SSD on the MacPro- Any advantages?

[jwestpro]

In a post above you mentioned installing the SSD into an OPTICAL space or using those cables ???

Do you mean to say that this would allow the main 4 drive slots to be used by 4 other sata drives? That would be perfect for me if so.

Glad to hear there are cheaper solutions at least for ssd/boot drive than the $1300 from apple! I plan to order a 12 core this week with 2T internal drives but wanted to check on that ssd slot idea.

Thanks to anyone who knows the answer....

 

[Transporteur]

In a post above you mentioned installing the SSD into an OPTICAL space or using those cables ???

Do you mean to say that this would allow the main 4 drive slots to be used by 4 other sata drives? That would be perfect for me if so.

Yes, that's correct.

Another tip, don't buy your 2TB drives from Apple, they are more than overpriced.

 

[jwestpro]

Yes, that's correct.

Another tip, don't buy your 2TB drives from Apple, they are more than overpriced.

What is required, if anything special that is not inside the case, to connect the above mentioned ssd drives via the optical slot?

It seems like I would just order with 1x 2T hd and then set up the new drive and merge over/reinstall the os clean. Then buy other 2T drives but how does one make sure they are the highest quality? I can deal with 4T through this year but will need another starting January filling about 300 Gb / year.

Will this tower ever allow a 4T drive? If so I should only get what I need now until that time. I do of course copy the archive into other places, external on site and also in another location.

Awesome!

 

[strausd]

In a post above you mentioned installing the SSD into an OPTICAL space or using those cables ???

Do you mean to say that this would allow the main 4 drive slots to be used by 4 other sata drives? That would be perfect for me if so.

Glad to hear there are cheaper solutions at least for ssd/boot drive than the $1300 from apple! I plan to order a 12 core this week with 2T internal drives but wanted to check on that ssd slot idea.

Thanks to anyone who knows the answer....

Yup. That is what I am doing. The cables that would plug into the second optical drive will give both power and data to the drive so there is no need to purchase any other cables.

This would leave all 4 HD bays untouched. Then you could put either mechanical or more SSDs (with 2.5" to 3.5" adapter) in those bays.

Don't but the 2 TB drives from Apple. You can get Hitachi 2 TB 7200 RPM drives for like $130 and Apple charges $300 for a 2TB drive. Or if you wanted a better drive, go for a Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Black for only $170, which are considered one of the best mechanical drives out today. You could get almost 2 of those for the price Apple charges for one 2 TB drive.

Yes, that's correct.

Another tip, don't buy your 2TB drives from Apple, they are more than overpriced.

Do you happen to know what brand HDs Apple uses in their MPs?


Edit: If you wanted to physically mount the SSD in the optical bay instead of just letting it sit there, I would suggest getting this adapter. This is not necessary, but I decided to get one to keep my system nice and neet. And for a backup drive, I would suggest a Western Digital Caviar Green. They aren't as fast, but you don't need fast drives for backup. Also, they are only $120 for a 2 TB drive.

 

[hugodrax]

I find it foolish anytime I hear someone mentioning buying an SSD so just to speed up the boot time (how often do people reboot?) and just for the App loading time improvement.

But then they buy a slow HD to put all the actual data on it. So that means your Aperture loads fast but then all your actually work is slow because you are running it off the slow drive.

Sounds like a waste of money.

I just kept it simple, bought a 600GB Velociraptor and all my stuff is on that drive.

I never felt like somehow it was so slow that I need to spend for an SSD. Apps load so fast anyhow its kind of dumb. my apps load fast. I just opened aperture and it just took 1.5 seconds to load from scratch.

 

[strausd]

I find it foolish anytime I hear someone mentioning buying an SSD so just to speed up the boot time (how often do people reboot?) and just for the App loading time improvement.

But then they buy a slow HD to put all the actual data on it. So that means your Aperture loads fast but then all your actually work is slow because you are running it off the slow drive.

Sounds like a waste of money.

I just kept it simple, bought a 600GB Velociraptor and all my stuff is on that drive.

