MP 1,1-5,1 How to improve disk speed for Mac Pro 5, 1

[joebclash]

I've recently started learning video editing on my Mac Pro. For larger projects it's been a painful process because I'm just using SSD drives connected to the sata 2 ports on the Mac Pro. It takes really long time to load big projects from disk. Is there any way to improve disk access speed? I was thinking about buying one of these below from ebay. The seller said the card is also bootable. Any other idea's for reasonably price solutions would be appreciated.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-DEBROG...%3Ac1b8edc815f0a88459ab2271fffe2d84%7Ciid%3A1

 

[ActionableMango]

Generally people are doing M.2 SSDs in PCIe adapters. There is a long thread about it here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...the-09-mac-pro-bootable-ngff-pcie-ssd.1685821

People have posted very high benchmarks. Other people have pointed out that real-world processes doing actual work don't typically have the same gains that synthetic benchmarks do.

You might be an exception since it sounds like your real-world process is large file sequential reads, so you might have gains similar to the benchmarks for that one scenario. But I don't know enough about it to promise anything.

 

[kohlson]

From the commenter above, take some time to read through the first page of the USB 3.x link in his signature. While I highly recommend SSDs in any form (SATA or PCIe based) you may want/need to connect your drives through a USB3 port, which ActionableMango has wonderfully cataloged. If your existing external drives are USB3, this may be an inexpensive and quick fix. SSDs are relatively inexpensive and relatively quick, and usually smaller than spinners. If you can, do both!

 

[flowrider]

I've recently started learning video editing on my Mac Pro. For larger projects it's been a painful process because I'm just using SSD drives connected to the sata 2 ports on the Mac Pro. It takes really long time to load big projects from disk. Is there any way to improve disk access speed? I was thinking about buying one of these below from ebay. The seller said the card is also bootable. Any other idea's for reasonably price solutions would be appreciated.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-DEBROGLIE-SATA-III-to-PCI-E-X1-SSD-Adapter-Card-for-MAC-PRO-10-8-10-12/152367028391?_trkparms=aid=111001&algo=REC.SEED&ao=1&asc=49451&meid=de977e5907ca41ad8a21b84e66712e7e&pid=100675&rk=4&rkt=15&sd=152784189663&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A5b5a369d-ca51-11e7-8267-74dbd18066d2%7Cparentrq%3Ac1b8edc815f0a88459ab2271fffe2d84%7Ciid%3A1

That should work. I believe the most popular PCIE card for standard form factor SSD drives is:

https://www.apricorn.com/upgrades/vel-solox2

I have one with 2 drives mounted on it.

I also have:

https://www.angelbird.com/prod/wings-px1-1117/

With a Samsung SM951 AHCI SSD mounted on it.

Lou

 

[mikas]

Behind the link it says the card is PCIe x1.
x1 makes it a theoretical max 500MBps card in Mac Pro PCIe 2.0 slot.

Wiki: PCIe speeds and versions.

There is an other one with two SATA III slots on the card, but it's the same x1 connector ≤500MBps
It is better than SATA II ≤300MBps.

I use Kingston HyperX Predator AHCI. It came with it's own PCIe adaptor and is a x4 card. It's fast and bootable. Many use 3rd party adaptor and Samsung's AHCI or NVMe cards. NVMe cards are even a little bit faster than AHCI because of newer protocol.

I too believe that the last chapter by ActionableMango is a thing to consider. You might need a PCIe card for your work. On the other, many don't need continuos transfer speeds that much. I'm happy with that speed, but I would not necessarily need it - but you might.

This bootable AHCI version of this Predator is starting to become a rarity. They might be ramping down the production of it and go for NVMe only. You need AHCI if you want a bootable drive OOTB. I don't have any experience with NVMe's yet, by they are really good for data and scratch - with no boot option tthough.

ps. I've got a OWC Accelsior S too in one of my machines. It's a x4 SATA III card. It gives me 550MBps with SATA III SSD, out of the theoretical PCIe 2.0 x4 limit =2GBps

pps. I found all this information from this forum, and I decided the best for me is AHCI PCIe x4. Thank You to all former posters about this topic!!

 

[jbarley]

Big thumbs up for the "Kingston HyperX Predator AHCI", I use one for my system boot drive in a MacPro3,1, about as good as it gets.

 

[joebclash]

That kingston drive looks interesting. Going to check to see if it's available on Amazon. Thanks.

 

[jbarley]

That kingston drive looks interesting. Going to check to see if it's available on Amazon. Thanks.

If you want "bootable" then make sure the drive you choose states "AHCI"

 

[h9826790]

I also agree that the “Kingston HyperX Predator AHCI" is the most balanced high performance storage solution on the cMP.

SM951 may be faster, but really hard to buy a reliable one with reasonable price, and no warranty at all.

PCIe SATA III card is significantly slower than the PCIe SSD.

However, if you only need data drive for video work (since you already has a SATA SSD for the OS). And you are running High Sierra. You can consider to use NVMe SSD as data drive only. They are not bootable, but easy to buy, faster and cheaper.

In fact, it’s not a bad idea to separate the working drive from your OS drive.

 

[pierrox]

In fact, it’s not a bad idea to separate the working drive from your OS drive.

