Suggestions for setting up 2 SSDs and Velocity Solo X2

Dear Mac Pro gurus,

For my Mac Pro 2010 Hexacore, I recently acquired two (different) SSDs: a Crucial M4 256GB and a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB ... as well as an Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 PCIe card. (Why 2 different SSDs? ... no good answer, but it's what I have).

I use my MP mainly for high def video editing and related graphics and animation production using Adobe CS 6 (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Flash, PhotoShop, etc.). The MP has 24GB of RAM, a pair of 1TB Caviar Blacks in RAID0 for large video files, a 3TB Time Machine drive, and a 2TB for additional storage (e.g. recently completed projects or other archives). I currently have a 128GB OWC SSD in the extra optical bay for startup and apps, and smaller files related to current projects.

Currently running OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

Here's my plan:
1) Use one 256GB ssd (the Crucial M4) in the optical bay as the startup and apps drive.
2) Use the other 256GB ssd (the Samsung 840 Pro) in the X2 card for current project files ... including renders and scratch disk needs, which are significant for Premiere Pro and other CS apps.

Questions:
1) Does that make sense given my uses, or would it be better to swap things around (e.g. flipping the Samsung and Crucial?)
2) Should I enable TRIM support on either/both drive?
3) Will I get any better performance upgrading the OS to Mountain Lion? (I'm perfectly happy with Snow Leopard but open to suggestions).

Many thanks,
Dan

hfg said:

The disk on the Solo X2 card will run at SATA-III speeds (if the SSD is also SATA-III). If your optical bay mounted one is connected to one of the Mac Pro SATA-II ports, it will not have the same performance.

I would get a long SATA cable and run it from the optical bay mounted drive (still getting power there) down to the second SATA-III port on the Solo X2 card so both drives will run at SATA-III speeds. Since you aren't trying for RAID-0 here, you should have no PCIe bus saturation issues.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll try that.