Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Which SSD for a Mac Pro?
- Thread starter Ben1l
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If you have a Mac Pro with an SATA 3GBit/s controller, your best bet is the SanDisk Ultra Plus, as it might not have the top speed of the Samsung 840 Pro, but it saturates SATA 3GBit/s anyways and otherwise performs similar to the 840 Pro for small block sizes. It's also a tad less expensive than the 830.
Thanks for posting. I'm looking for a SSD drive to add to my MP1,1. I might go ahead and go with the ScanDisk.
I have been a faithful user of Samsung HDs for several years, and went with the 840 Pro SSD, paying a little more for what is generally considered one of the best SSDs. I installed it in the second optical drive and snaked a SATA cable to connect to one of the two extra ports on the motherboard of my 3,1, adding a connector to power it from the second optical bay. There are lots of sled adapters, I needed an adapter to fit the bay but had reducers for the drive sled lying around. The biggest problem was figuring out how to remove the fan asembly, but had a 90 screwdriver for that. Once installed, I transferred the O/S using Carbon Cloner, really simple and worked like a charm. Absolutely thrilled with how it works.
Having done that, I also added a second processor, I had a quad, because of how cheap the processors are. My only disappointment, ignoring that it was difficult to install because I didn't have the right tools and finding them was a pain, is that iTunes does not make use of multi-core processors. WTF.
In any event, this is why I hope Apple does not mess with the basic design of the Mac Pro. It is an elegant, upgradeable platform that is flexible and powerful. For what I paid, it blows out of the water any of the several crappy Wintel boxes I have had to buy over the years. Apple just works.
Having done that, I also added a second processor, I had a quad, because of how cheap the processors are. My only disappointment, ignoring that it was difficult to install because I didn't have the right tools and finding them was a pain, is that iTunes does not make use of multi-core processors. WTF.
In any event, this is why I hope Apple does not mess with the basic design of the Mac Pro. It is an elegant, upgradeable platform that is flexible and powerful. For what I paid, it blows out of the water any of the several crappy Wintel boxes I have had to buy over the years. Apple just works.
I have been using a Crucial M4 for over half a year. It started off in an Icy Dock in my old Early 2008 Mac Pro and is now on an Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 in my 2010 Mac Pro. It has worked wonderfully for me.
I enabled trim from terminal and also unchecked "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" in Energy Saver system preference. The reason for turning off sleep is so that the M4 can do garbage collection.
According to Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, reads and writes when it was connected to the Early 2008 Mac Pro's built in SATA2 port were about 250-270MB/s. When on the Velocity Solo, reads are about 480-500MB/s and writes are about 250-270MB/s.
I enabled trim from terminal and also unchecked "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" in Energy Saver system preference. The reason for turning off sleep is so that the M4 can do garbage collection.
According to Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, reads and writes when it was connected to the Early 2008 Mac Pro's built in SATA2 port were about 250-270MB/s. When on the Velocity Solo, reads are about 480-500MB/s and writes are about 250-270MB/s.
I am not going to disagree with you.
I've got two SSDs:
Intel X25-M G2 160GB SSD
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD
I’m not sure that this makes sense but...
I recently purchased the Samsung 840 Pro.
I was running the Intel SSD as my main drive for OS X.
But after the acquistion of the Samsung, I switched the Intel SSD over to Windows 7(Bootcamp).
The Samsung 840 Pro is now my main drive for OS X.
I can’t prove this but I think my computer started up faster with the Intel SSD than it does with the Samsung SSD.
Maybe it’s because my Mac Pro is 2008 and doesn’t make good use of Samsung’s speed? ..Or it could be that I'm just off in the head.
I've been using various OCZ drives for almost 4 years now and never had an issue. I'm the only person on the internet though. Right now the MP has an Agility 3 and the 17" has a Vertex +