SSD Drive VS SAS 15,000rpm Drives

[Will Keir]

So some research provide some interesting results. Why put one SSD in the optical bay on a Mac Pro if you can put more.

The 4 port cage that fits the empty optical bay is SNT-SAS425
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816710002&cmre=SNT-SAS425-_-16-710-002--Product

[Will Keir]

8 SSDs!!!

http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/in...0&redirect=yes

[Will Keir]

2009 Mac Pro.

It worked! Successfully I can dual boot from a 7200 RPM SATA drive in optical bay #2 and I can boot from a RAID 5 Apple RAID card with 3 500GB SAS 15,000 RPM drives. Didn't have much time to tests, reinstall everything today, will test more tomorrow and post results.

Thank you Jeff, glad I was persistent and had your encouragement. This is a system people told me two years ago would not work. I pushed and at last sucess. Just need a RR card and I am all set.

[Will Keir]

I like the SSDs for Boot drive and the SAS RAID for storage.

SAS for RAID storage, don't you limited yourself in file size? SAS drives are also ridiculously expensive? I ask people I would think there is a better option for storage capacity and speed.

[Will Keir]

In terms of speed the 3 x 15Krpm 450GB drives should still be a good bit faster than the SSD in all areas but seek time, which is near instant on SSD.

What about boot times? I've seeing the RAID card with SAS drives taking a long time to boot up. I hear SSD are fast on MBP's. What about SSD's for the boot drive on a Mac Pro?

[Mark Phelan]

Interesting to see your speed ratings. The Dulce ProRX I bought from Torrey at Silverado Systems back in 2008 is running 750MB per second R/W times in a RAID 5. Just noticed their new model, the Pro RXd is reporting speeds of 2,020MBs in a RAID 5 configuration, but it ain't cheap.

http://www.dulcesystems.com/html/pro_rxd.html