Apple MacPro 1.1 – Part 4.

Ok, so I haven’t posted on this subject for a few weeks.  Its crazy busy!

Anyway, Part 4!

Now we are talking Solid State Drives (SSD for short), which has taken me ages to find the best one for me.  I have looked all over the internet and found one going cheap on the PC World site. If I am honest, I wasn’t sure what i was looking for. I was looking for cheap SSDs with the same read and write speed however, after many discussions with friends, I decided to go for a high read and low write speed. Why??? Because the time it takes to write wasn’t an issue for me, I just wanted a drive to speed up my machine and do things at my pace. So this is it –

PNY Optima 2.5″ Internal SSD – 120 GB

Boasting low power consumption alongside high performance storage, the 120gb PNY Optima 2.5″ Internal SSD is the ideal upgrade for my MacPro.

Not only does the Optima SSD allow me to easily store data, it also helps to speed up my MacPro so I can achieve even more. It’s flash-based storage has no moving parts, which means there’s less wear and tear on the drive, no matter how much I use it. It should let the MacPro start up in less than 60 seconds (I am yet to confirm this).

OVERVIEW

Type	SSD
Capacity	120 GB
Interface	SATA III
Form factor / Drive size	2.5″
Read / Write speed	– Read: 400 MB/s – Write: 160 MB/s

FEATURES

Other features	– 128-bit AES-compliant – 1 million hours MTBF

GENERAL

System requirements	– Serial ATA Fully compliant with Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA Revision 3.0. Fully compliant with ATA/ATAPI-8 Standard Native Command Queuing (NCQ) – Windows XP 32-bit/64-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit/64-bit, Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit, Linux, Mac OS X – Power requirements : Standard SATA Power Connector
Dimensions	100 x 70 x 10 mm (H x W x D)
Weight	77 g
Manufacturer’s guarantee	3 years

 

As you can see not the best write speed but considering my budget of £40.00 I did well. I also had to pick myself up a IcyBox due to the SSD size and the MacPro sleds!

£15.00 on Amazon from Maplin. So £55.00 all in, job done.

Playing devils advocate, I expect I could have found a better deal but that is something which will always happen. Im just glad the SSD is in, TimeMachine did its job by updating the OS back to the new dive and all within 10mins!

In regards to benchmarking, I used Geekbench and scored 5033 on a Multi-Core score. By the looks of it thats not half bad!

So thats the most recent change I have made, comments welcome!

Ciao

Uptown Funk – Awesome!!

Arron Crascall – Making me laugh via Vine!

Fresh Install of Yosemite

Following my earlier post, I tried to install Yosemite again on the new hard drive.  For some reason it didn’t work, it just upgraded the OS that was on there before.  More than likely it was an error on my part but I am not too sure.  However, I removed the hard drive from the MacBook and connected it via a SATA to USB connector to my MacPro and formatted the drive using Disk Utility.  I then popped it back in the MacBook and set about reinstalling Yosemite again, 15 minutes later and all is well, a fresh install of Yosemite and I am happy.

All I have to do now is add the 8GB RAM which is due any day now and whoosh all will be speedy and updated.

I would like to see my MacPro running Yosemite but it means upgrading the graphics card and a few other things.

Anyway, I am going to sit and have a good look at the new OS whilst adding some software.

Ciao

OSX Yosemite – Install Drive.

Hi All, I have just upgraded to Yosemite and its OK….. I will hopefully post more soon, when I have properly tested it out.

OS X Yosemite

If anyone is looking at making an installer drive please follow the Macworld description.  Long winded but works really well.  

I chose to use the Disk Utility option, took its time but all ok.

Some issues I have noticed so far are some popular third-party apps, most notably Chrome and Firefox, devour RAM and CPU time in a way they never did in Mavericks.  Is this a ploy by Apple to use their own apps and no third-party ones?

I am going to stop any possible issues with Yosemite by running a clean install on a new HDD, I will let you know if it proves worthwhile. In addition to the new HDD (nabbed from my old MacMini) I will be upgrading the RAM to 8GB, 4GB is certainly not enough.

Comments welcome,

Ciao