Best COMPATIBLE ssd for NVidia MCP79 chipset?

AmedeeBulle wrote:

Since I had taken the HDD out as well to set set a jumper to force the 3Gbps, I decided to give the SSD a last chance and booted the system with the SSD in the HDD tray...

... and hooray, I have now a full 3Gbps on the SSD.

Where is this mysterious "jumper" in the iMac9,1 which you say forces an SSD in the HDD slot to operate consistently at 3G speeds?

(Furthermore, the link you posted seems to have been blocked by Apple for some reason.)

I was maybe unclear about this...

You can set a jumper on the WD Blue HD to force it in 3Gbps. That would have solved the fact that it did not always negotiate at 3G. But since I have now the SSD in the HDD tray, I have the nice WD Blue on my desk...

I guess my screenshot was removed because I left the serial on it. Here is it again without it -- hopefully this should be good.

Thank you for clarifying that the "jumper" was on your WD HDD and not the SSD. But I can only say that I am further confused. You are getting 3G speeds "sometimes" but I am not getting them ever.

I thought it might be the 2.5" to 3.5" adapter I used:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B0088QXTK6/

But if the tiny PCB on that adapter was bad or had solder defects, I would assume the connection itself would be problematic and not work at all sometimes, rather than drop me to 1.5Gb/s speeds. But since my Samsung EVO 850 500GB drive works consistently within that adapter (albeit slower than it should), I can only assume the reason I cannot get 3G speeds lies elsewhere. But again, this makes no sense because:

1) The MacBook5,5 gets 3G speeds with the same Samsung EVO 850 SSD, and

2) You apparently get 3G speeds with your Samsung EVO inside an iMac9,1 "sometimes."

All have the same exact NVidia controller!

It makes no sense at all!

JDW1 wrote:

Thank you for clarifying that the "jumper" was on your WD HDD and not the SSD. But I can only say that I am further confused. You are getting 3G speeds "sometimes" but I am not getting them ever.

Not sometimes, always: I get consistently 3G with the SSD in the HDD bay!

The 'sometimes' was with the HDD -- hence the jumper.

JDW1 wrote:

I thought it might be the 2.5" to 3.5" adapter I used:

You should at least try with a direct connection -- when my SSD is in the optical bay with an adapter it stays in 1.5G as well... (Consistently -- I never had 3G in that bay).

The reason I used this 2.5" to 3.5" adapter (to mount the Samsung SSD in the HDD slot of my office iMac9,1) is because it was the only one reasonably priced. The Newer Technology AdaptaDrive (sold by OWC and on Amazon USA) costs a mere $14, but on Amazon Japan (I live in Japan) it sells for a mind boggling, stab-the-customer-in-the-back-why-don't-ya, $50. But the concept of both products is the same insofar as there is a tiny PCB on both adapters the pass the signal through, due to the way the SSD must mount inside the bracket. But I have not seen hoards of people complaining about the AdaptaDrive for any speed (even 6G), so I assume it works fine. But if it works fine, why would the one I purchased cause a slowdown? Again, it doesn't make sense.

Even if I spend the time to reopen my iMac9,1 and direct connect, I can't close the Mac in that condition because I don't have a bracket that allows for direct connect (without the use of that little straight-thru PCB).

All I can do is take a deep breath and sigh. :-( But thank you for clarifying your experience. The info you provided is much appreciated.

I have to agree with you, all this does not make too much sense...

JDW1 wrote:

Even if I spend the time to reopen my iMac9,1 and direct connect, I can't close the Mac in that condition because I don't have a bracket that allows for direct connect (without the use of that little straight-thru PCB).

Well, if you have done it once, it does not take more than 10 minutes to open it again 😉

What I first did was connecting the SSD loose in the Mac, putted the screen back in place and then booted it again without re-assembling further. That way you know if a direct connect helps or not.

When I saw it was working for me, I removed the screen again and mounted the SSD properly. I printed this tray -- it is not perfect, as the power cable is really short you can't use the tray holes to screw the SSD, but it is good enough to secure it in place...

In case it might help someone, size of the SSD also matters, from my experience.

I have a mid 2009 macbook (6,1 model) with this problematic NVIDIA chipset.

I was able to use a Sandisk Plus 120GB at 3gb speed (SATA2) without any trouble.

A Samsung 250 Gb 850 Evo though is beach balling all the time.

And exactly the same Sandisk, but a 240gb rather than a 120gb model, does not want to be detected at all. In a USB enclosure it is fine, but not in the optical bay.

