Need recommendation for upgrading Mac main drive. :-)

greg328 · Post by **greg328** » Sun May 17, 2015 11:25 am

Hi guys, would like your advice. My 2008 MacPro 3.1, 8-core 3.2gHz machine shipped with a 500GB main drive back in the day. Since then I've filled every internal drive bay with extra drives for sample libraries, and I also have 2 Firewire drives for additional storage. I'd like to substitute a larger main drive (boot drive) in place of the original 500GB one. It's 15GB shy of being full!

It seems one inexpensive option would be to purchase another SATA 3.5" internal drive of 2-to-4TB size and just copy it. If I choose this option, I would need advice on the best way to copy the old main drive to the new one. It seems I could simply remove one of the other internal sample drives, put the new one in and drag-drop the old main drive onto the new one. Then I would select the new one to be my boot drive, and remove the old one. Any reason this would not be a good way to copy over? Should I use CarbonCopyCloner instead to do this job? Just learning about that.

Another idea would be to upgrade further to a SSD. I hear they're blazing! Do they fit in a SATA MacPro drive bay? I see several PCI card-hosting options on Ebay, should I go that way? Again, would I just drag/drop the old main drive to the new SSD, or do I need to use CCC? Would a drag/drop copy preserve any drive authorizations my original boot drive may have? Would CCC?

I'm open to suggestions at this point. Any and all ideas welcome!

Greg Giacona
Houston TX

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Sun May 17, 2015 11:38 am

Check with Other World Computing (OWC). Don't even think about it. Get an SSD. You'll need an adapter. Keep your old drive in one of the 4 bays as a back up. I'd just clone the old one to the new. Then use the old one as your Time Machine backup. Get as big an SSD as you can afford. It's a better choice than a spinner twice its size. IMO.

greg328 · Post by **greg328** » Sun May 17, 2015 11:42 am

MLC, thanks for the quick response. So, do I need to install the SSD on a PCI card adapter? I guess I could research this myself!

When I use the old main drive as a Time Machine backup, do I need to wipe it completely beforehand? (Of course, after I copy it to the new SSD!)

I'll check out OWC, thanks for the recommendation.

Greg

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Sun May 17, 2015 12:04 pm

Deep ds on how much space is on the old drive. Since it'll be a copy, I'd wZit a few days than when you're happy the transfer went well wipe the old drive and setup the backup.

I think you need an adaptor for you drive bay. You can also use the extra optical bay if you're not already using it for something else. You can also call OWC and they'll walk you through it.

greg328 · Post by **greg328** » Sun May 17, 2015 12:18 pm

All 4 of my drive bays are full, plus I have 2 CD drives so it seems I'll have to get a PCIe adapter. I'll give OWC a call. Thanks again..

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Sun May 17, 2015 12:58 pm

4 drive bays full? How large are the drives? Can you consolidate a few into one larger drive? Newer, larger drives run cooler and, as you have seen, they aren't very expensive.

Absolutely get a 1T SSD for your boot drive.

If it's an old drive and you don't know it's in perfect health, do not clone. Install the OS onto the new drive and use Migration Assistant as Apple suggests, either from the old drive or a Time Machine backup. There are reasons that they never, ever recommend cloning.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Sun May 17, 2015 12:59 pm

OWC is great, but you'll pay more for your SSD than if you go elsewhere. Read this thread:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 26&t=59727

greg328 · Post by **greg328** » Sun May 17, 2015 1:29 pm

Mike and HC, great info, thank you. Yep, all 4 sata drive bays are occupied by large drives and they're mostly full with sample libraries. Two of them came from East West preloaded with sample libraries. Maybe the 4th one could be exchanged for a new larger one. My main issue though is my need for a much larger, main boot drive. I'll heed the above advice regarding Migration Assistant and exploring other vendors. Thanks again guys, much appreciated!
Greg

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Sun May 17, 2015 6:01 pm

A 1T PCIe blade such as this
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDPHWE2R960/
will give you the best performance, no doubt but there are other ways to go.

Notice that it has two eSATA ports. You can get eSATA docks for very little money – I paid less that $15 each for mine. Drives drop right in (with power off – these are not hot-swappable!). This one at OWC is $47 but USB2/eSATA are available for far less.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/FWU3ES2HDKU/

You can get an eSATA Controller card
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/MXPCIE6G2S2/
and put a much less expensive 1T SSD in a dock. That is exactly how I am running my iMac. I will someday install mine internally but that is difficult and expensive on an iMac.

