This is in a Mac Pro. It's a Crucial MX300 525GB 2.5" SSD. I thought "no problem, I'll just get an RMA from Crucial" but it appears to be out of warranty.

What do we like for 2.5" SSDs? I could go to 1TB but since it's a Mac Pro with lots of other storage, I'm fine with staying with 500GB.

(BTW, before you suggest a NVME and PCIe card, I don't really want to do that but feel free to suggest anyway if you can point me to a good deal on a drive, and more importantly, a specific card. )

Backstory: I had some weirdness and then the drive didn't want to play nice. I had to erase and restore to get it to do anything and now although it appears to be working fine for the time being, Smart Utility shows it as failing with unrecoverable errors.

cMP 5,1 & High Sierra (or higher)? NVME + PCIe card is the way to go.
I have an Inateck M.2 PCIe SSD Adapter, $12 @ bezosville.
For NVME SSD, reliable 1TB can be had for <$100. I'm currently using a MicroCenter
1TB Inland. iirc, paid $80-ish for it on sale with a coupon.

btw, BF/CM sales begin in Four Weeks or less.

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39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

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Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio

I'm starting to think Crucial SSDs should be avoided! It's the only SSD I've ever had fail-

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Something different...

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Quote
DP
I'm starting to think Crucial SSDs should be avoided! It's the only SSD I've ever had fail-

I have about 4-5 Crucial and yes, I have one fail and replaced under warranty, and I have another one with 2 bad sectors.

I have a Samsung and a WD with no issues so far, but those were not used that much.

I suppose I'd recommend Samsung.

Most of my several SSD's have been Crucial. One seemingly went bad in 2014, but a firmware update put a stop to its flaky behavior.

I have a heavily used 128GB Samsung that got exposed to temps >70C according to its SMART data. It still works fine. Another very heavily used Samsung (one of their professional models that has well over a 1000 TBW rating, used for recording OTA TV in a home theater PC after a Seagate Purple surprisingly proved to be completely inadequate for this purpose) has been flawless for over a year.

Samsung. I've had several failures from Sandisk, Crucial and our sponsor. Never had anything but great experience with an admittedly much larger sample set from Samsung. I also just bought one of the AData NVME drives 2-3 months back, and so far so good, but that will need longer experience to see if that pans out as well as it seems it might.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2020 10:19AM by clay.

OWC's SSD offerings are top-notch. I trust them with my data. [eshop.macsales.com]

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I was running a SATA SSD on a PCIe card and switched to an NVME on a PCIe card. I'm running an ADATA SX8200 Pro; others like WD and Inland. For me, the measured speed increased; more importantly the subjective experience is much better-it feels about 30% faster.

Quote
clay
Samsung. I've had several failures from Sandisk, Crucial and our sponsor. Never had anything but great experience with an admittedly much larger sample set from Samsung. I also just bought one of the AData NVME drives 2-3 months back, and so far so good, but that will need longer experience to see if that pans out as well as it seems it might.

IO too have seen failures from Sandisk, Crucial and our sponsor, but only one OWC & one Crucial. I've seen 3 sandisks go bad and it's not like I've seen a lot of them overall. That would be my DO NOT BUY brand name for sure.

Seen lots and lots of samsungs - never one failed or even failing. Also the Apple/samsung & apple/toshiba drives - seen LOTS Of those, but never a failure.

5 Sandisks, all 5-8 years old, and all still work. The 8yr old one is the most used to this day.

4 WD Blues no failures, but only max 3 years old now.

3 OWCs, one failed within warranty period, the replacement is about 7 years old and also in daily use

3 Crucials, 2 in daily use, no failures

1 MyDigitalSSD, daily use, 4.5 years old

1 Samsung, weekly use, 4.5 years old

A smattering of less-used Kingstons, ADatas, Silicon Power, 1-5 years old, all still working

A few NVMes as well - Toshiba RD400, WDBlack, HP EX920, 2-5 years old, all working

I've only had the one failure.

Keep in mind all current solid state chips are quite different technology in 2020 than in 2015.

Get a name brand chip, keep regular backups, and get to work is my view.

Thanks, folks. Samsung it is. I read through the thread, checked online and then ran out to Best Buy to grab an EVO 860. It was only a few bucks more than the best price I could find online and I didn't have to wait.

