Mac Pro 5,1 Mid 2010 - SSD - Crucial say no!

[Ironmalk]

Guys can anyone help,

Apologise if this is an inappropriate or incorrect post. I am looking for a 512gb ssd for my Mid 2010 8 Core Mac Pro 5,1. Crucial say that none of their SSD's are compatible which quite surprised me.

Could anyone offer any suggestions. I will be using it as a boot drive for music production eg logic pro etc. My budget is around £400 ($620)

I would be most grateful

many thanks

Ironmalk

 

[silvercircle]

I have this one in my Mac Pro 5,1 6 core:
http://www.corsair.com/en/ssd/force...40gb-sata-3-6gbps-solid-state-hard-drive.html
Works fine, there is also a 480Gb version.
Trim support with Trim Enabler http://www.groths.org/?p=308

 

[Ironmalk]

thank you buddy,

i know we both have 5,1 mid 2010 so it dont matter that im 8 and you're 6 core?

 

[silvercircle]

thank you buddy,

i know we both have 5,1 mid 2010 so it dont matter that im 8 and you're 6 core?

I can't see why this would make a difference.
BTW: Corsair is cheep and when I was looking for SSD I could not find any reviews on the net about using this in a Mac Pro.

But for me it is running just fine, no problem at all.
I first got a OWC Mercury Electra 6G but it only lasted 5 minutes. Could not even boot once from it.
It would have cost me a lot to return it, pay the shipping costs and taxes again since I'm from Europe.

 

[Cindori]

When a manufacturar says "Not compatible" in regards to Mac, it 80% of the time means "It works but we do not have a dedicated engineer for that platform so we are unable to provide support and will simply call it incompatible"

 

[scott.n]

The supposed incompatibility is probably in reference to the Mac Pro not having any 2.5" drive bays and/or not having any SATA III connections.

If you have an adapter and are satisfied with SATA II speeds, I bet the Crucial drive will work fine.

 

[Ironmalk]

ahh right, thanks guys

@scott.n - i suppose having sata 2 speeds is still worth the upgrade from a standard hdd with regards to app startups and boot times etc?

 

[silvercircle]

The supposed incompatibility is probably in reference to the Mac Pro not having any 2.5" drive bays and/or not having any SATA III connections.

If you have an adapter and are satisfied with SATA II speeds, I bet the Crucial drive will work fine.

I used this drive sled http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MMP35T25/
Speed is 3 gigabit.
Why would it be SATA II speeds?

----------

ahh right, thanks guys

@scott.n - i suppose having sata 2 speeds is still worth the upgrade from a standard hdd with regards to app startups and boot times etc?

It flies my friend Booting, starting an application.

 

[Ironmalk]

lovely - thank you for your help - guess I be makin a little purchase tomorrow

 

[tobiasvdp]

another possibility to get rid of the sata2 speed problem would be a raid 0 of two ssds... in my mac pro 2008, two 128gb samsung 830 work fine in raid 0, speed is about twice as high as the sata2 limit (approx 480 to 500 mb/sec)

and: there are bootable pci sata3 cards out there, for instance this here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/SSD-Upgrade...620?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e6e198afc

 

[Small White Car]

Speed is 3 gigabit.
Why would it be SATA II speeds?

SATA II is 3 Gigabit which is what the Mac Pro has, so what you're getting is exactly right.

SATA III is 6 Gigabit.

 

[Ironmalk]

ooh quite interested in that pci upgrade kit - not too expensive either - and i guess technically where the pci ssd kit is situated i could have 5 hard drives in my mac pro

 

[deconstruct60]

When a manufacturar says "Not compatible" in regards to Mac, it 80% of the time means "It works but we do not have a dedicated engineer for that platform so we are unable to provide support and will simply call it incompatible"

In the context of users calling the vendor to ask the nuanced differenced between "unsupported and/or uncertified" and "not compatible' isn't particularly significant. You can bet that in the vast majority of cases if something goes wrong that customer will be wailing about how Crucial "fooled them" into buying the drive.

"Not compatible" also is literally true if you look at the Curcial drive and its supporting software (firmware updater , administration software) in a holistic perspective. Given Crucial has issued what, 4-7 firmware upgrades for their m4 drives. if you don't have an updater, pragmatically it is incompatible.

If the caller presented to them as "I have a Windows clone PC box with a DVD drive is it compatible?" they'd say yes. Running bootcamp/Windows it is supported.

"Trim enabler" is not supported solution by Apple or Crucial.

I think several of the SSD drive vendors are behind the times with these DOS firmware updaters that are oriented to bootable internal DVDs.

 

[silvercircle]

SATA II is 3 Gigabit which is what the Mac Pro has, so what you're getting is exactly right.

SATA III is 6 Gigabit.

