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SSD Drives for Mac Pro Boot Drive?

Can anybody explain to me why securing an SSD to the MP is so important, that one would spend $25-$50 to do so?
The SSD is rugged and slight. I'd be inclined to velcro an SSD to the chassis, just to keep the plugs in, or rest it on a piece of cardboard shoved to the bottom of a MP 3.5" sled, connecting with a 2.5-3.5 cable.
It sounds like some of you folks hold your mods to Ive-like standards. Am I crazy?
 
wpc33 said:
Can anybody explain to me why securing an SSD to the MP is so important, that one would spend $25-$50 to do so?
The SSD is rugged and slight. I'd be inclined to velcro an SSD to the chassis, just to keep the plugs in, or rest it on a piece of cardboard shoved to the bottom of a MP 3.5" sled, connecting with a 2.5-3.5 cable.
It sounds like some of you folks hold your mods to Ive-like standards. Am I crazy?
Click to expand...

In a drive bay I would not be concerned at all, but I'm going to fit it to a sled and currently there is no sensible way to do it. I would like a bracket for 3-4$ to do it. There is certainly no need to replicate the connectors and make a big fuss of it. But such a product isn't offered yet.
 
gugucom said:
In a drive bay I would not be concerned at all, but I'm going to fit it to a sled and currently there is no sensible way to do it. I would like a bracket for 3-4$ to do it. There is certainly no need to replicate the connectors and make a big fuss of it. But such a product isn't offered yet.
Click to expand...

The Mac Pro should have come with sleds that can take either size of drive. If you want a cheap and cheerful solution, I would just connect the drive to the backplane and use duct tape to hold it in place. :)

My Dad use to say that you really only need two tools... duct tape and a hammer... duct tape is used to put things together and a hammer is used to take them apart! :D
 
VirtualRain said:
The Mac Pro should have come with sleds that can take either size of drive. If you want a cheap and cheerful solution, I would just connect the drive to the backplane and use duct tape to hold it in place. :)
Click to expand...
I agree, Apple should have added the mounting holes to the bracket (and extra metal to drill them in). ;) Unfortunately, duct tape doesn't work so well for this in my experience (hint: think adhesive behavior when heat is added ;)). :p

VirtualRain said:
My Dad use to say that you really only need two tools... duct tape and a hammer... duct tape is used to put things together and a hammer is used to take them apart! :D
Click to expand...
Whoa... You're giving me flashbacks of my dad. :D :p
 
Hehe,

But yes, Velcro should work just fine. Just don't use too big a piece or when you go to remove it you could damage the connectors. I know I originally said to use a wide strip but in rethinking it I think I would use two 1/2 inch squares on the outer-most corners of the drive. It's enough to hold it in place and at the same time won't require and too much force should you need to remove the drive.

Check it after a few weeks to make sure the adhesive gum backing isn't loosening due to the heat. And make sure you keep the sled in it's proper location so that if it does come loose it won't fall into the machine.

If the heat is a problem remove the adhesive gum backing from the Velcro with solvent and use a modest amount of Elmer's white glue in it's place. Elmer's will "peel" off leaving the original surfaces unscratched should you need to sell anything later. :)


.
 
Hey guys, I didn't wanna start a new thread for this Q:
I have a G5 w/SATA I. Will a SATA II SSD, like the OCZ Vertex work in my crippled drive bay at full SATA I speeds?

I've gotta milk this tower for as long as possible, and I'm maxed in RAM and have one of the best old GPU's (7800GS flashed). I have determined that the HDD is a persistent bottleneck for me.

SATA II SSD in SATA I G5 a-ok for SATA I speeds?
Thanks for your time and brain!

PS: I'd rather not track down a SATA-I SSD, or a II with a lower speed, as I plan on taking the hypothetical SSD w/me to a MP.
 
wpc33 said:
Hey guys, I didn't wanna start a new thread for this Q:
I have a G5 w/SATA I. Will a SATA II SSD, like the OCZ Vertex work in my crippled drive bay at full SATA I speeds?

