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Any advice on going from 2008 Mac Pro to a new 5K iMac..

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fredlord

fredlord

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It's been a great computer but my MacBook Pro is faster now and I have to start thinking ahead to replacement time. Who knows how long the OS X systems might remain compatible? The new Mac Pro is too much money and, probably, too much computer for my photography processing needs. A good friend with the 5K iMac is very happy with his as well.

I have a lot of SATA HDDs containing archived images back to 2002 and I use a 256GB SSD for a boot disk with a 3TB internal SATA disk for primary file storage. A 4TB SATA disk is also mounted internally for backup.

My first thought was perhaps I could go to a thunderbolt HDD dock in order to be able to read all my SATA backup and working disks. Then, I thought perhaps that might be overkill because those disks are relatively slow and there is no reason to go to such a fast interface in order to use them. They are mostly for storage and catalog files. Would a USB 3 HDD dock be sufficient? I could always pick up a Thunderbolt HDD dock as SSD drives go down in price.

I have two USB 2 docks I could use for ordinary storage and HDD backup readers.

My question is would I gain any significant speed by using a Thunderbolt HDD dock with these older HDDs? Would the interface speed gain be worth the expense of the Thunderbolt dock?

I also have three monitors I use for a post processing. I will probably go down to just one other monitor with the iMac. This would run off the Thunderbolt interface I presume. I already have a Thunderbolt adapter for VGA I use with the laptop and a projector.

I'm just starting to do the planning for this changeover and any relevant advice from those who may have gone through this process would be greatly appreciated.

It's been nearly eight years since I upgraded and I now have a camera body that produces enormous image files. I think the equipment list may need to change. I get sleepy waiting for things to happen sometimes in post processing, especially HDR.
 
I just did something similar but on a larger scale by moving from a 4-year old Hackintosh with seven internal SATA drives (including a 256Gb SSD) and six USB2/3 external drives I use for one level of backup.

While you say your SATA drives are older, I'd like to know if they are SATA 2 or 3? I ended up buying two OWC Thunderbolt 4-bay external drives (TB 2) and a USB3 4-bay external drive. I found the USB3 external drive unreliable and I returned it for that second OWC TBolt drive.

I would recommend getting at least one 4-bay TBolt case. On SATA 3 drives the speed is outstanding--better than USB 3 using UASP, old USB3, Firewire 400, and of course USB2. The build quality and the stability of the OWC case and firmware is way superior to much of the common commodity grade USB 3 enclosures. The data is worth the cost to me. I just don't think Macs and USB3 get along all that well.

If you need to stay with USB 3, then find an enclosure that supports the UASP protocol. It was significantly faster than generic USB3, but not so easy to find. All Macs since Mountain Lion support UASP if the enclosure does.

In my transitioning to the new iMac this week, I've grown impatient with older USB2 performance. It's still OK for backup, but it is becoming a legacy product for storage. The OWC TBolt dock will probably meet your needs. I like mine when it works but it can be temperamental with an external monitor. Mine is connected via HDMI (preferred over TBolt because you lose a valuable Tbolt port). The dock really does require high-quality HDMI cables and Thunderbolt cables. The cheapo HDMI cables I purchased from this site's overlords were inconsistent at getting a startup signal to the monitor. I ended up using a pricey HDMI cable and it works much more consistently.

It is good to plan you are doing--I did as well. Even more importantly is a good budget estimation. None of this stuff is cheap. I don't regret getting the highest spec'd internals, excepting the 256K SSD.

M
 
I also had a bunch of disks left over from moving from a hackintosh.

I got an OWC Tbolt case, but don't love it. Rather noisy, and had issues waking up (some of that is the drives I put inside, some the OS, so not necessarily a case thing).

I think Tbolt is overkill unless you have specific need for the speed; USB 3 is indistinguishable from my Tbolt for practically all I do. If I needed superfast I could always go another way, but no reason for that now (might be useful for dual booting scenarios, or your video needs though).