For some reason, I was kind of against Samsung but you convinced me. I was going to go with Sandisk because they have always been rock solid with my photography flash drives and I also have a Sandisk SSD that has worked perfectly. I just retired the SSD, but that is because I wanted to upgrade to a larger size (in a different machine, not the Mac Pro with the failing Crucial drive).

Now I just have to get my machine resurrected. The irony is it went toes up while I was trying to clone the drive.

A bonus is my clerk's office is near Best Buy so I also used the trip to vote.

Definitely go with some sort of NVMe if you can - I just put one in my Hackintosh and it is much snappier, even though my machine is 10 years old.

Cool and all, but MrNoBody gave you a link to a $12 card... and everyone said NVMe is faster. lol?

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

What the NVMEers failed to mention is the firmware—and its installation requirements including a Metal-compatible video card—needed to use NVME. If it were just a matter of popping in the card I probably would have done it.

All,

Not sure this is an issue when the SSD is connected to a 3rd party card as it would be in this case. There will be minimum OS requirements. I threw an NVME stick into a 2013 MBPr. Runs like a champ. The NVME sticks I use with other machines are in USB 3.1 Gen 2 boxes.

Robert

Quote
Robert M
All,

Not sure this is an issue when the SSD is connected to a 3rd party card as it would be in this case. There will be minimum OS requirements. I threw an NVME stick into a 2013 MBPr. Runs like a champ. The NVME sticks I use with other machines are in USB 3.1 Gen 2 boxes.

Robert

It is definitely an issue in a cheese grater Mac Pro, which unlike your 2013 MBP, were last produced in 2012 (with a design unchanged since 2010) and do not natively support internal NVME drives, third-party card or not.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2020 01:41PM by AllGold.

All,

The MBPr 2013 does not support a NVME SSD natively. I had to use a Sintech adapter for it to work. What OS is on the machine? That definitely plays a role.

Robert

Quote
AllGold
What the NVMEers failed to mention is the firmware—and its installation requirements including a Metal-compatible video card—needed to use NVME. If it were just a matter of popping in the card I probably would have done it.

including a Metal-compatible video card.
Nope, that is only if you want to go to Mojave or higher!
This forum has numerous threads on the ins & outs of installing NVMe in a cMP 5,1
over the past year or more.

Basically you need:
A PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe Adapter w/ NVMe SSD installed.
Upgrade to BootROM 140.0.0.0.0 or newer (currently @ 144.0.0.0.0), and install 10.13 to have full native NVMe support.
You do not have to upgrade to
Mojave to get the BootROM upgrade. Hence, no 'Metal' graphics card needed.
See dosdude1 for more info. [dosdude1.com]

imho, if you're running a 2009-2012 MP you should upgrade to 144.0.0.0.0
anyway. It adds more to the hardware than just NVMe capability.

---

39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

DuckDuckGo
The search engine that doesn't track you.

DemComm Records 2021 Greatest Hits
includes:
Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2020 05:20PM by MrNoBody.

Ok, I stand corrected.

I will upgrade the firmware at some point in the not too distant future, but I just wanted to get my machine running again and not mess around with anything extra (or wait for anything to arrive by mail/shipping).

Also, I *just yesterday* upgraded to High Sierra, after I got the machine up and running again.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2020 12:24AM by AllGold.

-Deleted-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2020 03:52PM by anonymouse1.

Quote
MrNoBody

Quote
AllGold
What the NVMEers failed to mention is the firmware—and its installation requirements including a Metal-compatible video card—needed to use NVME. If it were just a matter of popping in the card I probably would have done it.

including a Metal-compatible video card.
Nope, that is only if you want to go to Mojave or higher!
This forum has numerous threads on the ins & outs of installing NVMe in a cMP 5,1
over the past year or more.

Basically you need:
A PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe Adapter w/ NVMe SSD installed.
Upgrade to BootROM 140.0.0.0.0 or newer (currently @ 144.0.0.0.0), and install 10.13 to have full native NVMe support.
You do not have to upgrade to
Mojave to get the BootROM upgrade. Hence, no 'Metal' graphics card needed.
See dosdude1 for more info. [dosdude1.com]

imho, if you're running a 2009-2012 MP you should upgrade to 144.0.0.0.0
anyway. It adds more to the hardware than just NVMe capability.

The Mojave installer requires a Metal-compatible GPU to run. So how do you upgrade to the 144.0.0.0.0 firmware, which is part of the Mojave installer, without a Metal GPU???