I've gotta milk this tower for as long as possible, and I'm maxed in RAM and have one of the best old GPU's (7800GS flashed). I have determined that the HDD is a persistent bottleneck for me.

SATA II SSD in SATA I G5 a-ok for SATA I speeds?
Thanks for your time and brain!

PS: I'd rather not track down a SATA-I SSD, or a II with a lower speed, as I plan on taking the hypothetical SSD w/me to a MP.
Click to expand...
Yes, SATA II is backwards compatible. :)
 
wpc33 said:
Thanks for the ka-nowledge, but that was a total false alarm.
Click to expand...

Are you sure?

If I were to use a SATA 3 Gbit/s device on a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s bus, you can bet I would make sure the device had a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s mode and I would put it in that mode.

I have been caught out by this problem in the past.

S-
 
Switching from a regular HD to SSD do you have to change any settings in Mac OS?? I heard that you have to disable journaling when using a SSD...
 
I read that some SSDs slow down when they run in RAID0 configuration. Does anybody know about tests for this issue? How would stripe size affect the speed hit?

Edit:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/974/1/

super_atto_io.jpg


You obviously want to set stripe size at least 128k if not more to keep up the read/write rates.
 
gugucom said:
You obviously want to set stripe size at least 128k if not more to keep up the read/write rates.
Click to expand...

Correct. On a drive in a used state, a write may require a read/write of an entire block... the erase block size is a critical factor here. If you set a stripe size smaller than your erase block size, you will suffer the erase block hit multiple times per drive for a single write operation.

On Intel drives, the erase block size is 128K so it makes sense to have a stripe size of 128K. On some older drives, the block size was 512K which makes it useless for RAID (and in general) since such a write erase penalty is brutal.

The bottom line is that RAID0 arrays of SSD's will not have a huge advantage in terms of every day performance because with such a large stripe size, you don't benefit from the added parallelism for small read/write operations. The key compelling reason to RAID SSD's is to combine small drives into a larger more practical volume size... not for performance although you will see added performance on sustained transfers of larger files.
 
So what would you suggest for the above drive? 64k or 128k?

At 64k the drive would already have 95% of read/write speed and the stripe size would only be half a big.
 
wpc33 said:
Can anybody explain to me why securing an SSD to the MP is so important, that one would spend $25-$50 to do so?
The SSD is rugged and slight. I'd be inclined to velcro an SSD to the chassis, just to keep the plugs in, or rest it on a piece of cardboard shoved to the bottom of a MP 3.5" sled, connecting with a 2.5-3.5 cable.
It sounds like some of you folks hold your mods to Ive-like standards. Am I crazy?
Click to expand...
Hmm, for anyone who owns a Mac Pro, $50 probably isn't going to break the bank. Mac Pro is a beautiful design inside, and we'd prefer to keep it that way :)
 
nuckinfutz said:
Supposedly next tuesday. Do a search for "Intel Postville" and you'll find more info.
Looks like the 80GB is gonna be around $270.
Click to expand...

I don't like that price.
I can get a OCZ 120GB SSD for $295.
Yeah, I know, not as good.
But I'll wait until the prices come down further.
.
 
Topper said:
I don't like that price.
I can get a OCZ 120GB SSD for $295.
Yeah, I know, not as good.
But I'll wait until the prices come down further.
.
Click to expand...

Yes but OCZ and other vendors who cannot command the same price premium will be forced to lower their pricing and they too get the advantage of lower cost NAND because of a smaller fab process. I expect OCZ will have the Vertex 120GB down to low $200s by the end of this year or start of next
 
nuckinfutz said:
Supposedly next tuesday. Do a search for "Intel Postville" and you'll find more info.

Looks like the 80GB is gonna be around $270.
Click to expand...

A 250GB extreme Intel drive would be amazing. I would easily pay $600 for that. But it will likely be 160GB. A 250GB mainstream wouldn't be that bad either. I wonder which vendor will get them first if they are in fact released on Tuesday?
 
Yeah, I saw the rumors of those being 128GB, 250GB, and 320GB. I'm just wondering what the extreme model capacity's will be.
 
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