SSD Blade Drive for "Classic" Mac Pro

. I have two PCIe cards, one of which is: Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter (Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242), and the other is PCIe M.2 NGFF SSD Adapter Card for Apple Mac Pro 2006-2012 -> Samsung SM951 PCI and my hard drive is Samsung SM951 AHCI (MZHPV128HDGL), with neither card, recognize the SSD, please help me? For days I've been struggling with this, thank you very much.

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Answer 2

Sep 21, 2017 11:56 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Hi friends, I have a problem, I purchased a PCIe card, compatible with my Mac Pro 2.1, and it is recognized by the system:

pci144d, a801:

Type: AHCI Controller

Driver Installed: No

MSI: No

Bus: PCI

Slot: Slot-4

Vendor ID: 0x144d

Device ID: 0xa801

Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x144d

Subsystem ID: 0xa801

Revision ID: 0x0001

Link Width: x4

Link Speed: 2.5 GT / s

but it does NOT recognize the SSD Samsumg SM 951 AHCI (MZHPV128HDGL), and I do not know what the reason is, should I load the drivers, which appear as NOT installed? and in that case how can I do? Thank you

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Answer 3

lllaass

Level 10

210,465 points

Feb 28, 2015 2:41 AM in response to The hatter

Why not make it a User Tip?

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Answer 4

The hatter Author

Level 9

61,001 points

Mar 1, 2015 11:20 AM in response to The hatter

RAM City http://www.ramcity.com.au

Provides support and adapters for use with various M.2 blade SSD drives

Samsung XP941 512GB M.2 PCIe x4 80mm SSD

Quote:

When combined with a M.2 to PCIe adapter, the Samsung XP941 provides class-leading storage performance in desktop machines and is also fully bootable in all cMP Mac Pro models (2006-2012, excluding the 'tube' model). See the table at the bottom of this page for approximate throughput figures.

* * * W A R N I N G * * * *

Do not run Parted Magic's secure erase on this drive. It will render it useless and void the warranty.

Secure Erase will brick the XP941.

https://www.ramcity.com.au/blog/how-to-install-windows-8.1-on-the-samsung-xp941- ss/138296

To use this SSD in a desktop machine or cMP Mac Pro (all 2006-2012 models prior to the current cylindrical shaped one), you will need a free PCIe slot, and an M.2 to PCIe adapter. Booting is supported in the Mac Pro.

Note, system boot on Windows desktop PC's is only supported on certain Z97 and X99 chipset-based motherboards with built-in M.2 sockets. Booting with the XP941 is not currently supported in a Windows PC with the XP941 drive in conjunction with the adapter , but it works perfectly without drivers as a storage drive.

Review our M.2 SSD compatibility list blog post if you are not sure if this drive is compatible in your machine.

You might also need....

A M.2 (NGFF) to PCIe adapter card - so you can install this drive in a standard desktop case or Mac Pro tower computer.

A PCIE M.2 SSD to USB 3.0 external enclosure - so you can clone, copy, or retrieve data from this drive or an existing one already in your system.

* To achieve maximum throughput in the 2008 Mac Pro, one or two of the PCIe 2.0 x16 slots must be used. These models have two x16 PCIe 2.0 slots and two x4 PCIe 1.0 slots. The latter PCIe 1.0 slots will only allow up to 585-753MB/s data transfer rates.

Data Throughput Rates

Throughput rates are provided in the table below. See the performance notes regarding slower PCIe 2.0 x2 and PCIe 1.0 slots

** From the review at barefeats.com: "Using the 'Expansion Slot Utility' in the System/Library/CoreServices folder, we reconfigured the PCIe slot speeds to various combinations of 4, 8, and 16 lane slots to benchmark the XP941. The transfer speeds above were achieved using the 4 lane slots. The 8 lane and 16 lane slots did not produce any faster transfer speeds. On other other hand, if you use a 1 lane slot, the transfer speeds drop to 200MB/s READ and 170MB/s WRITE. We tested with both OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard. OS X Tiger kernel panicked at startup. Though we didn't try it, it should also work with OS X Lion, the last Mac OS to be officially supported on the 2006 Mac Pro."

