Rip Those Macs Open

[happyhacking]

Wrong

Of course via SATA... Thunderbolt will be much slower...

and... dont forget to check the trim functionality, especially when apple (ML) enables it only for apple ssd drives

Wrong ! Thunderbolt its the deal and much faster !!


eSATA (SATA 300) 3 Gbit/s 300 MB/s
eSATA (SATA 600) 6 Gbit/s 600 MB/s
Thunderbolt 10 Gbit/s × 2 1,250 MB/s × 2

 

[hfg]

I just ordered a Seagate Thunderbolt STAE128 adapter and a Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD. What will be faster: SSD via Thunderbolt connected or via SATA? First I will try via Thunderbolt.

You may wish to search around on these threads for a long thread about the Seagate Thunderbolt portable bus-powered adapter and larger SSD problems. Several users have experienced dropouts when attaching 512GB SSDs to the Thunderbolt adapter and are suspicious about the power available from the adapter.

I had been using a Crucial M4 512GB SSD on the Seagate connected to a iMac without issue. However, when I connected the same Seagate/M4 512GB SSD to my late 2011 Macbook Pro, it suddenly died and I was unable to revive the SSD and figured it simply died. Several days later I removed a different M4 512 from the MBPro as part of an upgrade, and put it on the TB adapter to migrate my data to the newly installed drive. Once again, it started the data transfer and then died ... also unable to be revived.

So, I "bricked" 2 of the Crucial M4 512GB SSDs on the Seagate adapter. I have 2 of these TB adapters and use them without issue with hard disks and 256GB SSDs, just not the 512GB ones.

As to your question: The direct SATA connection will be somewhat faster than SATA via. Thunderbolt. But the Seagate TB adapter does quite well speed wise with SSD data transfers.


-howard

 

[happyhacking]

Apple iMac 27" Late 2012 i7, 32GB RAM CL9 LV, GTX 680MX, RAID 0

Hi, guys, finally i completed my configuration for my

Apple iMac 27" Late 2012, 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 CL9 LowVoltage, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB, Apple SoftRAID 0 (Samsung SSD 840 PRO + APPLE SSD SM256E), Dual Boot (Windows 7)

And imo benchmarks are damn great with this config, its perhaps the fastest iMac you can build by today.

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More pics comming...

 

[jmpage2]

That's pretty insane, what's the boot time for OS X?

 

[trustever]

OMG!!!! The values your reaching are pretty insane!

 

[epine]

Rad numbers happyhacking. I appreciate your contributions to this thread.

 

[hfg]

Hi, guys, finally i completed my configuration for my

Apple iMac 27" Late 2012, 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 CL9 LowVoltage, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB, Apple SoftRAID 0 (Samsung SSD 840 PRO + APPLE SSD SM256E), Dual Boot (Windows 7)

And imo benchmarks are damn great with this config, its perhaps the fastest iMac you can build by today.

----------------------------------
More pics comming...

Pretty nice numbers coming from your RAID-0 SSD configuration.

Where is your bootable Windows installed?

 

[cmjars]

Hi, guys, finally i completed my configuration for my

Apple iMac 27" Late 2012, 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 CL9 LowVoltage, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB, Apple SoftRAID 0 (Samsung SSD 840 PRO + APPLE SSD SM256E), Dual Boot (Windows 7)

And imo benchmarks are damn great with this config, its perhaps the fastest iMac you can build by today.

----------------------------------
More pics comming...

How did you install the 256 and the 512?

Thank you.

 

[jmpage2]

How did you install the 256 and the 512?

Thank you.

If he's doing Raid-0 then they both would have to be 256 or he would have had to take the 512 and put it in two partitions, one for the RAID-0 softraid and then the second partition could be used as a bootable Windows partition.

 

[happyhacking]

If he's doing Raid-0 then they both would have to be 256 or he would have had to take the 512 and put it in two partitions, one for the RAID-0 softraid and then the second partition could be used as a bootable Windows partition.

