATA from any port with the correct conversion cables; from a speed perspective, it's simply an external SATA connection. eSATA cables do have more robust connectors and better shielding to prevent RF interference.

[Michael Canavan]

MIke, the linked card is a PCIe card, and provides either internal or e-SATA via jumpers. For a long time, I had one set up with one internal SATA and one eSATA port enabled. No difference in speed either way. It is very possible the card you referred to in an earlier post uses the same ASMedia SATA controller chip; I couldn't tell, 'cause the link just took me to NewEgg.

Sure, my point was that you bypass SATA with a PCIe card that hooks into the system bus. SATA maxes out at 300mbs or so on Mac Pros. The PCIe bus hooks into your internal system bus which has a theoretical speed of 6Gs. So, with a modern SSD that hits between 450-600mbs you're getting a better bang for your buck to not use a SATA connection on your PCIe slot.

Basically Mac Pros do just fine with SATA 3Gs or SATA revision 2.0 if you're using regular hard drives on the HD bays, and SATA etc. but SSD's that aren't really old are bottle necked by the SATA connection in Mac Pros. eSATA runs at revision 2.0 or 300mbs. Most SSDs run at 450 or 550mbs.

To get a hang of this look at the mbs chart on the SATA wiki here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA ... 6_Gbit.2Fs

Sure this is 'splitting hairs', but add up loading large libraries in Kontact etc. and it matters a bit, if it's not prohibitively expensive to do.

On a side note, it would be interesting to find out if there are any discount 'SSD from a few years ago' retailers that sell older models that clock in at 300mbs or so to fill HD bays in Mac Pros.

[mikehalloran]

On a side note, it would be interesting to find out if there are any discount 'SSD from a few years ago' retailers that sell older models that clock in at 300mbs or so to fill HD bays in Mac Pros.

False economy now that the Crucial M500 from OWC is $335 for 960G and $189 for 480G.

Last week, these include the spacer/adapter that lets them install in 3.5mm HD slots. Those may be extra now. I'd certainly call and ask.

http://eshop.macsales.com/search/crucial+m500

[philbrown]

Here's what a google search turned up this morning.
Any opinions on any of these?
I have 2 1TB SSD's, one in a drive bay I'm (slowly) setting up as a new boot drive and one I haven't hooked up yet for projects and data.

http://www.siig.com/it-products/control ... -pcie.html

http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Velocity ... B0090IA3GY

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 1JM0YR5025

This one can hold 2 drives. Are there tradeoffs besides price?
Since I have 2 drives, this would be nice if it didn't cause some bottleneck.
Also I can only spare 1 PCIe slot at present.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet+T ... SATA6SSDE/

[HCMarkus]

This thread has a lot of discussion about the Apricorn products:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread. ... 573&page=3

If you can mount your drives and get power from the optical bay (you'll need a power splitter and longer SATA cables to do this), you can go cheap with the ASM-chipped card I linked to in an earlier post. It supports one or two drives on SATAIII, but is a 1x card, so will only approach full SATAII speeds (per port) when reading from a single drive at a time.

[philbrown]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears after reading that the ones that hold 2 drives are bottlenecked by one PCIe port, BUT if one is a boot drive and other a data drive (DP projects etc) I wonder how much that bottleneck would matter in actual practice?

I don't run any sample-heavy projects but I do work with long files and long (over an hour) bounces a lot, so if I had one drive as a boot drive and one for data (one PCIe and one in a drive bay) do you guys have any opinions on what would be optimum? In that scenario at least one could run close to full speed.
OR I could get one of the 2XSSD cards and mount both. I don't understand the power cable situation though and it's not explained very well on the web sites in question.

I appreciate the input very much. I've done quite a bit of research but you guys have a better handle on this technical stuff than I do.

[HCMarkus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears after reading that the ones that hold 2 drives are bottlenecked by one PCIe port, BUT if one is a boot drive and other a data drive (DP projects etc) I wonder how much that bottleneck would matter in actual practice?

I don't run any sample-heavy projects but I do work with long files and long (over an hour) bounces a lot, so if I had one drive as a boot drive and one for data (one PCIe and one in a drive bay) do you guys have any opinions on what would be optimum? In that scenario at least one could run close to full speed.
OR I could get one of the 2XSSD cards and mount both. I don't understand the power cable situation though and it's not explained very well on the web sites in question.

I appreciate the input very much. I've done quite a bit of research but you guys have a better handle on this technical stuff than I do.

Phil, your Mac Pro's PCIe can be much faster than SATAIII; it depends on the number of lanes the SATA controller chip on the SATA card uses. Basically, one SATAIII port operating at max speed takes about one lane's worth of bandwidth, so a card like with two SATA ports using the ASM chip (which uses only a single lane - 1x) maxes out before a card using a 2x chip would.

You can get into the specs by running tests and benchmarking, but real-world, you would probably only notice the difference when copying large files from drive to drive. Even running SSDs on SATAII (like your Mac's internal SATA ports) may not perceptibly slow down your SSD speed, especially in a boot drive application, which involves many small reads and writes.

It is really the fantastic access time that SSDs offer that (no physical heads to move around) that makes SSDs so brilliant.