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Is this SSD is compatible with my Mac Pro Mid 2010?

i have an mac pro mid 2010 https://support.apple.com/kb/sp589?locale=en_US


with :


Storage

  • Four 3.5-inch cable-free, direct-attach drive bays with built-in independent 3Gb/s Serial ATA channels; four internal drive carriers included
  • Up to 8TB of internal storage6
    in bays 1 through 4 using hard drives or solid-state drives in the following capacities:
  • 1TB or 2TB hard drives, Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 32MB cache


    512GB solid-state drive, Serial ATA 3Gb/s



    this SSD is compatible w my mac ? if yes, i’ll need an internal cable or adapter/support?


    https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/ssd-860-e vo-2-5--sata-iii-250gb-mz-76e250b-am/


    thanks



    [Re-Titled by Host]


Posted on Sep 20, 2018 11:35 AM

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Posted on Sep 21, 2018 11:35 AM

You need a sled or adapter that holds the drive against the left side of the slot. Adapters with two cute little rails are useless. This adapter from OWC works great.


OWC Mount Pro: 2.5-Inch Drive Sled for Mac Pro 2009- 2012


You can also put it in slot 1 (at the front) with no sled and put a block of wood on top of the fan to support it.


Those sizes are complete nonsense -- you can go MUCH larger if you like. Those were the sizes Apple was selling when that system was released. There are no practical upper limits to drive sizes in that Mac.

6 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Sep 21, 2018 11:35 AM in response to corruptdream

You need a sled or adapter that holds the drive against the left side of the slot. Adapters with two cute little rails are useless. This adapter from OWC works great.


OWC Mount Pro: 2.5-Inch Drive Sled for Mac Pro 2009- 2012


You can also put it in slot 1 (at the front) with no sled and put a block of wood on top of the fan to support it.


Those sizes are complete nonsense -- you can go MUCH larger if you like. Those were the sizes Apple was selling when that system was released. There are no practical upper limits to drive sizes in that Mac.

Sep 21, 2018 4:59 AM in response to corruptdream

Yes that will work - ideally as mentioned by Grant with a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter. However unless you do something else this SSD despite itself being a SATA III device will be limited to SATA II speed because that is what the speed of the built-in Mac Pro drive bays is.


My experience with similar SATA SSD drives in a Mac Pro is that via SATA II it would deliver about 250MBps whereas via SATA III it would deliver about 450MBps.


It is potentially possible to upgrade the drive bays in a Mac Pro to SATA III but this is probably more money than it justifiable, you would need both a PCIe SATA III controller card and a means of converting the drive bay cables. I have done this myself a long time ago but I bought the stuff second hand and finding in particular the special replaement drive sleds and cables is going to be more difficult these days.


An alternative approach is to mount the same Samsung SATA SSD on a special PCIe adapter card directly - not in one of the drive bays, this would get you SATA III speed. See - https://www.apricorn.com/upgrades/vel-solox2 as one example.


An even faster option is to get not a SATA SSD but instead a PCI M2 AHCI SSD and mount that on a different type of PCIe adapter. See - https://www.angelbird.com/prod/wings-px1-1117/?category=1 as it mentions you need to use an AHCI type SSD for boot support but an NVMe type could be used for data storage only e.g. video editing. These types of SSD could reach about 1500MBps as you can see much faster!

Is this SSD is compatible with my Mac Pro Mid 2010?

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