I never felt like somehow it was so slow that I need to spend for an SSD. Apps load so fast anyhow its kind of dumb. my apps load fast. I just opened aperture and it just took 1.5 seconds to load from scratch.

Personally I don't consider a Western Digital Caviar Black 64MB Cache drive slow... Others might, but I don't.

And some people turn their computers off at night. Having an SSD will make it come up quicker in the morning when they turn it back on.

And some of the apps out there are very big and can take a very long time to load on a mechanical drive. Having an SSD to open these apps can make things go much quicker.

 

[hugodrax]

Personally I don't consider a Western Digital Caviar Black 64MB Cache drive slow... Others might, but I don't.

And some people turn their computers off at night. Having an SSD will make it come up quicker in the morning when they turn it back on.

And some of the apps out there are very big and can take a very long time to load on a mechanical drive. Having an SSD to open these apps can make things go much quicker.

I just put mines to sleep. But even on a bootup its not that big a deal. Anyhow how long can it take to load an app??

I still do not see the point of spending all that on an SSD and then have your big video file or library on your slower Disk drive. All your I/O is gonna be between your application and your data. How much time out of your 8 hour work day do you spend loading apps compared to massaging data and all the associated I/O.

Go home or go big if your gonna go SSD do your apps and data on SSD.

Also do you have any examples of some Apps and how long it took to load on non-ssd?

 

[VirtualRain]

Go home or go big if your gonna go SSD do your apps and data on SSD.

I actually agree... I think most people that get an SSD for their OS/Apps end up installing more and more on there and then buy more and more SSD storage until they're either broke or checking into a clinic (in my case )

My message to everyone getting their first SSD for their OS/Apps... be prepared to want to buy more SSD storage... almost immediately. "You can't just have one" There's nothing more lovely than SSD's in RAID0

 

[jwestpro]

for me it's not at all about start up time, only shut down when I leave town anyway. It's about freeing up all 4 data drive slots and keeping the data separate from the os/app drive.

My old power pc dual 2.0 has 2 drives, one is 10k rpm and the other 15k rpm. Neither are for archive. one is for os/apps, the other for "working" and then all finished jobs transfered to external drives which are never messed with except adding more until full.

over the years the externals have changed though, merging from an old 1T when full to a new 2T, etc.

I think I need to look at filling high quality drives chronologically, and not having them plugged in and/or running unless I need to retrieve something.

The idea behind 4 free slots internally is to be a redundant copy of what's external too.

If I were making it to be a performance machine, i'd go with the SAS internals, especially if the os drive could still be separate in an optical slot.

If a person wanted to just use an external cd reader, could you then also use the 2nd optical slot for a 2nd ssd? use one ssd for os, the other for "working"

I don't burn cd/dvd much anymore, use my ftp instead, an an external would do fine for loading software.

4T internally would do me fine for several years, even allowing my total archive of finished "work", not raw though which doesn't really need to be "at the ready". so, I could have 2 2T drives for size, then 2 fast working drives, or something like that if the above 2nd ssd out of the way idea isn't possible.

for me saving speed is crucial as my image files are usually 1Gb before layer compression and bit reduction. waiting the extra minutes per image adds up over the course of a day, week, year.

 

[strausd]

If a person wanted to just use an external cd reader, could you then also use the 2nd optical slot for a 2nd ssd? use one ssd for os, the other for "working"

I don't burn cd/dvd much anymore, use my ftp instead, an an external would do fine for loading software.

Personally I haven't tried, but I don't see why not. However, I don't know if you would be able to boot from a CD if it was in an external optical drive. Anybody know?

If it can, then that would be something to look at. If not and you needed to restore your computer or upgrade to 10.7 when it comes out, you would need to take out one of the SSDs and put the optical drive in to boot from the CD.

 

[nanofrog]

Personally I haven't tried, but I don't see why not. However, I don't know if you would be able to boot from a CD if it was in an external optical drive. Anybody know?

Yes.

For the ability to use it universally (i.e. install any OS), it's best to use a USB port (Windows has dropped FW support).

