NVMe upgrade for Mac Pro 4.1/5.1 Mojave

[WorldStudios]

I ordered the Crest card from amazon USA direct instead of going through the UK branch and that worked. It was pretty pricey with shipping and custom charges elevating the price to just under 300 dollars, but I can take it. :)

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by ghostwriter

I believe that is the case, but Darryl might chime in with a more definitive answer. I could be wrong.

Ok thanks I have decided regardless I will get the dual 1 TB blades and simply partition and use 1 for PT sessions and 1 TB for FCPX projects Given my use is personal so 1 TB storage is plenty for each Application
That way everything will be PCIe express as far as data transfer rate.
Hopping this will give me another 3 maybe 5 years of service with my current machine

[Ghost In The Attic]

Originally Posted by K Roche

Ok thanks I have decided regardless I will get the dual 1 TB blades and simply partition and use 1 for PT sessions and 1 TB for FCPX projects Given my use is personal so 1 TB storage is plenty for each Application
That way everything will be PCIe express as far as data transfer rate.
Hopping this will give me another 3 maybe 5 years of service with my current machine

I won’t be partitioning mine, so I wasn’t paying close attention to whether it will work. But, I don’t see why you couldn’t do what you are after. I hope I am not steering you wrong. Worst case, you have full speed use out of 2 TBs.

I hope adding the switcher fan and graphics card fan don’t increase the noise too much. I guess I will find out.

[Darryl Ramm]

That's not partitioning in the classic sense.... It's a smart move if you want to simultaneously use both M.2 drives you will get up to twice the IO performance.

[Darryl Ramm]

Would anyone know if the the 1 TB yields faster read/write speeds than the 500 GB ,,,like in my current 951 (AHCI) SSD where the 500 was faster than the 250 ?

I believe that is the case, but Darryl might chime in with a more definitive answer. I could be wrong.

Good question, the reason for that slowdown in performance on smaller drives is usually just the lack of flash nvram fan-out from the controller, the smaller capacity drives just have less data paths from the controller to the nvram to deliver the performance. As nvram chip densities go up that point may move up in capacity, or may not... all depends on what the vendor is doing (they may use more lower capacity chips to avoid this)

And the answer is the only way I'd know is to look at performance tests by folks like Anantech (the best consumer SSD benchmarks by far). e.g. You can see performance differences here https://www.anandtech.com/show/12670...o-ssd-review/2

Performance differences may also be due to DRAM cache effects (different sizes for different drives) and tuning setting on the controller/firmware. Currently for me I think the 1TB and 2TB drives are a great performance/price/density point. YMMV

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

That's not partitioning in the classic sense.... It's a smart move if you want to simultaneously use both M.2 drives you will get up to twice the IO performance.

Humm, I am not quite understanding. "not partitioning in the classic sense"

Am I correct that the Mac will see the dual blade one adaptor situation, as a single , 2 TB drive ? Or will it see as 2 - 1 TB drives ?
If the latter then I can just choose to send PT files to one and send FCPX files to the other ?

If it sees it as a single 2 _TB drive and it is not partitioning , then how would I designate which blade to send the data to ? Or are you saying I would not designate and it's spreading the data over both blades and I just have make two different folders ?

[Darryl Ramm]

It is not partitioning (a drive) it is two separate drives... just use them that way. The way they can appear as a single drive is with software RAID, the card does nothing but give you two very fast physical devices.

[rballister]

Still researching this solution as a possibility for my Mac Pro. Is there full compatibility with a Mid 2010 Mac Pro running Mojave? I guess the card with two drives on the card would allow me to run Pro Tools on one drive and keep the instruments/samples files on the other.

[lancemcv]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Yes but my point was if you want performance in a Mac Pro Cheesegrater classic look for a switched adapter card that does the PCIe 2 to PCIe3 lane aggregation. I don't think that Sonnet card does that. The card I link to above does.

If you are looking at a modern PC or new Mac Pro Cheesegrater with PCIe 3 slots then there are many more adapter choices out there, including this Sonnet card (and if you want 4 x M.2 drives then it's likely a good choice).

Hey Darryl, I see what your saying about the switch ability, a very interesting card option indeed. I currently have a 256 gig m.2 AHCI which I get about 1300 read / write. I only use it for my system and currently still on High Sierra as I have a flashed 980ti. Happy with performance at the moment but that card looks like a great choice. I saw one review saying they had issues if they only had one drive installed in it. I personally like smaller system drives as cloning is super fast for backup and don’t do any recording or editing on my system drive.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by rballister

Still researching this solution as a possibility for my Mac Pro. Is there full compatibility with a Mid 2010 Mac Pro running Mojave? I guess the card with two drives on the card would allow me to run Pro Tools on one drive and keep the instruments/samples files on the other.

Yes, and be super-fast, but remember there is likely no performance reason to *need* to do that, these are so fast you can put everything on one drive if it will fit.... if it does not then sure grab the editors performance. My objection to RAIDing drives is it’s better to just keep things simple as possible. KISS. Most mistakes are user error, not drives failing etc.