Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Level 1

70 points

SSD Boot/System Drive for Mac Pro

I have a Mac Pro 5.1 and I’m planning to add a SSD as my boot drive. I have been researching replacing a boot drive, but I’m not sure exactly how best to go about it still so I thought I would start my own thread. Here is my setup and I would appreciate any assistance.

All 4 bays are currently in use so I was going to install the SSD in my open optical bay.

Currently, my home is located on an internal drive other than my boot/system drive.

Running ML 10.8.2

Only Apps on my boot/system drive amounting to approx 80gig

240GB Mercury Electra 6G SSD

Multi-Mount bracket from OWC (but might just use velcro to hold down the SSD)

Where I want to end up is the SSD as my boot/system drive, in my optical bay with all my apps and my current profile stored where it is now (a separate internal drive). I will then use the old system/boot drive for data.

Thoughts on how best to do this? Thanks

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 6 Gig RAM

Posted on Feb 18, 2013 9:19 AM

Best reply

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Posted on Feb 18, 2013 10:03 AM

why not just clone and go? qnd you do need to maintain a system restore image or clone going forward.

you want a yes do it? no real question or problem I see (velcro vs physical mount cage)

View in context

36 replies

Feb 25, 2013 9:33 AM in response to The hatter

• And anyone still running 10.5, lot of reasons to upgrade to SL

Not an option on that computer for reasons too long to explain. (I do have Macs with 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 as well. The latter have already been SSD'ed.) The 10.5 system is used so seldom I cannot justify adding an ssd, so the question was just out of curiosity.

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Feb 25, 2013 9:37 AM in response to Eustace Mendis

And you can get nearly the same if not better with

Western Digital 10K VelocityRaptor 250GB $104 / 500GB $140

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007V5A1BK/

Still get 180MB/sec and actually better writes, slightly more noise of course but not bad, 4ms seeks instead of 0.1ns, and lower IOPS but hey they are solid and have that SCSI feel to system.

Keep your OS/Apps separate from data on 2nd drive (or array)

Feb 25, 2013 9:47 AM in response to Eustace Mendis

Mac OS X support for TRIM in Apple drives was added at 10.6.

Since TRIM Enabler just patches Mac OS X modules to "not notice" drives may be third-party drives, TRIM Enabler will not work in 10.5. An interesting Side effect is that this limits reliable SSD operation to Intel Macs.

One work-around might be the Manual method I used from time-to-time before TRIM Enabler:

Use a Utility to consolidate free space. (This step alone does NOTHING for you!)

Immediately Erase free space to Zeroes.

Now you have all the free space collected together and Zeroed. IF the SSD drive controller paid attention to the zero data it would now know those blocks were free.

Feb 25, 2013 10:01 AM in response to The hatter

Thanks for the info. But I think that particular Mac will likely stay the way it is.

Feb 25, 2013 10:04 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks again, Grant.

4Runner Author

Level 1

70 points

Feb 26, 2013 2:02 PM in response to Eustace Mendis

Seems like a stirred a hornets nest. Ceartainly not my intention as I just needed advice on how best to go about setting up my SDD as my startup drive. Wow. A couple of comments. First, OWC did respond with TRIM isn't necessary but they didn't say not to use it. Is there a downside to using TRIM? I'm not sure, but the one article I did quote stated said to research its use with SandForce drives as there could be conflicts. I'm summarizing. Again, I haven't found a true negative to using TRIM with my OWC Mecury Electra. I'm not an expert by any means. I'll continue to research, but I'm leaning towards enabling TRIM.

Back to my original topic and to provide an update. I received my SSD today, installed it in the optical bay, using Carbon Copy Cloner, I cloned my original startup drive to my new SSD (after formatting it of course). CCC also indicated that if intended to use the new drive as a startup that I should create a recovery volume. I did that as well. The clone took approximately 50min for the roughly 55GB of data. Once complete, I rebooted, then went into System Preferences and selected my new "Macintosh SSD" drive as my startup drive. Selected restart and was up and running. I clearly see the speed difference. Everything is faster. Spotlight is almost instantaneously providing results. Aperture opens and closes much faster. I used to have to wait on close to "updating xxx" and now it just closes. Very nice. I will watch my performance over the coming months for sure.

Thanks for all the input and I hope this thread will help someone else down the road.

SSD Boot/System Drive for Mac Pro