https://www.ramcity.com.au/buy/samsung-xp941-512gb-m.2-pcie-x4-80mm-ssd/MZHPU512 HCGL-00000

"How to Clone an existing drive to a new SSD" Windows but there were some good tips like this:

Samsung XP941 512GB M.2 PCIe x4 80mm SSD

https://www.ramcity.com.au/blog/how-to-clone-an-existing-drive-to-a-new-ssd/1382 97

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Answer 5

The hatter Author

Level 9

61,001 points

Mar 3, 2015 9:05 AM in response to The hatter

The PCIe SSD revolution is upon us. So far nearly every controller vendor has shown off its PCIe SSD controller design and the latest news I've heard is that we'll be seeing a large number of PCIe SSDs from numerous manufacturers in the second half of 2015

Samsung SM951 (512GB) PCIe SSD Review

- the successor of the XP94

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Answer 6

Apr 11, 2015 8:20 AM in response to The hatter

Thank you for the great info. My only issue is that TRIM is not natively supported on the XP941 and now Yosemite seems to disable any third-party TRIM enabler.

Gina

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Answer 7

Apr 11, 2015 9:47 AM in response to LifeboatParty

Although in-line TRIM is not easy to Install, you could install TRIM Enabler into an older version of Mac OS X (10.6.8 through 10.9.4) on any-old-drive and use it for weekly on monthly run of Disk Utility (Repair Disk) to eliminate unused blocks.

When properly installed and activated, this produces a very satisfying "Trimming unused blocks" message in Disk Utility and pauses for a minute or so while the blocks are freed up.

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Answer 8

The hatter Author

Level 9

61,001 points

Apr 11, 2015 10:24 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I would never use an older version of Disk Utility from a prior OS and especially with the changes possible under the hood that Mavericks may not know about.

However there is nothing to stop someone from doing so. Or, create a small system maintenance volume where you don't use it except for this, where the new kernel signing can be turned off - and afterall it is only necessary on a one-time basis.

You just turn TE off, make a clone if you are smart before ANY OS changes and update, then re-enable after applying (10.10.3) update. Or if you are in the habit of zapping PRAM.

But head over to TE support pages.

FAQ and App Support: https://www.cindori.org/help/

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Answer 9

abfsc

Level 1

0 points

Jun 9, 2015 11:21 AM in response to The hatter

I started looking into reliable PCIe SSD's and it seems Samsungs are the way to go. Get ready for my lack of expertise to shine through. And sorry for the rapid fire questions, I didn't want to turn this into a dissertation.

Some PCIe SSD options come preassembled, so its just plug and play, but these Samsung models listed here are just the blades. Are these parts intended for laptops? If so are there desktop versions of these Samsung drives? Or versions of these Samsung drives that resemble the Accelsior with eSATA ports on the back? Or do I have to find a M.2 to PCIe adapter which has the eSATA ports built in. And if so does this M.2 adapter affect speed compared to the way the Accelsior was just plug and play (or did OWC just do the work for me and attach SSD blades to a M.2 adapter) and if so is this process of attaching an SSD to an M.2 adapter hard for somebody with no real tech background, other than popping in RAM and a couple Accelsiors?

I apologize if I'm asking a bunch of questions that were covered in links you listed above but for some reason those links are dead ends and the more I try to research on my own, the more I feel like I'm experiencing the rabbit hole effect. So before I end up on the deep web looking at mangled kangaroo fetuses I thought I'd reach out to somebody who seems like they've got a good grip on this kind of thing.

I'll be using the SSD for my OS X (10.3) Adobe programs (video/photo editing) and project folders (4k video, RAW images) and I'm looking for the fastest, reliable HD solution. Samsung x SSD x PCIe seems the way to go but maybe by now there's a better option so please feel free to impart your wisdom. Thanks!

