SSD Configurations... Feeling confused... ?

[MikeymikeT5]

Sorry to trouble you guys and gals... I've trawled this forum looking for info that might make me feel better educated, but am feeling a tad confused.

I have a 12 core Macpro 5,1 (3.33ghz). I was running a 500GB Crucial MX200 SSD on an OWC Accelsior S PCI card running OS and apps. I was then using another OWC card with a 2TB MX300 SSD attached, for all my files, images, etc...

I then upgraded the 500GB MX200, to a second 2TB MX300, and did a fresh OS (High Sierra) install onto that drive. I had a long standing issues with Photos not indexing my images, which I couldn't resolve. I figured that if my Photos library was on the same drive as the OS, it might possibly resolve this, which indeed it has! I'm really happy about that aspect.

But, initially, I fitted the new MX300 2TB into the optical bay to do the OS install, and import of apps via the OS installer. However, when swapping this drive over onto the OWN Accelsior card in place of the MX200, I didn't really notice any performance increase.

Would you guys keep the two SSD's on the OWC cards, or would you move one over to the optical bay, or perhaps install a different PCI card instead of OWC???

Many thanks in anticipation of your thoughts...

Mike.

 

[pl1984]

But, initially, I fitted the new MX300 2TB into the optical bay to do the OS install, and import of apps via the OS installer. However, when swapping this drive over onto the OWN Accelsior card in place of the MX200, I didn't really notice any performance increase.

This is not surprising. I've observed the majority of people will notice an increase in performance going from a traditional hard drive to an SSD. However most of these will not notice a difference going from the internal SATA-II ports to SATA-III ports made available on a PCIe card (such as the OWC Accelsior S). Your experience is inline with this observation.

The SSDs primary advantage for most users is their faster random access performance which, for many SSDs, doesn't exceed SATA-II speeds. Thus you're not being constrained by the connection and therefore a faster connection won't benefit you.

Would you guys keep the two SSD's on the OWC cards, or would you move one over to the optical bay, or perhaps install a different PCI card instead of OWC???

Since you already have the OWC card I see no reason not to use it. It does offer a higher connection speed which may occasionally benefit you. I also feel having an SSD in the optical bay is a kludge and therefore from an aesthetics perspective the OWC card is cleaner (but that's just me).

 

[orph]

you wont see any real big speed change from sticking a SSD on a PCI card, for real speed you want NVME PCI but as long as you have a work load that will gain any real speed from a faster drive.
lots of things just are not limited by SSD drives.

edit lol to slow to post pl1984 is correct

ps apple photos is always flaky