Power Mac G5 Compatible 1 TB SSD

[mac57mac57]

I am looking for a 1 or 2 TB SSD that will boot in my G5 Quad. Most SSDs you can buy these days are SATA III. The Quad is SATA I. MOST SSDs will "downshift" to SATA I, but not all.

Can anyone who is using one recommend a good G5-compatible 1 or 2 TB SSD?

Thanks!

 

[ToniCH]

Do you really need a TB sized boot drive? Install OS and apps to smaller drive which you know is compatible. Then install the big drive for other stuff. That way you can utilize 2 Sata buses. Or you can even install a PCIe sata card which might be faster than the internal sata bus.

If you get the OWC Accelsior S card it supports also up to sata III drives. And if you want you can transfer your user older to it too. And also disk intensive applications.

 

[eyoungren]

I can speculate on two brands and know for a fact that one brand works in my 17" PM G4.

The brand that works is Zheino, but the problem with them is that they seem to have exited the market entirely.

Samsung EVOs have been mentioned to be working here a few times. Not sure exactly which models. And I've used Silicon Power, but that's only on my MacPro. I feel though they may work on PowerPC.

That's all I got.

 

[MarkC426]

Is this any help
There is a list of ‘known to work’ also.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/list-of-sata-ssds-known-not-to-work-in-imac-g5s-and-power-mac-g5s.2375683/

 

[Doq]

I swear by the Kingston A400 for my SATA SSDs. Technically they top out at 960GB, not 1TB, but I'd call that Close Enough.

My G5 has a 480GB unit installed (that's where Adelie Linux lives), but there's no reason why the 960GB wouldn't work.

 

[mac57mac57]

Do you really need a TB sized boot drive?

Perhaps not, but I want to partition it into TWO boot volumes, one for Sorbet Leopard and one for Tiger. That is 500 GB each.

I do also want both partitions to be big enough to hold all of the apps for each OS. This dramatically decreases app load time. Now admittedly, a 500 GB drive positioned into two 256 GB partitions would almost certainly work, but 500 GB partitions turns that "almost certainly" into "definitely".

In the end, this is not about " need", it is about " want". Yesterday I booted my G4 Sawtooth into Tiger, forgetting that it was on an SSD. It was SO fast, even on a G4! That got me thinking about doing this on my Quad. Imagine how fast THAT would be! I want that!

 

[ToniCH]

Perhaps not, but I want to partition it into TWO boot volumes, one for Sorbet Leopard and one for Tiger. That is 500 GB each.

I do also want both partitions to be big enough to hold all of the apps for each OS. This dramatically decreases app load time. Now admittedly, a 500 GB drive positioned into two 256 GB partitions would almost certainly work, but 500 GB partitions turns that "almost certainly" into "definitely".

In the end, this is not about " need", it is about " want". Yesterday I booted my G4 Sawtooth into Tiger, forgetting that it was on an SSD. It was SO fast, even on a G4! That got me thinking about doing this on my Quad. Imagine how fast THAT would be! I want that!

Ok, I understand you want speed/performance. 👍 Substitute the word I used "need" with your word "want" and re-read, then think. What I am suggesting uses 2 SATA I-buses (faster than 1) or 1 SATA I -bus and via a PCIe a SATA III-bus (even faster option). All this while avoiding possible compatibility issues making things simpler. And obviously you can partition the boot drive like you plan and apps and docs can be installed to any drive - even to that SATA III SSD connected to the 40€ PCIe card.

Imagine how fast THAT would be!

I don't need to imagine it, I know how fast it is vs the spinner and how slow it is vs for example the PCIe-option - I've tried most combos with my G5s. I am just offering options I have found good by trying them myself. Some food for thought for you while planning for upgrades.

But, all of the above is faster than the original spinner, including one big drive connected to one SATA I bus like you plan. In the end choice is of course yours.


Here are some comparisons I made earlier.

Pic 1: Spinner vs cheap mSata SSD vs expensive 1TB OWC SATA III SSD in the internal bus. Yes, much faster than the spinner but notice how the SSDs are bus restricted and basically equal (and slow vs how we think SSDs should perform).

Pic 2: same mSata SSD in internal SATA -bus, different benchmark. Compare to pic 3.
Pic 3: 1TB OWC SATA III drive in a OWC Accelsior S PCIe -card. Compare to pic 2. Notice the difference between the 2 SSDs? They were equal when connected to the internal bus (pic 1). Still not 100% of what the drive can do (in a modern machine) but totally transforms G5 disk performance for around 40€.

 

[mac57mac57]

Thanks @ToniCH! Excellent information, and presented in a compelling way. I am sold!

There are a variety of different speeds for each PCIe slot: 4x, 8x, 16x. What slot/speed was the Excelsior card in for the test that provided the output in your Figure 3?

 

[ToniCH]

Thanks @ToniCH! Excellent information, and presented in a compelling way. I am sold!

There are a variety of different speeds for each PCIe slot: 4x, 8x, 16x. What slot/speed was the Excelsior card in for the test that provided the output in your Figure 3?

I put it into the next available slot beside the GPU (with FX 4500 I suspect that would be the 8x slot?). I believe the SATA III SSDs might be PCIe -bus restricted also as I think the drive itself performed even better when plugged to more modern Mac.

What other PCIe cards do you have or plan to use? Is any of them more demanding than the GPU and/or SSD card? If not then logical installation order to fastest slots at this point is GPU, Accelsior S, anything else.

 

[mac57mac57]

Thanks again @ToniCH.

BTW, can you confirm that the combination of an Excelsior S PCIe card plus an OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD is bootable by a Power Mac G5?

 

[ToniCH]

BTW, can you confirm that the combination of an Excelsior S PCIe card plus an OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD is bootable by a Power Mac G5?

No, I cannot confirm that nor have I implied it would. I probably tried it but cannot remember, I doubt it. My suggestion was: boot drive to SATA I bus, other stuff to the SATA III drive on the card.

I can only recommend the card. I have no comments about the OWC Electra 6G. It has worked fine in my use but I remember seeing some complaints about OWC drives on line. And they are expensive (I bought mine as one component in a bigger batch or parts so I paid very little for it). Personally if I was buying a SSD drive now I would opt for some of the real SSD brands.

Ps. OWC doesn't list G5 or 10.4 or 10.5 compatible with Accelsior S but I have run it in G5 with 10.5.8 & 9 with no problems at all. So, recheck that it works with 10.4 if you need it.

 

[mac57mac57]

Thanks again @ToniCH - that puts a different light on things. I think I am back to getting a "standard" SSD and using it as a boot volume. It should be quite a bit faster than the current spinner.

I could split it as you suggest, but that is more work than I feel the result would justify.

 

[Matias_]

Do you really need a TB sized boot drive?

The Power Mac G5 only has two 2.5" drive bays which I've personally found very limiting compared to the MDD's 4 since I want to run a lot of different operating systems (and I sadly don't own any firewire disks). And there are no bootable PCIe SATA cards for the late 2005 G5 afaik.

So I can definitely understand the need for a need for a big boot drive in a G5 to divide into several smaller partitions for different operating systems

 

[JackAHyde]

I'm late on this, but I already got myself a Crucial 1TB drive off Amazon for not that much a month ago for the G5. After installing Sorbet on it and starting fresh with it, I would say it was worth it. It worked perfectly fine and I didn't notice anything amiss in terms of performance.

If anything, the only difficult part was actually taking the drive caddies out of the system. My fingers hurt just thinking about it because I was an unlucky soul who got a G5 on eBay only to have it arrive with some damage during shipping.