Which SSD tray for Mac Pro?

[Silly John Fatty]

This whole thing is confusing me…*My plan was to keep the original tray and just put the SSD in some kind of adapter, which would be held by the original tray. Is there such a thing? I see lots of plastic junk out there, I don't think I'm interested in that. I've also seen OWC's tray, but like I said, I don't know if I really want to replace the tray. They say their tray is blue, so we remember in which slots we got our SSDs. Alriiight…

Also, in Bay 1 I have a 2TB HDD. Is it okay to place the SSD in Bay 3 or 4 for security reasons, because of heat from the HDD for example? I don't like the idea of everything being in one corner, and 2 bays will be left empty for now anyway.

 

[Macsonic]

This whole thing is confusing me…*My plan was to keep the original tray and just put the SSD in some kind of adapter, which would be held by the original tray. Is there such a thing? I see lots of plastic junk out there, I don't think I'm interested in that. I've also seen OWC's tray, but like I said, I don't know if I really want to replace the tray. They say their tray is blue, so we remember in which slots we got our SSDs. Alriiight…

Also, in Bay 1 I have a 2TB HDD. Is it okay to place the SSD in Bay 3 or 4 for security reasons, because of heat from the HDD for example? I don't like the idea of everything being in one corner, and 2 bays will be left empty for now anyway.

Hi. You can try checking out Icy Dock adapters like this one: http://www.amazon.com/EZConvert-MB9...=UTF8&qid=1408023677&sr=1-7&keywords=icy+dock
With this you can keep your original Mac Pro HD sled.

 

[dollystereo]

OWC has a specific item to do this.

 

[Wardenski]

I have two icy dock plastic versions. They work and they're cheap.

You can't really see the plastic even with the door off.

 

[flowrider]

Why put your SSD in an adapter in one of the HDD bays? Why not use a PCIe SATA III card? Better performance and you retain all your internal HDD bays.

I'm using an Apricorn Velocity Solo x2:

http://www.apricorn.com/vel-solox2.html

With my Samsung 840 SSD.

Lou

 

[mikeboss]

I like the ones from Apple (part nr. 922-9629).

or, if you like it cheap(er) the ones from hewlett-packard. part. nr. 654540-001

 

[Silly John Fatty]

Why put your SSD in an adapter in one of the HDD bays? Why not use a PCIe SATA III card? Better performance and you retain all your internal HDD bays.

I'm using an Apricorn Velocity Solo x2:

http://www.apricorn.com/vel-solox2.html

With my Samsung 840 SSD.

Lou

I don't think I will need this performance, SATA will be alright, the extra price wouldn't be worth it for what I do I think. Also, I'm not sure if there's any place going to be left for PCIe stuff, at the moment I have the GPU and a (possibly) quite big sound card coming. I believe there would be some place left for a drive, but that's a bit to compact for me haha.

I like the ones from Apple (part nr. 922-9629).

or, if you like it cheap(er) the ones from hewlett-packard. part. nr. 654540-001

Interesting! I didn't know such a thing existed, lots of members wrote it doesn't at least. But I remember reading somewhere that someone got their Mac Pro delivered with these, when he ordered an SSD with it in the online store. So I believe that's the part?

 

[mikeboss]

yup, these are the adapters that came if a Mac Pro was BTO with Apple SSDrives.

 

[hfg]

OWC has the direct SSD mounting trays in two sizes depending on which model your Mac Pro uses (different depth). If you want to use your existing tray, they also have a mount adapter which will work in the tray, or anywhere that you want to mount a SSD in a 3.5" drive space (such as the ThunderBay IV or other enclosure):

NewerTech AdaptaDrive
2.5" to 3.5" Drive Converter Bracket
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/ADPTADRV/

I prefer the open structure over the IcyDock for better air flow and cooling.

For maximum performance in any Mac Pro, use a PCIe solution such as the Solo x2 with SATA III SSDs, or the recent PCIe blade solutions. This assumes you have a spare PCIe rev 2.0 slot available.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

I guess I'll either go with one of those official Apple SSD carriers, or the OWC one. Any pros & cons?

