Add SSD to Mac Early 2007?

Question

Add SSD to Mac Early 2007?

I have an Mac Early 2007, 2 x 2.8 Quad, with 22GB RAM, OS 10.8.5. I use the computer primarily for work in Photoshop and Lightroom. It does an OK job, but I definitely experience wait times with some processes. I upped the RAM, and that seemed to help, but I wonder if changing the internal hard drive out for an SSD would produce any noticeable improvement in the system. I'd like to wait for the next generation of MacPro before I jump to a new system.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on May 26, 2016 5:14 PM

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Answer 1

lllaass

Level 10

210,519 points

May 27, 2016 1:31 AM in response to Allen Birnbach

Yes, an SSD will speed up your Mac.

You can get an adopter so that you can use an SSD in one of the four HD sleds.

You can also get a PCLe cards that will accept a standard 2 1/2 inch SSD or a faster blade SSD

SSD Blade Drive for "Classic" Mac Pro

Fastest SSD in Mac Pro 2006 thru 2012, Leopard and above

PCIe SSD on Mac Pro 1.1 (First Gen) ... faster than SATA SSD?

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/mac-pro

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Answer 2

May 27, 2016 12:46 PM in response to Allen Birnbach

You should totally grab an SSD, it doesn't have to be super high-end to make a massive improvement. the one thing is your mac (by default) only has 3.5 inch drive bays so you would need a different drive sled, unless you put it into the first bay and rest it on something on the fan assembly

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Answer 3

May 31, 2016 8:57 AM in response to lllaass

Thanks for the reply. I made a typo. My machine is an Early 2008, MacPro 3,1.

I called OWC, and the rep I spoke to recommended their Mercury Electra 3G or Extreme Pro 6G that would go in the hard drive bay. He said that because the MacPro 3,1 has PCI 1, the Extreme Pro would still run at 3G, but would be a bit faster than the Mercury Electra because I am working on incompressible data while in Photoshop.

The difference is price is just $50, but I don't want to wast money either. Anyone have a sense of what speed increase I might see by buying the 6G vs the 3G?

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Answer 4

Jun 26, 2016 6:16 AM in response to Allen Birnbach

The SATA-II bays in the Mac pro silver towers run at 3 G bits/sec, equivalent to a maximum 375 M Bytes/sec. Many SSD drives have a 6G bits/sec interface, but are not really a lot faster than the bays. (Claims of SATA-III 6Gbytes/sec are often just specsmanship!)

I recently installed an SSD drive rated at a maximum transfer rate of 500-ish M Bytes/sec into a 375 M Bytes/sec bay. It runs good and fast and trouble free, and except for getting it aligned on the sled, was easy to do.

It runs MUCH faster than the Rotating Hard Drive it replaced.

You would need a sled adapter (not a new sled) for 2006, 2007, and 2008 models. For 2009 and later, you can buy a replacement sled.

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Answer 5

Jun 25, 2016 1:58 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for the reply. I made a typo. My machine is an Early 2008, MacPro 3,1.

I called OWC, and the rep I spoke to recommended their Mercury Electra 3G or Extreme Pro 6G that would go in the hard drive bay. He said that because the MacPro 3,1 has PCI 1, the Extreme Pro would still run at 3G, but would be a bit faster than the Mercury Electra because I am working on incompressible data while in Photoshop.

The difference is price is just $50, but I don't want to wast money either. Anyone have a sense of what speed increase I might see by buying the 6G vs the 3G.

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Answer 6

Jun 25, 2016 2:03 PM in response to Allen Birnbach

I purchased an OWC Accelsior 480GB PCI card, and am trying to install it.

The problem that I am running into is that my user folder is almost 900GB and I cannot find out where all that is. I've gone through every folder I can access and thrown out all movies, pictures, music and anything else in the user area. By checking the information window for all the folders that I can see, I should only have about 5MB.

So where is the rest of the 870GB, and how can I eliminate it? I hate to think that I have to buy a 1TB card!

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Answer 7

Jun 26, 2016 6:15 AM in response to Allen Birnbach

First use the Blue box in this article to hunt for a false Volume -- a failed copy or similar:

http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html

Then consider changing your User files to a different Volume as described in this article:

User Tip: Creating a lean, fast Boot Drive

.

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Answer 8

Jun 26, 2016 6:25 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for the suggestion! I purchased WhatSize6, and there are two problems to address. One is my mail(see photo). There is a recovered file of ~800GB and I wonder if I can just delete this. Is there a way to check to see what is in there and whether it exists someplace else as well?

The other item is a bunch of data in a folder of 25GB from users that are no longer on this machine. Can I just delete this as well?

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Answer 9

Jun 26, 2016 7:41 AM in response to Allen Birnbach

There is no way any mail service sent a single legitimate email 800GB in size.

If you are sure you will not need those other users' files, you could delete their Users (in Users&Groups), which provides an option to delete their files as well. You may want to copy them off to a different drive first.

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