 

[sirnh]

I never see anyone taking the route that I am going with, using the new 600GB Velociraptors. It's still no SSD, but considering I work with source code that measures in the 100's of MBs, with binaries that are checked into source control daily, I don't want to take the SSD degradation hit on OS X. I really wish they would add TRIM support.

 

[VirtualRain]

I never see anyone taking the route that I am going with, using the new 600GB Velociraptors. It's still no SSD, but considering I work with source code that measures in the 100's of MBs, with binaries that are checked into source control daily, I don't want to take the SSD degradation hit on OS X. I really wish they would add TRIM support.

The Sandforce and Intel drives are very robust under heavy usage.

 

[strausd]

The Sandforce and Intel drives are very robust under heavy usage.

And the Sandforce controller has a built in garbage collection.

 

[advres]

My friend who is system admin for a post production company suggests AGAINST using SSD's (for his type of setup). He has been all gung-ho over SSD's for the longest time and is just now changing his mind. This is what he posted on his site:

I tested SSD drives in the editing Mac Pros used in an ethernet SAN environment. We had problems. Actually we had one problem – they were too fast! Specifically, the driver for the PCIe ethernet card couldn’t load properly during boot up. For awhile, clearing the caches helped (I think it slowed down the boot process enough for the drivers to fully load). But after a month or so, that workaround stopped working and the card wouldn’t show up and the SAN volumes would not mount. Because of this issue, I can’t recommend SSDs in Mac Pros because of other problems that could crop up during boot. So few people have put SSDs in Mac Pros that all the possible problems just haven’t been discovered yet. Since I was using an “unsupported configuration” I was on my own with any issues. I could see Apple “slowing down” their stock SSDs to fix these issues. But then techie end users will complain saying Apple’s stock SSDs are too slow and swap them out for a faster brand. BTW, areas where I thought SSDs would help on an edit system, didn’t. Specifically, FCP projects didn’t load any faster. Autosave was still as annoying as always. When it comes to FCP, I’ve eliminated all the bottlenecks, except for FCP itself. In the end, I don’t recommend SSD drives for Mac Pros used for editing. Your best bet is to keep your boot drive big and clear, and defrag every so often.

Just some food for thought.

 

[kevink2]

The main reason for the degradation problem is because on an SSD when you delete something and then add something to the drive, it does not over write what you deleted. Where as on a mechanical drive, it will over write it. So the more you write to it, the less free space on the drive, even if you delete stuff. Now, it won't say there is less free space, but the stuff you deleted will still be on the SSD, much like something you delete will still be on a mechanical drive but it just won't show up.

The way I understand the problem is that there is the OS view of what parts of the drive are used, and the drive's view of what is in use.

SSD drives have to write in larger chunks, like 128KB, at a time. So if you want to just write out 4KB to part of that drive, the drive has to read 128KB, then write out the 4KB and the other 124KB. So once all the drive has been written to, when it wants to move the 4KB you are writing it has to do a read and write of the data, not knowing whether the other up to 124KB is actually real data or not. The TRIM command is a way for the OS to tell the drive that certain sectors on the drive no longer have data that the OS cares about, so it can free that space to just be written too without reading and maybe writing a larger chunk.

It is kind of like memory management in the computer. If the OS knows that a certain page is not used, it can just be overwritten when needed. If it is in use, and has been modified, it has to be written out to the swap file first before it can be reused.

 

[philipma1957]

buy 4 of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136579&cm_re=wd_re4-_-22-136-579-_-Product

and 1 of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...=wd_velociraptor_600gb-_-22-136-555-_-Product

boot with the raptor and you have 8tb for storage. you can use them in many ways and all 5 of these are less then 1 512gb ssd from apple... apple has used hitachi fujitsu and seagate in the past.

wd has a great rma policy. all of the above drives are 5 year warranty.

 

[jwestpro]

buy 4 of these

A. I like this idea considering any potential issues with how I work and the SSD problems mentioned above.

B. forgive me but can any other type of drive be installed in one of the optical bays? It doesn't have to be a smaller scale ssd? it can be a high rpm sata?