I have a caddy and repurposed by former internal hackintosh drives for rotating offisite backup.
 
MiguelD said:
I just did something similar but on a larger scale by moving from a 4-year old Hackintosh with seven internal SATA drives (including a 256Gb SSD) and six USB2/3 external drives I use for one level of backup.

While you say your SATA drives are older, I'd like to know if they are SATA 2 or 3? I ended up buying two OWC Thunderbolt 4-bay external drives (TB 2) and a USB3 4-bay external drive. I found the USB3 external drive unreliable and I returned it for that second OWC TBolt drive.

I would recommend getting at least one 4-bay TBolt case. On SATA 3 drives the speed is outstanding--better than USB 3 using UASP, old USB3, Firewire 400, and of course USB2. The build quality and the stability of the OWC case and firmware is way superior to much of the common commodity grade USB 3 enclosures. The data is worth the cost to me. I just don't think Macs and USB3 get along all that well.

If you need to stay with USB 3, then find an enclosure that supports the UASP protocol. It was significantly faster than generic USB3, but not so easy to find. All Macs since Mountain Lion support UASP if the enclosure does.

In my transitioning to the new iMac this week, I've grown impatient with older USB2 performance. It's still OK for backup, but it is becoming a legacy product for storage. The OWC TBolt dock will probably meet your needs. I like mine when it works but it can be temperamental with an external monitor. Mine is connected via HDMI (preferred over TBolt because you lose a valuable Tbolt port). The dock really does require high-quality HDMI cables and Thunderbolt cables. The cheapo HDMI cables I purchased from this site's overlords were inconsistent at getting a startup signal to the monitor. I ended up using a pricey HDMI cable and it works much more consistently.

It is good to plan you are doing--I did as well. Even more importantly is a good budget estimation. None of this stuff is cheap. I don't regret getting the highest spec'd internals, excepting the 256K SSD.

M
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Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Most of the bare SATA drives I use are level 3. I'm not sure what some of the older units might be as they are smaller capacity and in enclosures. Some may even be IDE units in their own cases. I do have about 10 bare SATA drives of various capacities.

As for the iMac, I'm planning on maxing everything but the RAM and SSD. The RAM is something I can update easily and I can make do with the 512 SSD as a boot and application drive only. Main image file storage would be through the external drives.

Please forgive my ignorance but your reference to HDMI has confused me. I see no HDMI port on the iMac. I see 2 Tbolt ports. Is there something I'm missing?

I appreciate the budget cautions. That's the main reason I'm researching the changeover right now.
 
robgendreau said:
I also had a bunch of disks left over from moving from a hackintosh.

I got an OWC Tbolt case, but don't love it. Rather noisy, and had issues waking up (some of that is the drives I put inside, some the OS, so not necessarily a case thing).

I think Tbolt is overkill unless you have specific need for the speed; USB 3 is indistinguishable from my Tbolt for practically all I do. If I needed superfast I could always go another way, but no reason for that now (might be useful for dual booting scenarios, or your video needs though).

I have a caddy and repurposed by former internal hackintosh drives for rotating offisite backup.
Click to expand...
 
