NVMe upgrade for Mac Pro 4.1/5.1 Mojave

[K Roche]

I have to admit I am just a tad nervous reading ghost's experience, and hoping that using a completely different drive for Boot and PT will be better suited .
As well as moving my PTHDN card to slot 4 from slot 2, not being any issue I do have the Crest placed on back order on Amazon, supposed to be back in stock Aug 7
I feel better now that I opted for the 970 EVOs, and not the 970 Plus

[the.engineer]

Correct me if I’m missing something... why would you not get full speed with only one ssd attached to the crest card?

Ghostwriter, you say that when you only had one 970 in you got 1,500 MB/s.


James Welch
Recording Engineer | Producer
Masterlink Productions

Mac Pro 5,1 (Mid 2010) | 3.46GHz Six-Core Intel Xeon | 32GB Ram | AMD Radeon R9 280X 3072 MB | 256GB Samsung SM951 SSD Blade (PCIe) System Drive | 1TB WDC Sample Drive | 4TB RAID 0 Seagate Audio Drive | UAD-2 Quad PCIe
Mojave 10.14.5 | Pro Tools Ultimate 2019.5 | HDX | Avid Omni | Avid 16x16 HD I/O x2 | Digidesign 192 | Digidesign C24

[Ghost In The Attic]

Originally Posted by the.engineer

Correct me if I’m missing something... why would you not get full speed with only one ssd attached to the crest card?

Ghostwriter, you say that when you only had one 970 in you got 1,500

No, there is a misunderstanding, I have not stated that. I have not tried using one 970 in the Crest adapter or in a standard adapter for that matter.
I have no reason to believe that you wouldn’t get full speed (around 3000) with one card in the Crest adapter. It is in a standard non-switched adapter that the 970 will operate at half speed.
I am going to put both of my 970s in a standard adapter (one at a time of course) to see if they are more stable than they have been in the Crest adapter.
If the 970s are stable, I will most likely replace the Crest adapter to see if I received a bad one. I am trying to rule out whether it is a 970 that is bad, or the Crest adapter and go from there.
I suppose I could try one 970 in the Crest just to see how it behaves. I’m this far down the rabbit hole, eh?

[the.engineer]

Originally Posted by ghostwriter

No, there is a misunderstanding, I have not stated that. I have not tried using one 970 in the Crest adapter or in a standard adapter for that matter.

I have no reason to believe that you wouldn’t get full speed (around 3000) with one card in the Crest adapter. It is in a standard non-switched adapter that the 970 will operate at half speed.

I am going to put both of my 970s in a standard adapter (one at a time of course) to see if they are more stable than they have been in the Crest adapter.

If the 970s are stable, I will most likely replace the Crest adapter to see if I received a bad one. I am trying to rule out whether it is a 970 that is bad, or the Crest adapter and go from there.

I suppose I could try one 970 in the Crest just to see how it behaves. I’m this far down the rabbit hole, eh?

Thanks for clarifying! Let us know how it goes.


James Welch
Recording Engineer | Producer
Masterlink Productions

Mac Pro 5,1 (Mid 2010) | 3.46GHz Six-Core Intel Xeon | 32GB Ram | AMD Radeon R9 280X 3072 MB | 256GB Samsung SM951 SSD Blade (PCIe) System Drive | 1TB WDC Sample Drive | 4TB RAID 0 Seagate Audio Drive | UAD-2 Quad PCIe
Mojave 10.14.5 | Pro Tools Ultimate 2019.5 | HDX | Avid Omni | Avid 16x16 HD I/O x2 | Digidesign 192 | Digidesign C24

[WorldStudios]

I have now worked one full day with my setup. PT and OS on one drive in the Crest adapter and Audio on a second older ASHC drive. No hiccups. I think you were sent a bad Crest Card, Ghost.


System drive in Bay 1 on the crest card

Available: 735,53 GB (735*532*539*904 bytes)
Capacity: 1,02 TB (1*023*999*787*008 bytes)
Mount Point: /
File System: APFS
Writable: Yes
Ignore Ownership: No
BSD Name: disk4s1
Volume UUID: 83020104-4E7A-309E-BA80-F47A4EA00AE4
Physical Drive:
Device Name: Samsung SSD 970 PRO 1TB
Media Name: AppleAPFSMedia
Medium Type: SSD
Protocol: PCI-Express
Internal: No
Partition Map Type: Unknown


Audio SSD in the second bay on the same crews card:

Available: 37,2 GB (37*195*681*792 bytes)
Capacity: 479,76 GB (479*760*007*168 bytes)
Mount Point: /Volumes/Audio SSD
File System: Journaled HFS+
Writable: Yes
Ignore Ownership: Yes
BSD Name: disk2s2
Volume UUID: B5F0BCD3-0F4A-3C5F-ACA2-31E047AD0D97
Physical Drive:
Device Name: Kingston SHPM2280P2/480G
Media Name: Kingston SHPM2280P2/480G Media
Medium Type: SSD
Protocol: SATA
Internal: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
SMART Status: Verified

[Ghost In The Attic]

Originally Posted by WorldStudios

I have now worked one full day with my setup. PT and OS on one drive in the Crest adapter and Audio on a second older ASHC drive. No hiccups. I think you were sent a bad Crest Card, Ghost

Could be.

I sure would like to know how stable your system would be with a second drive running at double the speed.

I have taken out one of the 970s and am going to attempt to boot from the remaining one in the Crest adapter. Don’t know if it will work or how well, but we shall see.

Also, I have a new Crest adapter arriving Wednesday to see if that one works better. I really would like to be able to have two 970s running speeds close to 3000.

[Ghost In The Attic]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Mac System report, drive/firmware version should be listed under NVMExpress. But AFAIK there is no 970 Evo Firmware updates...

I see nothing under system report NVMe that tells me what revision the 970 is. I see serial number, size, etc.... but no revision info.

[the.engineer]

How are your boot times?


James Welch
Recording Engineer | Producer
Masterlink Productions

Mac Pro 5,1 (Mid 2010) | 3.46GHz Six-Core Intel Xeon | 32GB Ram | AMD Radeon R9 280X 3072 MB | 256GB Samsung SM951 SSD Blade (PCIe) System Drive | 1TB WDC Sample Drive | 4TB RAID 0 Seagate Audio Drive | UAD-2 Quad PCIe
Mojave 10.14.5 | Pro Tools Ultimate 2019.5 | HDX | Avid Omni | Avid 16x16 HD I/O x2 | Digidesign 192 | Digidesign C24

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by the.engineer

How are your boot times?

Why do you care if you boot once a month or two?

[Ghost In The Attic]

Okay, here is today’s update.

The Crest card will not work with one 970 ssd in it. Well, it will work, but it crashes. I put a single 970 in a non-switched adapter and Pro Tools is running fine, although the speed test shows it’s running around 1500 as to be expected.

Either I have a bad Crest adapter or the Crest adapter works with one ssd running at 3000 and the second ssd running at 1500, as Johan Bejerholm
of World Studios is experiencing.

I will test the new Crest adapter in my Mac, probably on Thursday by the time Amazon delivers it on Wednesday.

I am determined to get this working and will keep you all updated.

Cheers.