Exactly as you described:

256GB --> 1 partition (RAID0_A with 203 GB), 48 GB unpartitioned (Spare Area To Avoid Write Amplification)

512GB --> 2 partitions (RAID0_B with 203 GB and NTFS Windows with 261 GB), 48 GB unpartitioned (Spare Area To Avoid Write Amplification)

 

[happyhacking]

Here are the oem 128GB ssd from imac with fusion drive and the oem rMBP 256GB ssd

 

[happyhacking]

Pretty nice numbers coming from your RAID-0 SSD configuration.

Where is your bootable Windows installed?

Thanx, windows is installed at the Samsung 840 Pro

 

[hfg]

Thanx, windows is installed at the Samsung 840 Pro

Does Windows "boot selection" work both as an "option key" boot startup disk selection ... and as a default selection under "SystemPreferences / StartupDisk"? Also can you return to OS X from Windows by using the BootCamp option from the toolbar?

Thanks,

-howard

 

[happyhacking]

Does Windows "boot selection" work both as an "option key" boot startup disk selection ... and as a default selection under "SystemPreferences / StartupDisk"? Also can you return to OS X from Windows by using the BootCamp option from the toolbar?

Thanks,

-howard

Yes it works exactly as boot camp assistant does, you can always choose the bootcamp partition by holding the alt key, or you can do it over system preferences by changing default boot partition to bootcamp, the same applies in windows by using bootcamp icon

 

[Ppq]

Wrong ! Thunderbolt its the deal and much faster !!


eSATA (SATA 300) 3 Gbit/s 300 MB/s
eSATA (SATA 600) 6 Gbit/s 600 MB/s
Thunderbolt 10 Gbit/s × 2 1,250 MB/s × 2

You papering, are you kidding me?

Thunderbolt in real is slower than direct sata.

RE: Need 3rd party support by barefeats on Sunday, January 15, 2012
I have tested a fast 6Gb/s SATA to 5GB/s USB3 bridgeboard (Koutech ASU330) with the fastest USB3 host adapter (RocketU) and fastest 6Gb/s SSDs (OCZ Vertex3 Max IOPS, OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, etc.). The average large sequential transfer speed was 275MB/s.

I put the same SSDs in a Thunderbolt enclosure (Pegasus X4). The single SSD transfer speed was 466MB/s.

Then with a fast 6Gb/s SATA host adapter (RocketRAID 2744) in a 6Gb/s rated SATA enclosure, I got 510MB/s.

A pair of 6Gb/s SSDs in a stripe (RAID 0), USB3 = 504MB/s, Thunderbolt = 767MB/s, and 6Gb/s SATA = 1003MB/s.

Four 6Gb/s SSD in RAID 0, USB3 = 954MB/s, Thunderbolt = 855MB/s, and 6Gb/s SATA = 1864MB/s.

Not quite a fair fight in the two and four SSD RAID sets. The USB 3.0 and SATA setups had a dedicated data channel for each drive. Thunderbolt had one data channel shared by all drives.

 

[epine]

I'll leave this advice to the other users that still dont have this iMac, buy the 27" model with 8GB RAM, the i7 processor, the GTX 680MX, and 1 TB drive. Then replace RAM with 32 GB Kingston low latency low voltage dimms and the Samsung 840 pro instead the HDD (This is not very hard to do in the end).

happy hacking,

thanks for your rad advice. I cancelled my previous order with apple and purchased exactly what you explained; only change really was the ram, as I choose 16gb initially (it set me back another week for delivery, oh well). I ordered the kingston low cas low voltage 2(2x8) for a total of 32gb as you have advised.

I have several questions with the samsung 840 pro 516gb ssd. Where did you purchase it from? Since I have the 1TB fusion, do i need to buy special mounting brackets to fit in place of the hdd, or special sata cables... screws? What hardware do I need in order to replace the 7200rpm hdd; just the hdd (exclude the LCD removal materials). Note that I plan on keeping the 128 ssd. Once installed, is it as simple as a quick format of the 840 pro under disk utility, and is then ready to store my wares? thanks!

 

[happyhacking]

happy hacking,

thanks for your rad advice. I cancelled my previous order with apple and purchased exactly what you explained; only change really was the ram, as I choose 16gb initially (it set me back another week for delivery, oh well). I ordered the kingston low cas low voltage 2(2x8) for a total of 32gb as you have advised.

