I figured I'd make this a dedicated post as to not take up space in the SSD's known to work in the G5 thread, as I have quite a bit I'd like to say! I feel pretty confident that this SSD is rock solid after a week of heavy use, installing OS's, cloning an install, transferring files over my gigabit network server, etc. and I have had 0 issues so far.
Now, what is this SSD you may ask? Well, the one I've found is the WD Blue WDC WDS250G1B0A. This is a 250GB SataIII SSD that I got off eBay for a very reasonable $20, as a sort of "why not, let's take one for the team" kinda deal. I haven't seen any mention of anyone trying one in a G5 so far, so I thought it would be worth documenting. This SSD released back in 2017(hence the "new" in the title), and uses a Marvell 88SS1074 controller. It also features DRAM cache, which is huge in the modern cheap SSD world. Transferring some files from my 2007 iMac server over gigabit ethernet, I was able to basically run the read speeds at the full speed the iMac is capable of, with speeds that peaked at 92.5MB/s! I've also included some Xbench results, for anyone interested.
I measured boot times as well: For Sorbet Leopard on an HDD, it took 33 seconds from the Apple logo to being on the desktop. On the SSD, that went down to 18 seconds. For my clean Tiger install, that speed was a breakneck 13 seconds!
Now, an important note if anyone goes to try and find one of these for themselves: They are NOT the same as the brand new WD Blue SSDs you can get today. Mine has a May 2017 manufacturing date printed right on the label.
Hopefully someone finds this post helpful, thanks for reading!
SSD Results
My factory HDD results for comparison
Now, what is this SSD you may ask? Well, the one I've found is the WD Blue WDC WDS250G1B0A. This is a 250GB SataIII SSD that I got off eBay for a very reasonable $20, as a sort of "why not, let's take one for the team" kinda deal. I haven't seen any mention of anyone trying one in a G5 so far, so I thought it would be worth documenting. This SSD released back in 2017(hence the "new" in the title), and uses a Marvell 88SS1074 controller. It also features DRAM cache, which is huge in the modern cheap SSD world. Transferring some files from my 2007 iMac server over gigabit ethernet, I was able to basically run the read speeds at the full speed the iMac is capable of, with speeds that peaked at 92.5MB/s! I've also included some Xbench results, for anyone interested.
I measured boot times as well: For Sorbet Leopard on an HDD, it took 33 seconds from the Apple logo to being on the desktop. On the SSD, that went down to 18 seconds. For my clean Tiger install, that speed was a breakneck 13 seconds!
Now, an important note if anyone goes to try and find one of these for themselves: They are NOT the same as the brand new WD Blue SSDs you can get today. Mine has a May 2017 manufacturing date printed right on the label.
Hopefully someone finds this post helpful, thanks for reading!
