2013 Mac Pro Flash Drive (SSD) Can Fail

2015-04-01 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: 2013 Mac Pro, Mac Pro, Other World Computing, SSD, USB

(this is not an “April Fool’s” joke, especially the MacMini part!)

2013 Apple Mac Pro, innards

Chris R had the internal SSD (“flash drive”) fail in his 2013 Mac Pro:

Just a quick update on my 2013 MacPro, I have just collected it from Apple repair and they said the SSD had definitely failed, the rest of the system
was intact and fault free.

Whilst it was away being repaired I bought a basic 2014 MacMini 2.6ghz to get me by (cheapest modern option to accommodate my OWC Thunderbay) as my old 2 GHz iMac was grinding to a halt with modern raw files.

I was surprised that the MacMini was not as slow as I was expecting—100 Raw Canon 5D Mark III files can be batched in around 9 min in CaptureOne Pro, however, it’s no match for my 6 core 2013 Mac which does the same job in 1min 15 sec!

I also, with your links and recommendation, bought a 240GB 6G OWC SSD along with a Mercury Elite Pro and I’m using that as a back up boot drive now for both the MacPro and MacMini rather than just fit the SSD into the MacMini. It now serves two machines with one drive and with it read/writing at a around 430mb/sec it has certainly made the MacMini twice as snappy! happy days!

All in all, it’s a big thank you to you and MPG for the superb no nonsense articles which have kept me going last week without any loss to any data along with your excellent consultation many years ago and following your MPG back up strategy blog.

MPG: always have a bootable clone backup.

MPG suggests the Mercury Elite Pro Mini USB3, preferably the SSD version, but HDD (hard drive) is fine too.

Note that OWC offers a replacement SSD for the 2013 Mac Pro with up to 2TB capacity (Apple offers at most 1TB).