I have several questions with the samsung 840 pro 516gb ssd. Where did you purchase it from? Since I have the 1TB fusion, do i need to buy special mounting brackets to fit in place of the hdd, or special sata cables... screws? What hardware do I need in order to replace the 7200rpm hdd; just the hdd (exclude the LCD removal materials). Note that I plan on keeping the 128 ssd. Once installed, is it as simple as a quick format of the 840 pro under disk utility, and is then ready to store my wares? thanks!

Hehehe nice to see you liked my sugs, well there are a lot of questions:

I got the Samsung 840 Pro 512GB from ebay
You need a 2.5 to 3.5 bracket/tray (I used a old Intel X25-M 2.5 to 3.5 metal bracket), so most of this adapters should work.
You dont need any sata cable, the oem cable from 1TB HDD its enough
Excluding LCD seal strips you will need a torx screewdrivers, buy them a kit from owc
If you plan on keeping the 128GB, get the Aura envoy pro from OWC to use it as external drive
To use the drive you should reinstall Mountain Lion with the OSX Internet Recovery feature (Press Command+Alt+R at booting) and install as usual

 

[bmcgrath]

@happyhacking - I want this setup in my life

 

[happyhacking]

@happyhacking - I want this setup in my life

Hehehe yeah, its a little expensive but it worths every penny !

 

[jido]

Of course via SATA... Thunderbolt will be much slower...

and... dont forget to check the trim functionality, especially when apple (ML) enables it only for apple ssd drives
Originally Posted by Ppq

Wrong ! Thunderbolt its the deal and much faster !!


eSATA (SATA 300) 3 Gbit/s 300 MB/s
eSATA (SATA 600) 6 Gbit/s 600 MB/s
Thunderbolt 10 Gbit/s × 2 1,250 MB/s × 2

Don't where you got these numbers.

But Ppq is mistaken, Thunderbolt is not much slower. Speed is almost the same, see comparisons in this forum.

 

[Ppq]

Don't where you got these numbers.

But Ppq is mistaken, Thunderbolt is not much slower. Speed is almost the same, see comparisons in this forum.

at first, happyhacking is mistaken because he says thunderbolt is much faster. it isn't. actually is slower, in some cases not much slower, in some is...

but definitely is NOT MUCH FASTER (oh except the paper)...

 

[happyhacking]

at first, happyhacking is mistaken because he says thunderbolt is much faster. it isn't. actually is slower, in some cases not much slower, in some is...

but definitely is NOT MUCH FASTER (oh except the paper)...

From specs there isnt doubt that thunderbolt is faster, but its a recent technology, so its very possible that right now the available thunderbolt components/controllers dont reach the full capabilities from this technology, but its the way to go for the great features on connecting multiple devices.

Remember from your own benchmarks the following line:

Not quite a fair fight in the two and four SSD RAID sets. The USB 3.0 and SATA setups had a dedicated data channel for each drive. Thunderbolt had one data channel shared by all drives.

Here is a good article concluding that thunderbolt is faster, even at tomshardware they reached about ~925 MB/s

 

[cmjars]

HappyHacking can you post some pictures of your teardown and some insight on how to go about replacing the Apple ssd and the Hard drive?

Thank you.

 

[epine]

Hehehe nice to see you liked my sugs, well there are a lot of questions:

I got the Samsung 840 Pro 512GB from ebay
You need a 2.5 to 3.5 bracket/tray (I used a old Intel X25-M 2.5 to 3.5 metal bracket), so most of this adapters should work.
You dont need any sata cable, the oem cable from 1TB HDD its enough
Excluding LCD seal strips you will need a torx screewdrivers, buy them a kit from owc
If you plan on keeping the 128GB, get the Aura envoy pro from OWC to use it as external drive
To use the drive you should reinstall Mountain Lion with the OSX Internet Recovery feature (Press Command+Alt+R at booting) and install as usual

Are you suggesting that I remove the 128 SSD and turn that into an external drive? Would that require me taking out the logic board to remove the said drive? My original thought was to replace the HDD with the samsung 840 pro and leave the 128 SSD and have two SSD's running in the imac. What do you suggest?

 

[zonesey]

I manage to get 450/390 out of my external LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt with a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro fitted.

Do you mean that you put a Samsung 840 Pro into a LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt enclosure?