fredlord said:
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Most of the bare SATA drives I use are level 3. I'm not sure what some of the older units might be as they are smaller capacity and in enclosures. Some may even be IDE units in their own cases. I do have about 10 bare SATA drives of various capacities.
Click to expand...
Sort out what you have. IDE drives aren't worth the adapter cost. SATA 3 drives are current and worth reallocating. In an enclosure you can also group them into a single RAID of multiple flavors.
fredlord said:
As for the iMac, I'm planning on maxing everything but the RAM and SSD. The RAM is something I can update easily and I can make do with the 512 SSD as a boot and application drive only. Main image file storage would be through the external drives.
Click to expand...
The vendor's price on a 32GB upgrade to non-Apple-branded RAM (it was Samsung) was so reasonable that I had them do it. One less thing.
fredlord said:
Please forgive my ignorance but your reference to HDMI has confused me. I see no HDMI port on the iMac. I see 2 Tbolt ports. Is there something I'm missing?
Click to expand...
Sorry, that was my poor writing. I was referring to the OWC Tbolt dock. It has an HDMI input for a second monitor (up to 4K) and my HP IPS monitor has HDMI output so it was sweet. Alternatively you can use one of the two Tbolt ports on the dock to connect a second monitor, but I prefer saving that for some future function. Finally Thunderbolt is going mainstream so I expect something useful to use that interface.
fredlord said:
I appreciate the budget cautions. That's the main reason I'm researching the changeover right now.
Click to expand...
fredlord said:
--
Fred Lord
Click to expand...
 
USB 3 seems to be quite fast for everything i do with my older storages - and for backup it works. No videos. No real need for Thunderbolt gear at the moment

I bought a 3T fusion version + enough memory + i7 + some other extras.

Everything happens quite fast with my images. And i'm planning to use this machine more than 6 years ... and at the moment this machine is a bit "overkill".

The best thing is the 5K - funny but my photographs look much better. And PP is a joy.
 
believe me, it is going to be a huge pain as you will need to invest on a lot of new external devices. Thunderbolt is the one, and they are not cheap at all. Consider Thunderbolt 3 is widely adopted by PC market, I would hold off iMac 5K an wait for iMac 8K with Thunderbolt 3 connection on it. (just guess). From what I read, thunderbolt 1 & 2 computers can not access to thunderbolt 3 devices but thunderbolt 3 computers can access to thunderbolt 2 devices. if you want to migrate all your external and internal cards / devices to iMac, you need Thunderbolt or USB connections. I was using my iMac 5K from last Nov, it was great but also spent money on thunderbolt thing which was totally out of my budget plan.
 
KariP said:
USB 3 seems to be quite fast for everything i do with my older storages - and for backup it works. No videos. No real need for Thunderbolt gear at the moment

I bought a 3T fusion version + enough memory + i7 + some other extras.

Everything happens quite fast with my images. And i'm planning to use this machine more than 6 years ... and at the moment this machine is a bit "overkill".

The best thing is the 5K - funny but my photographs look much better. And PP is a joy.
Click to expand...
 
emily0204 said:
believe me, it is going to be a huge pain as you will need to invest on a lot of new external devices. Thunderbolt is the one, and they are not cheap at all. Consider Thunderbolt 3 is widely adopted by PC market, I would hold off iMac 5K an wait for iMac 8K with Thunderbolt 3 connection on it. (just guess). From what I read, thunderbolt 1 & 2 computers can not access to thunderbolt 3 devices but thunderbolt 3 computers can access to thunderbolt 2 devices. if you want to migrate all your external and internal cards / devices to iMac, you need Thunderbolt or USB connections. I was using my iMac 5K from last Nov, it was great but also spent money on thunderbolt thing which was totally out of my budget plan.
Click to expand...
Thank your for your advice and experiences. I had realized the Thunderbolt interface would cost much more than the older systems. I have a fairly new laptop with Thunderbolt and that gave me some insight into the transition problems

I can never wait for the next iteration. I have too much work to do and it's time to get into a faster platform. If it shows up before I buy anything that would be good but I can't wait for it.

