Frequent crashes when computer is sleeping

Take the SSD card out of the picture. Or restore from a backup clone you made to clone the OS to it? or afer you installed the OS so you would have a restore image (not and never "if" but "when" those are needed).

Not the first thread asking about that OWC SSD card.

Disk Utility has a problem with arrays.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4284

I take it all 3 750s are the same down to model etc and probably WD Black series.

Those are Caviar Blue series and older edition.

I never know whether to trust reviews because of relationships between reviewer and vendor.

http://www.macperformanceguide.com/

One person ran into trouble with Crucial 256GB m4 and there is a discussion over firmware of various SSDs and how safe and reliable. http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1

Experience w/ OWC Accelsior? ( 1 2)

If you wanted SSD on 6G PCIe and didn't want to use your optical or 4 x drive bays, OWC seems like over priced and even their comments on TRIM seem to be in strong dispute.

I still am old school, give me one of the newest WD 10K VRs and knock yourself dead wtih reliable technology that lasts for years and still capable of 150MB/sec and above. Comes in 250GB $150 and 500GB $200 and 1TB $290.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1907/1/

If you suspect problems from your ssd make sure you have the latest OWC firmware updates installed on it.

OWC Firmware Updaters for Mac

I tried the Accelsior 120GB PCI twice on a Mac Pro 2010, OS Lion. The objective was to use the Accelsior as a startup disk to replace an OWC SSD 100GB. Initially, there was a noticable increase in speed, almost too fast. But then I started having problems. Most notably, when waking up from a sleep, the computer would freeze and require a hard restart to get it up and running. After two weeks of OWC tech support, and doing a fresh install of OS and applications, the card died... dead in the water, not to be found anywhere. The OWC SSD took over as the assigned startup disk as it had remained installed as a backup given the problems I was experiencing with the PCI SSD. OWC replaced the Acclesior, but the second effort never go off the ground as my computer could not initialize it, giving me a failure window saying something to the effect the PCI SSD could not be "opened". I returned the card and declined a third effort. I'm back to using the OWC SSD as a startup disk. I'll try Accelsior in the future, perhaps in another year. There are wrinkles in the technology that need smooting over, or I was simply getting a bad batch. Either way, I'm done for now.

That is what I did. In addition to the 120GB SSD for OS and applications, I got a 480GB SSD for storing text documents, photoshop cache, and photoshop scratch disk. I use the remaining two bays for 2TB WDC 7200 drives where I store my photography work. It works very well, no pausing and extremely rapid. When I first got the Mac Pro, I also upgraded to 32GB of memory. For the money, I like the setup. Not cheap, but I think dollar for dollar, it makes good sense.

Part of my configuration is motivated in "good house keeping"... knowing where everything is and keeping unrelated items on different drives. But mostly it is motivated for speed and efficiency. My understanding is as follows:

I use Lightroom 4 to open images, and by keeping Lightroom previews set to "Full Size", and by keeping the lightroom the preview data file and lightroom catalog file on the 120GB SSD startup disk, images open very quickly. The RAW files don't have to be on a super fast hard drive with this configuration. It might be true that if the RAW files were on an SSD, operations would be even faster, but as it is, there is no lag in opening image files using Lightroom. Likewise when exporting images from Lightroom into Photoshop.

If I directly import image files into Photoshop from a WDC stored file, because my photoshop cache is kept on the 480GB SSD, as long as the file has been opened once previously, from there out photoshop will use the SSD cache to reopen these images quickly and efficiently. I'm not sure if my description and understanding is rock solid, but performance is very quick and efficient.

Using this configuration, I can implement the lesser expensive WDC drives for storage, but still benefit from SSD speed of operation. I shoot with 24 and 36 MP cameras. These large files can take up a lot of space, so cost does come into play as to where images are stored.

Clarification on my last post. Regarding my use of the term, Photoshop Cache, I am actually referring to Adobe CR Cache.

As goes understanding Adobe CR cache, it may only pertain to developing images within the Develop Module within Lightroom and have nothing to do with how quickly images open in Photoshop, however I'm all ears if anyone wants to better clarify.

As goes the speed of opening images in Photoshop, a 347 MB layered tiff will open in about 0.6 sec with my current configuration utilizing a combination of SSD and standard hard drives. This is the case whether I'm exporting from Lightroom into Photoshop or importing into Photoshop directly from one of the WDC hard drives without Lightroom activated.

I particularly appreciate an SSD over one of the WDC hard drives when I open something like a Word doc. I find the pause when using a WDC hard drive to be very annoying as compared to how quickly the same doc. can be opened from a SSD. I don't see this same annoying pause when opening images from one of the WDC hard drives via Photoshop or Lightroom.

I hope that better helps in explaining my current configuration. Best of luck s_w_i_t_t_e_r_s!

You're welcome, glad I could help.

Currently, I maintain the two 2 TB drives separately, using one for backing up imported RAW images to Lightroom and the other to store files representing the Lightroom catalog. Once this second hard drive gets near full, I'll create a striped RAID out of the two. After the striped configuration gets full, I imagine it will be time to configure an external striped RAID. In the meantime, I back up all drives using Voyager Q with an eSATA cable.

CR cache size is set at 120GB (currently it is 60GB in size).

I do not use separate partitions for CR and Photoshop scratch (single partition).

I use the OWC 480GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD (same as the 120GB SSD for OS and Applications).

G

Move your User directories off the Boot drive, leaving only System, Library, Applications, and the hidden unix files includingpaging/swap. Then selectively move in the files you need to reference frequently and fast, as space permits.

http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/

japamac's blog: Make room for Performance -- Moving the Home Folder

Some suggest keeping the main Admin-only account on the Boot Drive as a hedge against temporary loss of the Users drive.