The 850 Evo in the optical bay is also unstable. (It installed fine but unusable after and is not detected at boot anymore. This was using El CApitan).

But the 120GB Sandisk is fine! Both Sandisks have the latest firmware. So there is something different in the 240gb model.

In summary, 120gb SSD detects fine, anything higher and even booting is a problem (could not even select a startup disk, it just hung).

Basically, you won't really know until you try, it seems, with this NVIDIA chipset!

These are the results for OCZ ARC100 240gb on a MBP5,5 mid 2009 with Nvidia mcp79 sata controller running Snow Leopard 10.6.8

muse77, yours is an interesting case and the first I've heard about beach balls. All I've read has indicated a stupid, foolish, idiotic slowdown from 3G to a painful 1.5Gb/s. Interestingly, you don't need a mounting bracket for your MBP6,1, which indicates that either the Samsung EVO 240 is bad (possible) or that wicked NVidia controller is more buggy than we thought. Why in THE world Apple chose that silly controller is beyond all my comprehension. In any case, you ought to test that SSD in something else or return it. It could be the SSD.

Apple chose that controller because it worked at the time. Those of us that have connected SSD's to our older macs are mixing new and old technology, sometimes that doesn't work well. My macbook with the Nvidia controller works perfect with a PRE Evo Samsung 840 250gb drive. When I installed it it was the single best computer upgrade I'd ever done, so good it gave me the incentive to open my iMac and install an SSD in it's optical bay. Don't blame Apple, it looks to me from reading this thread, and others, that it's the EVO drives that don't play well with the MCP79 controller which we know doesn't play well with Sandforce drives. Samsung changed "something" when they dropped the 840 line and introduced the EVO, I don't know what it is but their drives worked fine up until then.

+extra info

The nand controller of the OCZ ARC 100 is "OCZ Barefoot 3 M10"

It is not the Samsung 850 Evo per se! Like I said, the 240 gb Sandisk Plus is not recognised at all, whereas the Sandisk 120 Plus works fine.

So it is possibly a different controller on both the Samsung 850 and the Sandisk 240, or some other unknown issue.

In system report, under the Nvidia chipset, under the optical bay SATAII port, the system reported:

Unknown

That is very strange to me (this was for the Sandisk plus 240; a PRAM reset did not help either).

I am not disappointed about the EVo 850 too much, as that speed is wasted anyway, but am disappointed I cannot upgrade to higher than 120gb so far on Samsung nor Sandisk.

Anyway, I guess the key learning is to buy a drive you can test and return if needed!

Update: my beach balling was due to a bad Sata connector attached to the drive caddy. (The one that came from the original superdrive). I replaced it with a second hand one from Ebay and now all is well with the Sandisk drives! Have not tried the Samsung evo again but assume that would be ok too.

Another one that doesn't work: The Kingston HyperX Savage 480Gb (SHSS37A/480G) has a Phison S10 quad core controller. It works in a USB enclosure, but when I put it in my late 2009 27" iMac 10.1, I get write speeds of about 220Mb/sec and read speed close to 0 (zero). Booting off it is impossible. I've tried changing the Sata cable (and that procedure is a royal pain in the behind), but no change. Kingston support confirmed that this drive has issues with the Nvidia controller, and offered a return (good and fast service via email - kudos to Kingston for that), but a friend will take it off my hands for what I paid for it.

Crucial claims the MX200 should work in my Mac, so I'll try one of those...

As for finding Sata II drives these days - one of the biggest suppliers in Norway has none in their inventory, so it'll have to be a Sate III drive that works at II speeds. I'll report back on how the Crucial drive worked.

Johan-Kr

Hi johan-kristian, nice to hear that you decided to try out the MX200. Do you have any results as to whether the negotiated speed was consistently at sata 2 speeds? Reading through the 7 pages in this thread, I have learned a bunch about the intricacies of installing an ssd into the imac early 2009 (9,1) with the nvidia MCP79 controller.

In the end, I have concluded that the Crucial M500 will work but still dont know whether the MX200 actually works consistently as advertised by Crucial. In the end, I decided to go with OCW's Mercury Electra 3G SSD. I'll report back once I get that into the machine.

Let us know how MX200 fares in your imac with the dreaded nvidia MCP79! Thanks :-)

EDIT: Many of the current SSD's are listed here and show which controllers are used. I imagine that several of them (esp for the Samsung devices), the controller name is just a front for the much maligned SandForce controller...