I appreciate your help with this. I'm still gathering data so I may get lucky and the newer interface will be in the computer I end up with.
 
fredlord said:
emily0204 said:
believe me, it is going to be a huge pain as you will need to invest on a lot of new external devices. Thunderbolt is the one, and they are not cheap at all. Consider Thunderbolt 3 is widely adopted by PC market, I would hold off iMac 5K an wait for iMac 8K with Thunderbolt 3 connection on it. (just guess). From what I read, thunderbolt 1 & 2 computers can not access to thunderbolt 3 devices but thunderbolt 3 computers can access to thunderbolt 2 devices. if you want to migrate all your external and internal cards / devices to iMac, you need Thunderbolt or USB connections. I was using my iMac 5K from last Nov, it was great but also spent money on thunderbolt thing which was totally out of my budget plan.
Click to expand...
Thank your for your advice and experiences. I had realized the Thunderbolt interface would cost much more than the older systems. I have a fairly new laptop with Thunderbolt and that gave me some insight into the transition problems

I can never wait for the next iteration. I have too much work to do and it's time to get into a faster platform. If it shows up before I buy anything that would be good but I can't wait for it.

I appreciate your help with this. I'm still gathering data so I may get lucky and the newer interface will be in the computer I end up with.
Click to expand...
Wait for an 8K Mac? Right around the corner no doubt :)

USB 3 is fine for most of the OP's needs. Even USB 2 for some stuff would be adequate. And he has a Thunderbolt VGA adapter for the monitor. He might need to buy a USB 3 case or maybe a hub, but they're pretty cheap. Unless the OP has needs for say a RAID, the Thunderbolt issue just isn't very relevant. And who knows, maybe USB C is gonna supersede it.
 
Okay, I'm thinking of ordering the Mobius™ 5-Bay FireWire 800, eSATA, USB 3.0 RAID Hard Drive Enclosure and using it as JBOD for a while just to see how well it functions before ordering the iMac 5K. I can hook it to my laptop for the USB 3 portion of testing.

When the iMac is on the way, I'll probably order RAM from Amazon as well, the Adamanta 16GB set which will give 24GB for a start. If I need more later it's a simple upgrade.

I may eventually order the Thunderbolt dual disk dock from OWC if it appears it might offer some advantages.

I hate to give up the Mac Pro. It's been a workhorse with its SATA card and 3 graphics cards along with 22GB of RAM. It is my hope that the iMac will be worth the upgrade. The speed tests all seem to point to a significant increase with the upgrade.

Thank you all for your advice and experiential histories.
 
fredlord said:
Okay, I'm thinking of ordering the Mobius™ 5-Bay FireWire 800, eSATA, USB 3.0 RAID Hard Drive Enclosure and using it as JBOD for a while just to see how well it functions before ordering the iMac 5K. I can hook it to my laptop for the USB 3 portion of testing.

When the iMac is on the way, I'll probably order RAM from Amazon as well, the Adamanta 16GB set which will give 24GB for a start. If I need more later it's a simple upgrade.

I may eventually order the Thunderbolt dual disk dock from OWC if it appears it might offer some advantages.

I hate to give up the Mac Pro. It's been a workhorse with its SATA card and 3 graphics cards along with 22GB of RAM. It is my hope that the iMac will be worth the upgrade. The speed tests all seem to point to a significant increase with the upgrade.

Thank you all for your advice and experiential histories.
Click to expand...
 
As it should be. You dont want an app to be paging in/out of memory. The idea is to use all the memory in the best way possible.
 
The 16gb modules will have to drop in price a bit before I go to the full 64gb capacity. Maybe next year after the comparative speed no longer dazzles me. At US$175 per module, I can wait.
 
fredlord said:
The 16gb modules will have to drop in price a bit before I go to the full 64gb capacity. Maybe next year after the comparative speed no longer dazzles me. At US$175 per module, I can wait.

--
Fred Lord
Click to expand...
$175? In UK 16gb modules are only $40 from Crucial
 
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Hi, excuse my ignorance I have often thought of a similar upgrade, but have thought the solution was an ethernet connection between the imac and mac pro to access the files, so the mac pro becomes like a drobo device.

Would this not work?
 
Tim S said:
Hi, excuse my ignorance I have often thought of a similar upgrade, but have thought the solution was an ethernet connection between the imac and mac pro to access the files, so the mac pro becomes like a drobo device.

Would this not work?
Click to expand...
 
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