I know that there are no third-party solutions currently available, but if I want to go to the 1TB drive as soon as I can.
I understand that Thunderbolt 2 external SSDs aren't as fast as the internal PCIe type so I'd rather go the internal route but I don't know whether Apple or their dealer and service network can offer the internal ugrade.
Anyone know? Thanks in advance!
Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)
I understand that Thunderbolt 2 external SSDs aren't as fast as the internal PCIe type
How did you decide that?
I'm no expert (understatement!) but I googled around and found some math somewhere that showed that PCIe was a lot faster. However, it may be that both PCEi and Thnderbolt two are baove the ceiling of the fastest data read/write speeds of the fastest SSDs?
If there's no speed advantage to replacing the internal SSD then adding an external one vie TB2 would certainly be a lot easier...
ThunderBolt-2 connection:
theoretical 20,000 Megabits.sec /8 for 2500 MegBytes/sec
SATA-3 connection (e.g., inside a ThunderBolt enclosure):
theoretical 6 Megabits/sec /8 for 750 megaBytes/sec
SSD speeds:
Typical SATA-3 SSD speeds: Order of 400 MegaBytes/sec
Fastest SSDs seen to date of any Interface: about 900 MegaBytes/sec
OK, thank you. So can I take that to mean that putting a fast external SSD or maybe, because it's easy and off-the-shelf, a Lacie Little big disk TB2, I will get speeds about as fast as I'd get from the internal SSD on a late 2013 Mac Pro?
Yes, I think that is correct.
If you could get the fastest SSDs we have seen to date, they would be slightly slowed by the limitations of SATA-3 -- but not crippled by any means.
I'm a bit out of my depth here (as you can probably tell) but I thought that SATA 3 was slower than PCIe - certainly the internal SSD on the Mac Pro can clock speeds of well over 1,000 MB/s - up to nearly 1,400 on my testing.
Best case burst of around 1,000 MBytes/sec would be slowed to a transfer time of "only" 750 MBytes/sec making its fastest transfer.
Considering that is still about 6 times faster than a Rotating Hard Drive, I doubt you will feel short-changed.
I think this Thunderbolt2 product is down your alley.
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/Thunderbolt-OWC-Mercury-Helios2.html
Thanks - I have been thinking of that - it seems that the Lacie product is on permanent backorder so the OWC might be a good option and probably less expensive.
".... only $499!!"
PCIe cards extra, of course. Luckily, 1TB SSDs are getting cheaper, and nothing like when 500GB were being sold by OWC for mere $1499 couple years ago?
Only $499? that nMP needs a full wardrobe change to go with it!
A full wadrobe is currentlybeing assembled ;-)
I got two external 8TB G-Raid thunderbolts, one running as a RAID 0 master volume and one as an hourly Carbon Copy Clone backup. I had a Pegasus2 R6 12TB but it went back (failed after 24 hours and was generally a PITA) even though it was extremely fast. I'll probably add the Lacie 1TB Little Big SSD Thunderbolt 2 soon but I might just wait until prices drop and add a 6TB external SSD array also in RAID 0. That would be FUN!
I want to go from 256 SSD to the Full Monty - can I get this done by Apple?