A 600 10k rpm boot drive would be perfect and plenty large enough to be my "working drive, however if you all think it's best to not repeatedly add and remove large amounts of data from your primary os/boot drive, wouldn't it make sense to "work" from a 2nd fast drive which is smaller but 15k rpm ?

C. is there any reason the 2T drives on newegg, or similar, are better than the 2T drives you get through Apple? The cost is about the same, is everything else?

D. I could sacrifice one of the primary 4 slots to be a small fast working drive using the remaining 3 for 6T of archive which is also duplicated externally and off site.

E. I have a mac pro from last year, the 8 core 2.4 or whatever was the base 8 core but it only has one internal, the stock cheap option. It seems I could get more out of that machine too now using some of the above ideas?

Does anyone think a certain Apple, or other brand, internal or external drives are the most reliable for long term archive? How about if the plan were to chronologically fill an external, for example with raw photo files, then shelf it? As opposed to having the drives always powered inside the tower?

 

[highdefw]

My plan is to have a 120gb ssd in the optical, two 1TB hdd for RAID 0, a 2 tb drive (for movies, music, etc...), and another 2 TB for backup purposes.

Also I plan on adding another 1TB drive in the optical to boot windows.

 

[johnnymg]

My plan is to have a 120gb ssd in the optical, two 1TB hdd for RAID 0, a 2 tb drive (for movies, music, etc...), and another 2 TB for backup purposes.

Also I plan on adding another 1TB drive in the optical to boot windows.

How about putting the 2T backup drive in a slide-out cage adapter in the optical bay?

I like the idea of keeping backup drives somewhere other than in the backed-up computer.

cheers
JohnG

 

[highdefw]

How about putting the 2T backup drive in a slide-out cage adapter in the optical bay?

I like the idea of keeping backup drives somewhere other than in the backed-up computer.

cheers
JohnG

I would, but I recently found out that because I will have a raid 0 setup via OSX built-in software, I will need to put the windows disk that is not connected to the built-in SATA controller, and run a data cable from that hdd to an internal PCIe SATA card.

Basically because I have a raid setup, I need a separate controller to boot windows.

I could get a raid card, but this way is a whole lot cheaper...

 

[johnnymg]

I would, but I recently found out that because I will have a raid 0 setup via OSX built-in software, I will need to put the windows disk that is not connected to the built-in SATA controller, and run a data cable from that hdd to an internal PCIe SATA card.

Basically because I have a raid setup, I need a separate controller to boot windows.

I could get a raid card, but this way is a whole lot cheaper...

What do you mean by "OSX built-in SW"?

FWIW, my experience with a 2 drive RAID 0 system disk didn't end well.

On the other hand I Have been running a 2 drive RAID 0 data drive for about 4 years without a problem.

 

[Giuly]

buy 4 of these


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136579&cm_re=wd_re4-_-22-136-579-_-Product


and 1 of these


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...=wd_velociraptor_600gb-_-22-136-555-_-Product

For what apple charges us, one may get 4 G.Skill Phoenix Pro 120GB - and/or 2 OCZ RevoDrive 240GB (I'd go with these, as they are 2x120GB in hardware-RAID0), put them in RAID 0 and have 4-5x the performance of Apples SSD. These are the only SSDs I'd consider at the moment (SandForce in general).

Compared to the VelociRaptors, you get about half with SSDs. 2x performance with 1/5 the space for the same $.

When those drives double the space though, they cost the same. When they double the space again then, they will become mainstream.

 

[funkahdafi]

Putting SSDs in my computer was THE most significant upgrade I have EVER put in a computer. It's a different world. Go for it.

 

[nanofrog]

What do you mean by "OSX built-in SW"?

OS X (Disk Utility) can be used to create 0/1/10 arrays (JBOD as well) without the need of a separate RAID card (works on the SATA ports in the system, or disks attached via SATA/eSATA cards so long as they have drivers for OS X).