It supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gb/sec, but of course your Mac Pro uses Gen 1 and that's still fast enough for SATA SSDs. I put hard drives in it and an SSD in one bay, designated for scratch. My Mac has Thunderbolt 3, but to solve the similar problem, I decided the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad, plugged in through USB 3, would be fast enough. USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gb/s), supported by the ports on your Mac Pro, is fast enough for the speed of a common SATA SSD. It may be an overkill, but I won't be bothered for the next 3 years at least and it's future proof, since I'll be able to use it if/when I buy a new MP.īut you're not finding many options because you're only considering Thunderbolt, right? Because I'm not sure Thunderbolt is a necessary expense to solve this problem.

Furthermore, it has a 3 year warranty, it's portable, the SSDs are upgradeable and it doesn't have a fan. You can use each one separately, or in a RAID array, which is what I'm going to do. It's compatible with the trashcan and also has four 250GB SSDs preinstalled. That's about £650 including the cost of the Apple adapter. However, after reading countless posts, articles and product reviews, I decided to go for an OWC Thunderblade 1TB. That's about £600, including the cost of four 250GB SSDs and the Apple TB3>TB2 adapter. I'd have up to 4 SSDs and it's compatible with TB2. My second option was to buy an OWC Express 4M2. That's just over £400 and I'd have one SSD. My first option was to buy a Samsung X5, connect it to a Thunderbolt 3 dock and use an Apple adapter to connect the TB3 dock to the trashcan. There aren't many options that are compatible with the MP 6.1.

External ssd for mac raid 1