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Answer 10

Jun 9, 2015 5:38 PM in response to abfsc

abfsc, are you looking to put one of these drives in your 2010 Mac Pro tower? Samsung has a couple of good blades available: the XP941 and the slightly faster SM951, which comes in a couple of flavors (NVME and AHCI). These blades can be used in certain laptops and on certain motherboards without an adapter. On the older (noncylindrical) Mac Pro towers (cMP), a PCIe adapter is needed. The Lycom DT-120 will work and is not costly. If you get Samsung, buy this adapter; others (Sintech) will not work as they were made for a different type of blade. The blade goes into the PCIe adapter not unlike a RAM installation, although you will probably have to remove a stand-off screw from the center and then put the bottom part in the hole farthest from where the blade is inserted, using the top part of the screw to hold the blade in place. After that, the adapter goes in just like any other PCIe card. I am not sure why you would need eSATA. I have used both models of the Samsung blades and currently have them both in a 2009 Mac Pro (4,1 flashed to 5,1) in a RAID 0 configuration: in this model Mac Pro, the SM951 will not work at full speed in Slot 2, so I have the XP941 there and the SM951 in Slot 3. If you get one drive, then you may as well get the SM951, as it is slightly faster and not that much more money (sometimes, it is cheaper and, as I write this, is $387.99 at MacMall). I would recommend Slot 3. There are some concerns with non-Apple drives and the lack of native trim support. If this is a concern for you, then you can pick up Disk Sensei by Cindori for $19.99 and clean up the drive. Temperature has not been an issue with these drives. I boosted the fan speed in my tower, but only because I put in Xeon 3.46 quad-core processors. Any of these Samsung drives will be an incredible speed increase over the stock drive and may even be noticeable compared to other SSDs. I doubt you will notice any real-world speed difference among the XP941 and SM951 models, but the latter is faster on paper and (right now) cheaper. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Gina

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Answer 11

Jun 9, 2015 6:50 PM in response to LifeboatParty

Reading the fine print on Cindori's site, I am left with the impression that the installation of in-line TRIM still has exactly the same installation issues. Disk Sensei is a nice new Utility, but does not appear to break new ground on the issue(s) surrounding TRIM and TRIM Enabler.

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Answer 12

Jun 9, 2015 7:17 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Trim is not natively supported on any non-Apple drives, and there is no work-around in Yosemite to make that happen. Disk Sensei simply provides a convenient way to manually trim and maintain the health of the drive. One can, of course, choose an Apple drive on eBay and use a Sintech adapter. Speeds will be comparable. Apple drives go as large as 1 TB, too. The price is generally higher. All drives are funny. Some people have multiple fails, whereas others use the same drive for years with no issues. The one thing I can guarantee is that some people will have drive failures and blame the lack of trim support, but there will be others using drives with native support who will have to find something else to blame. All drives have a finite life, which is unpredictable. That being said, this is the single best upgrade one can make to breathe new life into an old tower. In the not-so-distant past, people paid literally thousands to upgrade towers with new processors without seeing a tenth of the real-world performance difference one can now get with these little blades. My advice is to have multiple backups and, when a drive does fail after a few years, get a new one (or a new system).

Gina

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Answer 13

Jun 9, 2015 7:41 PM in response to LifeboatParty

I agree with the fundamental points you are making. But I do not want casual readers to think that this is magic.

What Cindori is calling "Manual TRIM" appears to be "Erase free space with Zeroes". You can do that with Disk Utility. Cindori site says that if you want automatic TRIM, you still must defeat kext signing.

None of this is BAD, but nor is it magic. I have been advocating "Erase free space with Zeroes" for years as a good second best if you cannot do real TRIM for some reason.

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Answer 14

Jun 9, 2015 8:22 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant:

I agree with you, and add that, whatever method one uses, it does not make sense to go crazy with erasing free space because doing so is, in essence, another write to the drive.

Gina

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Answer 15

abfsc

Level 1

0 points

Jun 9, 2015 9:59 PM in response to LifeboatParty

That was the reply of my prayers Gina! Might be the first time I can say I'm all out of questions when it comes to computer tech. Little backstory.. I had an OWC Accelsior, but that failed on me twice in a total of a weeks usage time, so I'm a lot more gun shy now about third party parts in my Mac. And thanks Grant for bringing up the points about no TRIM support still being an issue. I'm going to have to look into that some more but I do now realize with HD's, you're just playing the waiting game. It's not if but when the drive is gonna **** the bed. Time to get militant about backing my work up. Thanks again!

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