Also… how much of the speed of the SSD do I loose if I connect it in the hard drive bay and not by PCIe? Just out of curiosity. Thanks!

 

[h9826790]

how much of the speed of the SSD do I loose if I connect it in the hard drive bay and not by PCIe?

For some SSD like the 840 Evo, you can lost more than 50% of it's max sequential speed.

 

[DPUser]

If you don't buy a PCIe card, put your SSD in the second optical bay and connect there via the existing SATA and power ports. I moved my optical drive to the lower bay, where it makes a nice shelf upon which I have three SSDs resting comfortably.

For a single SSD, you can hit near peak SATA3 speeds with a cheap ($15) PCIe x1 card, connect via a longer SATA cable and put yer SSD in the optical bay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-PCI-E-SATA-3-0-SATA-III-Card-6Gb-s-eSata-ASM1061-/150839174303

 

[brand]

I like the ones from Apple (part nr. 922-9629).

I never knew that Apple made that for the Mac Pro.

 

[Modplod]

If you don't buy a PCIe card, put your SSD in the second optical bay and connect there via the existing SATA and power ports. I moved my optical drive to the lower bay, where it makes a nice shelf upon which I have three SSDs resting comfortably.

For a single SSD, you can hit near peak SATA3 speeds with a cheap ($15) PCIe x1 card, connect via a longer SATA cable and put yer SSD in the optical bay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-PCI-E-SATA-3-0-SATA-III-Card-6Gb-s-eSata-ASM1061-/150839174303

I have been looking for a way to maximize my crucial m500 drive. Does this card work straight out of the box with a Mac Pro 3.1 running mavericks and then Yosemite?

I tried a solo velocity but did not notice any improvement

 

[h9826790]

Most likely you can't notice anything unless you run benchmarking software or copying very large files. AFAIK, under normal OS environment, your system benefit from the high IOPS of the SSD, which is not even limiting by the SATA 2 speed.

 

[Modplod]

Most likely you can't notice anything unless you run benchmarking software or copying very large files. AFAIK, under normal OS environment, your system benefit from the high IOPS of the SSD, which is not even limiting by the SATA 2 speed.

I benchmarked the drive before and after using black magic. Read and write speeds were within 10mb/s

 

[DPUser]

Does this card work straight out of the box with a Mac Pro 3.1 running mavericks and then Yosemite?

ASM1061 runs great in ML, no driver installation required. Although I don't boot from mine, everything I have read indicates bootable.

As noted by h9826790, unless streaming large sequential data, difference between SATA2 and 3 is not noticeable. I run my boot SSD from internal SATA2.

With MP 3.1, you have the "secret" extra two SATA2 ports.

 

[hfg]

Here are some speed tests using the same Crucial M4 512GB SSD SATA-III.

1) M4 SSD mounted in Mac Pro tray in standard drive bay (SATA II)

2) M4 SSD mounted on PCIe card (SATA III)

3) pair of M4 SSD in RAID-0 on PCIe card (SATA III)

(The PCIe card is a Sonnet Tempo Pro Dual SSD in a 2012 Mac Pro 5,1)

Normal OS X user experience is very similar for all three configurations.

The PCIe mounted SSDs caused a noticeable improvement in photo management of my Aperture library, and was improved even further with the RAID-0 configuration due to the very large files involved.

Hope this helps ...

 

[Zwhaler]

This is what I use x2

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/transposer.html

 

[drnebulous]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130696186620?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

 

[Modplod]

I see the read speeds are twice as fast as I am getting when you use a pcie adaptor. I think I will give the controller card a go...after all it is really cheap

 

[ibarnett]

AFAIK you lose "option" key usability on boot with the PCIe card?
Anyone experience this?

 

[flowrider]

^^^^Not True!!! My Solo x2 BlackMagic test with a Samsung 840 SSD is attached.

Lou

 

[Modplod]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130696186620?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

So this would work with much increased speeds with my crucial drive?

I saw this, anyone have any experience?


http://www.ebay.com/itm/261473940100?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

[Einz]

Another adaptor.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F3QFKNS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1