I have a late 2013 Mac Pro which came with a 250GB SSD drive. Can I install another 500GB SSD drive onto this machine?
Thanks in advance,
Justin
No the 2013 Mac Pro only has a single internal slot to fit an internal SSD drive. Either you need to replace the existing SSD with a single bigger internal one, or you need to connect the second one via Thunderbolt or USB3 in an external case.
The Mac Pro late 2013 ships with an SSD intended to be the Boot/Applications drive. Even the largest 1GB drive option is not nearly large enough to store Edited Video or other large files, and there are no other ports available for Internal drives of any description.
It is assumed that you will keep your files on other drives as John Lockwood said, stored in ThunderBolt enclosures or a limited number of USB-3 drives.
Hey there, thanks so much for your response!
Thats my current setup, I have a 256gb SSD from which my OS and software run off of and my 2TB Lacie thunderbolt hard drive which has all my video files and projects that I work on. The problem is that the software and OS takes up between 150GB and 200GB of space.
The problem is that I need to share files with colleagues using my public folder, and it also gets clogged up by the downloads folder and documents folder which constantly need cleaning up, so I would like to get another drive to solve this problem. Would really appreciate your recommendations!
Officially Apple do not sell bigger internal SSD drive upgrades for the Mac Pro. Unofficially secondhand ones can often be found on eBay, some of these are from MacBook Pros and while they will fit and work will not have the heat-sink fitted to genuine Mac Pro versions.
Note: Apple's SSD uses a proprietary connector, you cannot buy and use a standard SSD e.g. a Samsung, it has to be specifically designed to fit Apple's unique connector. (Like the following one.)
OWC do sell a upgrade to replace the existing SSD. See https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDA13MP1.0K/
However with regards to sharing files with other users, it is possible to share a folder from your external drive so you do not need to 'clog up' your internal drive to do this. You can also tell Safari etc. to use a different location i.e. your external drive to save downloads. While programs might default to pointing to the Documents folder nothing stops you saving to a different location.
Take a look at this article and the ones it links to:
User Tip: Creating a lean, fast Boot Drive
It describes moving the Home Folder off the Boot Drive.
Adding a second SSD drive
