Best drive options - 2013 MacPro PT Ultimate

[Howardk]

These are on sale on Amazon.ca right now:
Samsung 970 EVO Plus Series - 2Tb PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V7S2T0B/AM)

And there is stock of another adapter card (Sintech backordered):
Rivo NGFF M.2 nVME SSD Adapter Card for Upgrade MacBook Air(2013-2016 Year) and Mac PRO(Late 2013-2015 Year)

I am ready to pull the trigger. Any concerns with the above for my purposes?

[corp]

"Samsung 970"

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Howardk

I am not aware of disabling spindump and tailspin. Not something I have noticed in my reading/googling.

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...-Errors-on-Mac

Also been discussed a fair amount on DUC. Very worth trying if you are getting CPU errors.

[Howardk]

. . . Thanks guys!

Anyone know of a decently priced USB3 enclosure to repurpose the Proprietary Mac Pro SSD, or is it too much of a fringe product? The only one I see is the OWC Envoy Pro, and I can't justify that cost.

[Dan IceWood]

In reply to the original post.
The sonett chassis- the internal thunderbolt port can be swapped out for a TB3 module, negating the need for use of the Apple adapter - less than £200 last time i looked.

[Ashford]

The EVO 970 Pro is the best of the 970's and it works well with OSX. The EVO 970 Plus had a problem with OSX when first released, but I understand that this has now been fixed. The standard 970 is the slowest of the 970's but it works perfectly with OSX and has higher potential data transfer rates than the Mac Pro's PCIe 2 data bus can achieve.
If you want to use an external chassis such as the Sonnet to house a nVME SSD, you must have at least OSX 10.14.6 to get the external nVME memory to work. Earlier versions of OSX did not have the correct nVME drivers.
As others have already pointed out, to replace the Apple SSD in the Mac Pro, you need to use the to use Sintech M2 adapter.
The reuse the original MacPro SSD, I would look at Sintech web site to see if they make an adaptor that goes the other way, that is Apple to normal nVME pinout.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Ashford

The EVO 970 Pro is the best of the 970's and it works well with OSX. The EVO 970 Plus had a problem with OSX when first released, but I understand that this has now been fixed. The standard 970 is the slowest of the 970's but it works perfectly with OSX and has higher potential data transfer rates than the Mac Pro's PCIe 2 data bus can achieve.

This adds nothing but confusion to clear advice already given. There is no such thing as the "Evo 970 Pro" for starters.

There are four relevant Samsung M.2 products.

Samsung 970 Pro (and the later 980 Pro)
Samsung 970 Evo
Samsung 970 Evo Plus

Any of these drives are fine for the use in this thread.

The 970 Evo Plus leveraged later generation NAND internally that the Evo and delvers higher performance than the 970 Evo. The Evo Plus had initial issues when released, that have been fully addressed.

The 970 Pro was the performance model that used MLC while others use TLC NAND, and offered more performance and improved wear life than the Evo, but confusingly the Evo Plus slightly outperforms the 970 Pro in many regards. And wear life of any of these drives is not likely to be a practical issue for DAW use.

The 970/980 Pro is not available in 2TB. The 970 Pro has/is been superseded by the 980 Pro which nicely has PCIEe4 support, but not relevant to the use in this thread.

None of these differences will make much difference for DAW use, so I'd go with any of these models that are available at lower cost. My preference has been for the well proven/low cost 970 Evo. And especially with the limited 4 x PCIe 2 capabilities in the Trashcan it's not worth worrying about any of these performance differences.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Dan IceWood

In reply to the original post.
The sonett chassis- the internal thunderbolt port can be swapped out for a TB3 module, negating the need for use of the Apple adapter - less than £200 last time i looked.

Uh no, please read carefully. The OP actually needs a Thunderbolt 1/2 dock not 3. So upgrading the expansion chassis card to TB3 would not help.

[Ashford]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

This adds nothing but confusion to clear advice already given. There is no such thing as the "Evo 970 Pro" for starters.

I take extreme offence to this level of cyber bullying. It was uncouth and uncalled for.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Ashford

I take extreme offence to this level of cyber bullying. It was uncouth and uncalled for.

What is your problem? Correcting errors like you using confusing incorrect product names was very much called for. I do not want people trying for example to purchase a product that sounds like a "Evo 970 Pro". I appreciate you tying to be helpful but confused posts like this are really not helpful. And if you post stuff with errors in it this to a technical forum like DUC you should expect other folks here to correct it.