Especially when you are editing videos. It puts more stress on the drive(s) holding media files as they are accessed way more than the boot drive. Which is why many editing software won't let you save files to the boot drive by default.

 

[pl1984]

Unless money is really tight or you absolutely need a bootable SSD I wouldn't consider anything that is not PCIe M.2 based. The gain SATA-III offers over SATA-II isn't worth it. Thus this recommendation eliminates the card you referenced (which, as someone else has already pointed out, is crippled providing only ~ 80% of the SATA-III theoretical speed).

PCIe M.2 based SSDs provide significantly more bandwidth than SATA based SSDs. If file load times are an issue then an M.2 based SSD will make a noticeable difference with some offering ~ 2GB/sec throughput (versus SATA-III's max 600MB/sec throughput). They currently come in two variants:

1. AHCI - More compatible but lower speed (offering around 1.2GB/sec throughput)
2. NVMe - Less compatible but higher speed (offering around 2.1GB/sec throughput)

For the Mac Pro AHCI is what I would consider the sweet spot for compatibility versus speed. There are some AHCI PCIe cards which can boot in a Mac Pro. I am not aware of any NVMe based PCIe cards which are bootable in a Mac Pro.

My recommendation is to separate the boot drive from the scratch / data drive(s). At least for the drive(s) which you'll be using for your video editing and consider an NVMe based PCIe card. If you wish to use the drive as a boot drive you're only option, that I'm aware of, is to use an AHCI based PCIe card. With a throughput of 1.2GB/sec they offer fast performance while also providing the flexibility of being bootable.

Any solution should be researched to ensure it is compatible with your model Mac Pro. This is especially true if you want it to be bootable. Others have provided specific models to help you out. I've never dealt with a PCIe M.2 solution for my Mac Pros but I do have an AHCI based PCIe M.2 HP Z Turbo drive in my Z620 system and I love it.

 

[h9826790]

Unless money is really tight or you absolutely need a bootable SSD I wouldn't consider anything that is not PCIe M.2 based. The gain SATA-III offers over SATA-II isn't worth it. Thus this recommendation eliminates the card you referenced (which, as someone else has already pointed out, is crippled providing only ~ 80% of the SATA-III theoretical speed).

PCIe M.2 based SSDs provide significantly more bandwidth than SATA based SSDs. If file load times are an issue then an M.2 based SSD will make a noticeable difference with some offering ~ 2GB/sec throughput (versus SATA-III's max 600MB/sec throughput). They currently come in two variants:

1. AHCI - More compatible but lower speed (offering around 1.2GB/sec throughput)
2. NVMe - Less compatible but higher speed (offering around 2.1GB/sec throughput)

For the Mac Pro AHCI is what I would consider the sweet spot for compatibility versus speed. There are some AHCI PCIe cards which can boot in a Mac Pro. I am not aware of any NVMe based PCIe cards which are bootable in a Mac Pro.

My recommendation is to separate the boot drive from the scratch / data drive(s). At least for the drive(s) which you'll be using for your video editing and consider an NVMe based PCIe card. If you wish to use the drive as a boot drive you're only option, that I'm aware of, is to use an AHCI based PCIe card. With a throughput of 1.2GB/sec they offer fast performance while also providing the flexibility of being bootable.

Any solution should be researched to ensure it is compatible with your model Mac Pro. This is especially true if you want it to be bootable. Others have provided specific models to help you out. I've never dealt with a PCIe M.2 solution for my Mac Pros but I do have an AHCI based PCIe M.2 HP Z Turbo drive in my Z620 system and I love it.

Use a PCIe SSD as boot drive? Why?

His current SATA II setup is more than enough for OS. The PCIe SSD is good for large file operation (e.g. video editing), but offer very little benefit for small files operation (e.g. OS).

The NVMe is not bootable on cMP is because of the firmware, not the PCIe card which is just an adaptor.

And both AHCI and NVMe offer (only) up to 1500MB/s on cMP because stuck at PCIe 2.0.

 

[pl1984]

Use a PCIe SSD as boot drive? Why?

His current SATA II setup is more than enough for OS. The PCIe SSD is good for large file operation (e.g. video editing), but offer very little benefit for small files operation (e.g. OS).

The NVMe is not bootable on cMP is because of the firmware, not the PCIe card which is just an adaptor.

And both AHCI and NVMe offer (only) up to 1500MB/s on cMP because stuck at PCIe 2.0.

He shouldn't unless he wants to combine his OS and data drive. My recommendation was for him to continue using his current SSD (even if it's on a SATA-II bus) and look into an NVMe drive as a scratch / data drive. As for the limit a PCIe 2.0 4x bus is capable of 2GB/sec theoretical bandwidth thus the recommendation for the NVMe.

 

[h9826790]

He shouldn't unless he wants to combine his OS and data drive. My recommendation was for him to continue using his current SSD (even if it's on a SATA-II bus) and look into an NVMe drive as a scratch / data drive. As for the limit a PCIe 2.0 4x bus is capable of 2GB/sec theoretical bandwidth thus the recommendation for the NVMe.

I see, it seems I misunderstood your post.

 

[pl1984]

I see, it seems I misunderstood your post.

Having gone back and re-read what I wrote I can see my recommendation wasn't very clear.