Ok, that is right but I thought you meant that you would not get the full speed a a Mac Pro was capable of. My wrong :-(

 

[Ironmalk]

so at the risk of this already being answered then I need to ask -

1. If I buy a pci sata 3 controller would I get full sata 3 speeds in my mac pro?

and..

2. With the ssd plugged into the sata 3 controller does it matter which ssd I buy or do I still need to be wary about compatibility.

I was thinking along the lines of a 480 GB Intel 520

Many thanks for all your input guys

 

[Loa]

so at the risk of this already being answered then I need to ask -

1. If I buy a pci sata 3 controller would I get full sata 3 speeds in my mac pro?

Yes.

2. With the ssd plugged into the sata 3 controller does it matter which ssd I buy or do I still need to be wary about compatibility.

To my knowledge there isn't a single HD or SSD that is outright incompatible with Mac Pros.

Loa

 

[derbothaus]

so at the risk of this already being answered then I need to ask -

1. If I buy a pci sata 3 controller would I get full sata 3 speeds in my mac pro?

and..

2. With the ssd plugged into the sata 3 controller does it matter which ssd I buy or do I still need to be wary about compatibility.

I was thinking along the lines of a 480 GB Intel 520

Many thanks for all your input guys

1. You need a card with at least 4x PCI. Most cheapo cards are 1x and can barely hit SATA 3GB speed. Watch out. If it costs under 50.00 it probably is not real 6G speeds. Also make sure if you need it bootable that it can do this and that the drivers are mature.

2. SSD's brands don't matter.

 

[Ironmalk]

thanks for that derbs I was gonna dive in and get el cheapo pci card - will look into it, phew - dodged a bullet there

 

[DanielCoffey]

If you are buying a SATA III card, you need to make sure it is bootable in OSX. Not all are and it can be tricky to find out.

If you are looking for minimum fuss, you could always get an OCZ Vertex2 drive. They are one of the older OCZ drives but they come in 3.5" format as well as the smaller 2.5", are SATA II and are pretty nippy for their generation. If they are cost effective compared to the newer, faster drives then it may be worth your while looking at one.

 

[Loa]

1. You need a card with at least 4x PCI. Most cheapo cards are 1x and can barely hit SATA 3GB speed.

Are you sure you're not mixing 1X lane with PCIe 1?

A 1X PCIe 2.0 card can reach 500MB/s, which is way better than SATA2 (3G), and will even accommodate most SATA3 (6G) SSDs.

Loa

 

[BlueBubba]

I spoke to Crucial about compatibility, the only thing they mentioned was that the Sled wasn't compatible with Mac Pro's, which can be solved with an Icy Dock Sled.

 

[derbothaus]

Are you sure you're not mixing 1X lane with PCIe 1?

A 1X PCIe 2.0 card can reach 500MB/s, which is way better than SATA2 (3G), and will even accommodate most SATA3 (6G) SSDs.

Loa

Yes. Not mixing. I have never ever seen a 1x lane card get anywhere near the theoretical. 350MB/s - 400 the best I have seen r/w. I have not seen all available models but the silicon chipsets can't get 500. Users opt for Atto and Areca cards for these reasons. Better than 3G yes. But couple that with driver issues and upgrade problems and it may not be worth it for main boot disk. I have a cheapo 1x lane card but I don't boot off it. I use it for eSATA.

 

[Ironmalk]

thanks for all your help guys.

I ordered my samsung 256gb 830 series this morning and also got me a multi mount from OWC to stick the ssd in the spare dvd bay.

thanks again guys

 

[ibarnett]

Sorry, it looks like I'm too late.
However I'm running a Crucial 512 on myMid 2010 4 Core Mac Pro 5,1.
Works perfectly, great price at the moment.

 

[Melbourne Park]

Sorry, it looks like I'm too late.
However I'm running a Crucial 512 on myMid 2010 4 Core Mac Pro 5,1.
Works perfectly, great price at the moment.

I just bought a 520 Intel 240GB. We've had an Intel 320 60GB as the boot drive for the games machine, and its been bulletproof. The 5 year warranty meant something to me. I guess the lack of capacity is related to how it handles file/performance management. Its also said to be fast.

I've also bought a PCI card, but have not figured out what power cable I need, and where to get the power from, for the SSD. The PCI card cost $26, and the web site and box says its OS X 10.5 upwards compatible. I intend putting the SSD into a drive bay, and then connecting it to power hopefully from the motherboard - or perhaps the drive bays port. And connecting the SSD to the card via a cable. Later, I probably will get a RAID PCI card, and thereby increase the capacity, simply by adding more SSDs.

The 5 year warranty make me feel better about that strategy.

Right now, I still have to superduper an OS onto the SSD drive, which is currently attached via the spare DVD drive bay. The only marginally difficult thing about popping that in there, was removing and replacing the alloy cage that supports the DVD player.