Daz1761
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: SATA III With Mac Pro 2008

Hi,

 

I have been scouring the internet for a few hours trying to pin point an answer for my question, but sadly Its not clear wether this can be done.

 

I have a Mac Pro 3,1 Early 2008 x2 2.8ghz and I am about to purchase an ssd and was wondering if I can get SATA III running Lion 10.7.5 as a bootable drive.

 

I am aware of the OCS Mercury Accelsior but sadly too expensive.  The only options I have discovered which may work is this:

 

The PEXSAT32 2 port SATA 6gbps PCI Express internal controller card:

 

http://uk.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/HDD-Controllers/SATA-Cards/2-Port-SATA-6-G bps-PCI-Express-SATA-Controller-Card~PEXSAT32

 

Just to test, I downloaded the driver for this card as it said 10.6/10.7, but the driver was Windows only.  So does this mean Mac OS X recognises Startech cards natively?  If so, could I install this card, screw a ssd 2.5" bracket on one of the hard drive bays and have Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 as a bootable drive?

 

There is another card I've found by Sonnet, the tempo SATA 6GB/s and that says its bootable, but its an external eSATA version which means having bootable hard drives in external caddies which would be a bit messy.

 

Any help will be much appreciated :-)

 

Many thanks

Posted on Nov 28, 2012 11:34 AM

Close
Daz1761

Q: SATA III With Mac Pro 2008

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

first Previous Page 3 of 3

  • by mister704,

    mister704 mister704 Dec 3, 2013 9:52 AM in response to leomonkeyhanger
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 9:52 AM in response to leomonkeyhanger

    I may try Mavericks but for now I think I will just start with 10.6 so I can even learn this thing. I am so off right now.

  • by The hatter,

    The hatter The hatter Dec 3, 2013 10:21 AM in response to mister704
    Level 9 (60,935 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 10:21 AM in response to mister704

    I can't see your most recent post but.... given t he issues with 10.9, t he one with WD and external drives resulting in data corruption (forum t hreads, MacIntouch, MacFixit, Xlr8yourmac) I would hold off. EVERY Mac OS dot-zero was a beta in waiting unleased on users. Maybe not all t he issues are earth shattering, but given t he Firewire bug in 10.3.0 and the issues in some FW or USB drives not working with 10.6.0 it is also "nothing new" either unfortunately.

     

    OWC sells a kit to manage swapping out a notebook drive for another (SSD also), a bare case basically and a copy of CCC but you should have your OWN copy of OS X (DVD or Lion installer) to start fresh.

  • by RussW,

    RussW RussW Jan 21, 2014 6:19 PM in response to Daz1761
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 21, 2014 6:19 PM in response to Daz1761

    For those of you looking for an in-between'r, there are 2 unused eSata ports on the Apple motherboard waiting to be used. I bought a Newer adapter to connect and added 2 external eSata 2 ports to the machine, could be internal though. Substantial improvement over the FW 800 bus I was using. Cost $20. Pros bootable. Cons not hot-swappable.

     

    http://www.amazon.com/Newer-Technology-eSATA-Extender-Adapter/dp/B005OSCO3Y

     

    I am also going to add an 1TB SSD for start up and apps. This will go on a slide tray with another adapter to make it fit. Should help extend the life of this machine.

  • by YOMOON,

    YOMOON YOMOON Feb 7, 2014 9:09 AM in response to leomonkeyhanger
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 7, 2014 9:09 AM in response to leomonkeyhanger

    Hey Lemon,

     

    It's been a while for you but I'm confronted with the similar issue now and was wondering if you could assist.  From what I read using the Velocity Solo X2 in Raid 0 should have fixed your problem with write speed.  Did it?  My second question was where did you put the second drive so it wasn't flopping around anywhere?

  • by YOMOON,

    YOMOON YOMOON Feb 21, 2014 8:20 AM in response to Daz1761
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 21, 2014 8:20 AM in response to Daz1761

    I ended up using the Velocity Solo x2 with my Samsung 840 EVO 1TB and I'm getting great speeds in my Mac Pro 2008 3,1.  Bootcamp on the same drive was a success!

  • by Angela Merkel,

    Angela Merkel Angela Merkel Sep 24, 2016 6:02 AM in response to leomonkeyhanger
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 24, 2016 6:02 AM in response to leomonkeyhanger

    For those following this thread a few years down the line.  Although the MP 3,1is limited to sata 2   I have recently had to replace my boot disk an found the options out there are all sata 3.  I've installed the new sata 3 disk and I'm astonished to find during testing that it is delivering 186MB/s which is more than twice the speed I normally see from a sata 2 disk. So quite a boost for just the cost of the disk.

  • by John Lockwood,

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Sep 26, 2016 2:18 AM in response to Angela Merkel
    Level 6 (9,411 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Sep 26, 2016 2:18 AM in response to Angela Merkel

    Angela Merkel wrote:

     

    For those following this thread a few years down the line.  Although the MP 3,1is limited to sata 2   I have recently had to replace my boot disk an found the options out there are all sata 3.  I've installed the new sata 3 disk and I'm astonished to find during testing that it is delivering 186MB/s which is more than twice the speed I normally see from a sata 2 disk. So quite a boost for just the cost of the disk.

    This is probably a combination of a possible switch from 5600rpm to 7200rpm and a bigger cache on the hard disk. If as an example you were using an SSD on SATAIII it would be able to do over 400MBps.

     

    As a reminder to others who may not have read the entire thread there are two ways to add SATAIII to a classic Mac Pro, either by fitting a PCIe SATA controller card and cable(s) to bypass the original SATAII connection(s) or to use a PCIe card designed to hold a SATA SSD and which will have SATAIII on the card, this second approach is only possible for 2.5" disk drives whereas the first approach could be used for both 3.5" hard disks and 2.5" hard disks or SSD drives.

first Previous Page 3 of 3