One of the advantages of running eSATA is that, through your PCIe bus, it runs at 6G speeds instead of the 3G limit imposed by your Mac Pro's SATA.

greg328 · Post by **greg328** » Sun May 17, 2015 6:29 pm

Wow, great info, Mike! I'm going to pull the trigger next week on something, that's for sure. I'm now convinced that I want to go SSD, and it'll have to be PCIe-based. I'll check out the links you posted closely and will come back here if I have any questions. There's a MicroCenter here in Houston, they have low prices and lots of stock, I'll check them out. They have a Crucial 1TB SSD 6G SATA III for less than $400. I need to get the PCI card though as well, so, I'll see what they have. Any specific type of PCI slot required to power these drives?

Greg

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Sun May 17, 2015 8:22 pm

The Micro Center in Santa Clara closed down a couple of years ago. That's where I got the inexpensive docks.

frankf · Post by **frankf** » Mon May 18, 2015 8:14 am

In my music only MP 3,1 I use an OWC 240gb with adapter as startup. It's got plenty of space. If a had a larger boot drive, I'd partition and use the second for current DP projects. I use other SSDs for sample streaming, both internally and in OWC Voyager dock via an eSata card. The system is very fast, but I/O is 3G. I haven't found that limiting to date. Where the 3,1 lags in comparison to newer MPs is processing speed (plugs, bouncing, rendering). In the event I buy a newer MP with 6G bus, I spent a little more on OWC 6G SSDs so I can use the drives in a new machine or enclosure. If someone hasn't mentioned it, you can also put a fifth internal drive in the second SuperDrive slot.

Frank Ferrucci

chadd · Post by **chadd** » Thu May 21, 2015 3:40 pm

I also have a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 and I'm debating whether to upgrade it or not. I replaced the boot drive in 2011 with an OWC 120GB Mercury Electra 6G SSD in a drive bay adapter. At first, it made a huge improvement in boot and application launch times, but it seems to have slowed down over the years, especially after I updated to OS 10.8. A recent Blackmagic speed test showed that the SSD isn't really any faster than the 1TB Barracuda spinner I use for DP project data.

This thread over at MacRumors has me interested in using an Apple/Samsung SSUBX or SSUAX SSD from a MacBook in a PCIe adapter: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1526090 Some folks are getting 1,400 MB/S read/write speeds from that configuration in these old Mac Pros.

But the real bottleneck in my Mac Pro 3,1 seems to be the processor. As I've upgraded to newer plugins, VI's and more script-intensive Kontakt instruments, I find I'm having to endure to higher and higher buffer settings in order to keep the CPU from pegging.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Thu May 21, 2015 6:52 pm

chadd wrote:I also have a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 and I'm debating whether to upgrade it or not. I replaced the boot drive in 2011 with an OWC 120GB Mercury Electra 6G SSD in a drive bay adapter. At first, it made a huge improvement in boot and application launch times, but it seems to have slowed down over the years, especially after I updated to OS 10.8. A recent Blackmagic speed test showed that the SSD isn't really any faster than the 1TB Barracuda spinner I use for DP project data.

This thread over at MacRumors has me interested in using an Apple/Samsung SSUBX or SSUAX SSD from a MacBook in a PCIe adapter: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1526090 Some folks are getting 1,400 MB/S read/write speeds from that configuration in these old Mac Pros.

But the real bottleneck in my Mac Pro 3,1 seems to be the processor. As I've upgraded to newer plugins, VI's and more script-intensive Kontakt instruments, I find I'm having to endure to higher and higher buffer settings in order to keep the CPU from pegging.

DP has two basic sets of processes, disk and CPU -- an oversimplification, yes, but good enough. DP functions that rely on CPU performance will not be speeded up with an SSD. That you have your projects on a spinner limits the DP performance so that you will see only a little speed benefit with having an SSD for your boot drive.

Since you are not running Yosemite, you should head over to cindori.com and install Trim Enabler.app if you haven't done so already. This allows the OS to trim the drive and may speed up your boot drive performance for other applications. You need 15-30% drive space free depending on your SSD's firmware.

Trim Enabler runs on Yosemite quite well but one needs to be aware of certain issues. This thread has more complete information than the Cindori web site.
http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =4&t=59419

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Thu May 21, 2015 6:54 pm

frankf wrote:In my music only MP 3,1 I use an OWC 240gb with adapter as startup. It's got plenty of space. If a had a larger boot drive, I'd partition and use the second for current DP projects. I use other SSDs for sample streaming, both internally and in OWC Voyager dock via an eSata card. The system is very fast, but I/O is 3G. I haven't found that limiting to date. Where the 3,1 lags in comparison to newer MPs is processing speed (plugs, bouncing, rendering). In the event I buy a newer MP with 6G bus, I spent a little more on OWC 6G SSDs so I can use the drives in a new machine or enclosure. If someone hasn't mentioned it, you can also put a fifth internal drive in the second SuperDrive slot.

Frank Ferrucci

Frank, unless you are running more than one OS, there is no benefit to partitioning an SSD.

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