Looking for Recs: Upgrading SATA HD to SSD in 2012 Mac Pro

[Winslow Schiller]

Hi All,

I'm looking to upgrade the internal 1TB SATA HD in my 2012 Mac Pro (5,1 running Mojave) to a SSD drive. Ideally, I'd like to clone the current drive (my booter) to the new drive. Any advice/pointers appreciated. - Winslow

[mikehalloran]

You have two choices. A SATA III SSD or a PCIe card to which you mount one or two NVMe3 x4 blades. In your machine, SATA III is about 3x the speed of the fastest HDD (mechanical hard drive) while the blade is about 6—9x faster. Your PCI bus isn't fast enough to support greater speed.

2.5" SATA III SSDs are available up to 8TB, priced from $46 for 1TB to $567 for 8TB. 3D NAND with a 5 year warranty is the best for System drives and 4TB Samsung 870 EVO @ $287 or a 2TB Crucial M500 @ $145 hit the sweet spot for price/performance. You will need an adapter bracket to install it in place of the old 3.5" HDD.

As for blades, Crucial P3 is a good choice for 2TB or 4TB. Advertised speed is unimportant — your cheesegrater limits them all to around 1550MB/s — still 3x faster than a SATA III SSD (already 3x faster than what you are using now). Blades up to 8TB are available but no one recommends that without an auxiliary fan to cool the card.
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-500GB-PC ... ref=sr_1_5

Instead of an adapter, you'll need a PCIe card for mounting such as this from OWC. Ignore the claimed speed—that applies when the card is installed in a 2019 Mac Pro,
https://www.amazon.com/OWC-Accelsior-PC ... ef=sr_1_18

The macOS has not supported true cloning since 10.4 Tiger. All cloneware is an API for Disk Utility and Time Machine—if you like the scripting options, fine but none of it can do anything not allowed by Apple.

Best to install the macOS from scratch and use Migration Assistant to pull over your System and Network Settings along with your Data files (Documents, Music etc.) — you'll see the checkboxes. If comfortable with the way the old drive performed, no reason not to pull everything over. Many do a clean install of their applications at this point which will leave behind a lot of old, unnecessary crap that never gets pulled over.

[HCMarkus]

MIke's advice is all solid.

SATA SSDs are great with a Cheesegrater. You don't need an adaptor if the Mac isn't moved as the SATA port will support an SSD physically on its own. But the adaptors provide a more robust attachment and you won't have to futz around with aligning the drive and port.

[mikehalloran]

MIke's advice is all solid.

SATA SSDs are great with a Cheesegrater. You don't need an adaptor if the Mac isn't moved as the SATA port will TA5$support an SSD physically on its own. But the adaptors provide a more robust attachment and you won't have to futz around with aligning the drive and port.

Yes. The first time you boot from a SATA III SSD, it will be so fast, you’ll wonder why you waited so long. Yes the NVMe blade is faster and the cost is on par but the increased performance over the 2.5” SSD is not as noticeable.

This is my preferred SATA III adapter. It costs about $5 more than the tray type but the easier installation and increased airflow for cooling is worth it.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Desktop ... ef=sr_1_11

[monkey man]

Mike rules.

[Winslow Schiller]

Thanks everyone, and Mike in particular (as usual). Looking forward to receiving my order from OWC. - Winslow

[Winslow Schiller]

My new SSD drives arrive today. A couple more questions for the pros:

1). I am currently running Mojave on my Mac Pro 5,1. I recently installed a Metal GPU for this OS upgrade with the expectation that I would get a performance bump or maybe better graphics. However, I do not experience any difference running DP on Mojave over High Sierra, and my Cinema Display actually looks worse with the Metal card on Mojave. In other words, the "upgraded" OS and card hasn't paid off. Question: is there any benefit to running High Sierra/old GPU over Mojave/new Metal GPU when I do a clean install on my new SSD later today?

2). After I format my new SSD, I plan on using Internet Recovery to format it and then install the new OS, a process which I believe to be "automatic": the program will determine the latest OS that compatible with my machine. Will it "know" to install Mojave (which is only possible with the Metal card) or will it install High Sierra (the most recent "official" OS)? Based on the answer(s) to question #1, I may want to choose one over the other but it's not clear to me that I'll have that option.

3). Once I've installed the new OS, booted from the SSD drive, and used Migration Assistant to transfer my files from the old HDD, I'll be more or less leaving my files on the old drive as backup. What do I do to the drive to facilitate this? I don't need an OS on it anymore, and I've never tried to delete an OS (and related files necessary for it) from a drive.

Thanks again if you take the time out to respond. I've been on Macs and DP since the mid 90s but at time (such as now) I feel like a total newbie. - Winslow

[HCMarkus]

IIRC, there were issues that Mojave introduced for DP. Personally, I never ran High Sierra, having migrated directly from Sierra to Mojave, so I can't confirm, but others may have thoughts.

So, you may want to got with Hight Sierra and not worry about sorting out the display issues! Whatever you do, you can just leave the old drive intact, no need to erase OS.

You may soon want to consider trying one of these newer Macs with Apple Silicon. They are wonderful; just a question of how much RAM your really need... that could have significant impact on cost. If and when you do, you can throw your new SATA SSDs in a couple of $10 USB3 cases and they will work great.

[mikehalloran]

Metal allows apps and the system to use the capabilities of a graphics processor (GPU) more efficiently. It is required for Mojave.

If you bought an NVMe blade, you cannot install High Sierra or Mojave from Internet Recovery.

Here’s how to do it:

Install your SSD. If you are already running Mojave on your System drive, open Disk Utility and format the new drive APFS macOS Extended. If not, Download Mojave from the App Store, not Software Update. When It wants to install, Open Disk Utility and format your new SSD first.

[Winslow Schiller]

Thanks again, everyone. The SSDs make a big difference. - Winslow