I have an early 2008 mac pro. I purchased a SATA III SSD to use as my boot drive. What is the difference between using a PCIe Drive Card and putting it in a drive bay?
1482409
Big difference is all MacPro computers 2006 to 2012 have a SATA II controller built in, you are adding in a SATA III controller which is theoretically twice as fast as the built in controller. Although you will not get twice the speed as the internal, it will take pull advantage of the speed of your SSD where the internal controller will not. Another big advantage is that controller has a plat you can add to it and put two SSDs on it and use a RAID 1 or 0 allowing you to make a mirrored set so you are redundant (you can loose a drive and still be up and running) or stripe across two drives making them one logical drive and increase speed significantly. Your internal MACPRO slots with a HDD will top out with 4 drives running raid 0 at about 540Mbps, just two SSD drives on your SATA III card will be well over 660Mbps even if they are slow SSDs. Adding in a second TEMPO and configuring 4 drives RAID 0 will be around 1280Mbps! You can use the SSD to run your system boot drive while using cheaper HDD in the drive slots for data and backups.
1482410
Read/Write speeds are limited to Sata II (3Gb/s) on the 2008 Mac Pro motherboard headers, but using the Sonnet card allows full Sata III (6Gb/s) speeds.
1482411
If the 2008 Mac Pro has SATA III not that much, you will find that these cards operate at roughly 5Gbps so a little slower than native SATA III, but if you have SATAII this will be a nice improvement. I use this card and it works rather well.
1482412
Much faster data transfer times withteh PCle Drive Card instead of the drive bay. Google the question and you'll get details.
1482413
The bus speed is different I think. But I can't remember which is faster right now!
424543
I can assure that the pro version runs faster - they have different chipsets. Take a look at http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1767466/samsung-840-pro-ssd-samsung-840-evo-ssd.html
2137207
"Hi, I've installed this drive in my late 2010 MacBook Pro and it worked without problems. I don't know your drive, but according to this page: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HTS545025B9SA02-NDW-R it seems that it is a SATA drive. Since all SSD drives are SATA you should not have any problem at all by replacing it. Now, since your MacBook is 2009, the drive won't be able to deliver more than 1.5 Gbps or 3.0 Gbps ( it is capable of delivering 6.0 Gbps in a faster system such a Core I5 or Core I7) But don't worry, your laptop will be way faster than it is now. Should you have more questions, please contact me via e-mail: rrllamas@gmail.com"
1944774
I've used both the 1&2 TB in my early 2008 MAC Pro; they work prefect. No issues to report.
431873
Answer 1 that you already received is the right answer. SATA is a relatively new connection design and used for all new MacBooks except for those with the new Solid State Hard Drive which is soldered to the logic board. Order the one based on your model and serial number. Good luck.
1564037
Normal SSD's, like the SanDisk Extreme, plug into typical SATA connectors and power connectors. They do not normally come with special mounting brackets to adapt them to a 3.5" drive bay. Some drive bays have screw hole alignments and screws for mounting SSD's, or even special smaller form factor bays for them. Plus you can just buy a cheap mounting bracket. I have even taped an SSD to a drive bay before.
657839
A drive in this bay will perform exactly the same as a drive mounted internally. The power and SATA ports are merely pass-thru connectors, so it is the same as connecting them directly to the motherboard and power supply.
514550
Sorry, I do not know anything about Macs. But, I would check your owners manual. The SATA connector should be the same, but the height of the drive could be an issue, it might not fit in your HDD slot. Good luck.
1934081
I havent tried booting from a PCie on a PC. But it did work without problems on my macpro 1,5
124537
Apple no longe puts Optical Drives in any of their computers. I still use them, so I bought a USB 3.0 external BluRay R/W player to use with mine. Also note that the internal SSD boot drive is only 256GB and is intended only to hold your System and applications. You will probably need external Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 drives to hold your work. If you don't understand what I'm telling you, please go to the Apple site and do more research about these machines.
1420202
Sorry I have no experience using the card in mac. I used the card on PC machines. My guess is as J Luster suggested ... the mac motherboard is scanning all the SATA ports 1st for a bootable HD before finding the AVSx2. On a PC one would have to look into the BIOS to change the boot order to boot off the PCI cards 1st. I found problems with AVSx2 recognition depending upon whether or not I was also running the motherboard in legacy vs AHCI HD configuration. I don't bother with the card anymore.
1355658
Ps- I went with this product before my knowledge of pcie drives. I would have chosen that over this product and an ssd. If you can afford it I think your performance will be way better.
445422
If it's a same size bay as a pc harddrive bay in the Mac Pro, (I am not a Mac person), then it should work.
1605578
Stephen, Sonnet stated that the limit was the early Mac 2008. On my Mac which is an early 2008 Mac Pro, when I installed the card, you where able to see the SSD but I wasn't able to boot the SSD so I went to their support page and downloaded a firmware upgrade and now it does does boot and works flawlessly.
1915225
It didn't work on my older Mac Pro from 2009. The connectors don't line up vertically or horizontally. I'm not sure if it's the exact same product, but I can tell by the picture that it has the drive centered, so it definitely wouldn't work in my computer. It would have to be offset to compensate for the smaller drive. I can't say for sure it won't work for you if your Mac is newer, but it seems unlikely if they still have the slide in trays. You would need something designed specifically for a Mac Pro to line up the drive connectors. Unfortunately, the standard has the connectors on one side of the drive so the smaller size messes everything up. It didn't work on my older Mac Pro from 2009. The connectors don't line up vertically or horizontally. I'm not sure if it's the exact same product, but I can tell by the picture that it has the drive centered, so it definitely wouldn't work in my computer. It would have to be offset to compensate for the smaller drive. I can't say for sure it won't work for you if your Mac is newer, but it seems unlikely if they still have the slide in trays. You would need something designed specifically for a Mac Pro to line up the drive connectors. Unfortunately, the standard has the connectors on one... » Read More It didn't work on my older Mac Pro from 2009. The connectors don't line up vertically or horizontally. I'm not sure if it's the exact same product, but I can tell by the picture that it has the drive centered, so it definitely wouldn't work in my computer. It would have to be offset to compensate for the smaller drive. I can't say for sure it won't work for you if your Mac is newer, but it seems unlikely if they still have the slide in trays. You would need something designed specifically for a Mac Pro to line up the drive connectors. Unfortunately, the standard has the connectors on one side of the drive so the smaller size messes everything up. « Show Less
162927
Yes, on my Mac Pro tower, I've successfully used bus powered CF & SD card readers and portable hard drives and thumb drives. Only USB 3.0 PCI card for Macs that I know of that does this with no issues.
1152253
I can confirm the Sabrent BK-HDDF will NOT work in a Mac Pro. I just tried: the bracket does fit the drive bay sled(s) (not too big) but the SATA/PWR connectors do not align. FYI - mine is a Mac Pro 4,1 (2009) model, though I believe the form factors for drive bays are the same 2006-2012 models.