Will an SSD work okay in Mavericks?

[Blott]

Hi,
Ive had my main hard drive fail in my 5.1 Mac Pro (it's okay, I have a backup), but I'm considering replacing it with a 2TB SSD.

I have only two concerns...

First the price - it's the best part of £400 for a 2TB SSD.
I can get a 3tb hard drive for under £80 so if Mavericks has any issues with SSDs it'd be much easier (and cheaper) for me to replace it with a standard 7200rpm HD.

Secondly the compatibility. I use an older now discontinued M-Audio Project Mix as my audio interface, and the latest OS it's compatible with is OSX 10.95 (Mavericks).

I will replace the Project Mix at some point in the future, but I love its workflow so will probably keep it until I replace my Mac Pro which shouldn't be for another year or so yet. The plan being for me then to slot the SSD into the new Mac, so there's an element of 'future proofing' in going for an SSD too (all be it a SATA3 one).

Mavericks is fine generally. I only use my Mac Pro for running Logic and making music so don't really have any issues, but I'm not sure how reliable Mavericks will be with an SSD.

It is after all a 5 year old OS now, so before I splash the cash I just thought I'd check if there are any issues I should be aware of or would it just be a case of it working like a normal HD (but quicker)?

I fitted a 1TB SSD into my 2011 17" MacBook Pro a while back and it's great, but I don't use that for music and it's running the latest OS too so I'd expect it to be fine, it's just the Mavericks part of the equation that is worrying me.

Any feedback and advice gratefully received - thanks.

[muzines]

First the price - it's the best part of £400 for a 2TB SSD.

2TB SSD's are still priced at a premium - 1TB ones are reasonably affordable now though (around £200)

I can get a 3tb hard drive for under £80 so if Mavericks has any issues with SSDs it'd be much easier (and cheaper) for me to replace it with a standard 7200rpm HD.

I can't remember which exactly, but I *think* Yosemite was the first OS which had official trim support. Without this, the OS uses SSD's less than optimally (it does work, but causes more "wear" on the SSD, so to speak).

There are software utilities that can mitigate this though - look up Trim Enabler, for example.

[Blott]

Thanks Desmond, think I'll probably bite the bullet and go for it.

I agree about the price being a bit of a premium, but in order to be able to restore the previous drive backup I'd need more than 1TB of space.

A 2TB drive is £365 and a 1TB is £170, so it's only a little over twice the cost for twice the storage.

That effectively means it is £25 more than buying 2 x 1TB SSDs which though not ideal, is not terrible either.

I'll mull it over this weekend before I place my order on Monday.

Thanks again.

[ManFromGlass]

Unless I'm reading this wrong, doesn't the Mac Pro have at least 4 drive bays? So why not a 500Gb SSD for the boot drive and a few regular drives for samples, projects etc. true it will be a bit more work to sort out, rather than having 1 drive to clone to. But it will be more affordable.
also
If you buy an SSD I would also include a second drive (regular one) in your costing for your backup of the SSD. And make regular clones to it of your SSD.

My machine might be as old as yours. Mavericks and an SSD worked fine here. It's even working fine now that I am up to Sierra.

[Blott]

Thanks for the replies - deed done 2TB SSD ordered.

So much for me mulling it over then!

It should arrive on Monday I'll post an update if I encounter any issues.

[muzines]

Remember to check out Trim Enabler - without it, the SSD will work, but you really should enable trim support if you can.

[Kwackman]

Sorry to bump an old thread- just wondering if this worked out ok for you in the end?

I'm thinking of changing my spinning HD for an SSD.
MacPro (Cheese grater) mid 2010 model, running High Sierra (10.13.6)

[MarkOne]

Sorry to bump an old thread- just wondering if this worked out ok for you in the end?

I'm thinking of changing my spinning HD for an SSD.
MacPro (Cheese grater) mid 2010 model, running High Sierra (10.13.6)

There are a bunch of tutorials around showing how to install an NVME SSD onto a PCIe adapter, which gives you a significantly faster boot drive than one sitting on the SATA bus and installed in the hard disk bays.

[Sam Spoons]

I have fitted SSDs in three Macs and in all cases the performance increase was significant. The 2011 MBP and 2008 cheese grater Mac Pro are running El Cap and the 2012 MBP (my day to day machine) High Sierra.

[Kwackman]

There are a bunch of tutorials around showing how to install an NVME SSD onto a PCIe adapter, which gives you a significantly faster boot drive than one sitting on the SATA bus and installed in the hard disk bays.

I've no PCI slots free, but thanks for the info Mark, didn't know that trick.

I have fitted SSDs in three Macs and in all cases the performance increase was significant. The 2011 MBP and 2008 cheese grater Mac Pro are running El Cap and the 2012 MBP (my day to day machine) High Sierra.

Thanks for the reply, Sam. I think I'll add this to my "To Do soonish" list.

[ConcertinaChap]

Incidentally my old Mac Mini had a Fusion drive and its performance came remarkably close to that of a pure SSD. There are instructions on the web on how to set one up for yourself if that appeals to you.

CC

[Kwackman]

1TB SSD drive now installed.
Using High Sierra- no extra software needed, it just worked using Disc Utility.

It took quite a while to re-install from Time Machine, and now boot up time won't give me enough time to make coffee!

Worthwhile update, and not horrendously expensive either.

[Dave B]

Just updated my 2010 MacBook Pro to an SSD and High Sierra (last update it will take). All very smooth now, despite on 8Gb ram (max on that model). Quite a happy bunny.

[muzines]

Just updated my 2010 MacBook Pro to an SSD and High Sierra (last update it will take). All very smooth now, despite on 8Gb ram (max on that model). Quite a happy bunny.

I'm considering doing this (going to HS), but it's tricky in my situation, giving me pause... I might see if I can rig up some kind of test rig and see how I get on...

[Sam Spoons]

Spare HDD/SSD and a clone of the original then run the upgrade on the spare?

[Dave B]

Just noticed the comments about Trim support above and have done some digging. It looks like my Crucial drives don't support it properly so it seems like a good idea not to have it enabled. It's worth a quick google at least..

[muzines]

Spare HDD/SSD and a clone of the original then run the upgrade on the spare?

It's unfortunately not that simple in my case...

[muzines]

It's unfortunately not that simple in my case...

I just created a test partition and installed High Sierra to see how it behaved in conjunction with my hardware (my MBP is the notoriously overheating 2011 model, and the graphics chip has died (twice).)

You have to do some deep hacks to make things work because of the malfunctioning hardware, but happily the test HS system installed ok, and the two main problems (lack of brightness controls, and kernel panics on coming back from sleep) seemed ok and working in my quick initial test - which is encouraging.

I'll do some more tests (mostly stability and temperature control) before I'm happy enough to make HS my main system, but it's a good first step...