It had many hardware upgrades over the years - upgraded CPUs, 128GB RAM, 4TB NVME storage, a modern AMD GPU, USB3/c, thunderbolt, etc
The only reason it got replaced is because it became too much of a PITA to keep modern OSX running on it (via OCLP)
Replaced with an M4 Max Mac Studio, which is a nice and faster machine but with no ability to upgrade anything and much worse hardware resale value on M-series I'll have to replace it in 2-3 years
Absolutely recommend you purchase the 4-bay Terramaster external enclosure — gives you four SATA slots that are hot-swappable (unlike MacPro's). 10gbps via USB-C.
Still an inexpensive solution to help ease your transition away from MacPro"5,1"land.
As USB-C is a physical form factor (capable of supporting multiple protocols), I would think that the ability to have multidrive external SMART support would be up to the vendor's choice of datachip/datastream. Again: my Acasis does support SMART for nVMEs.
SMART is supported on my external Acasis nVME.
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I have two TerraMaster sledbads; this one [typing] is years older [only 5gbps, macOS Ventura] and shows `SMART: not supported` [1]
[1] It's mirrored WD_blacks (RAID1) so I have at least some redundancy... I know: a RAID does NOT count as "backed-up".
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Within an hour I'll have checked the newer system (I suspect it'll be similar — definitely faster!).
#TodayIlearnt
If you're self employed, the cost of equipment and depreciation make hanging on to that 2009 system even more of a poor choice.
If you were still using a 2009 system I don't see why you'd "have to replace in 2-3 years."
The most notable feature was that there were mac-specific graphics cards, and you could also run PC graphics cards (without a nice boot screen). They had a 1.4kw power supply I believe, and there was extra pcie power for higher-end graphics cards. You could upgrade the memory, add up to 6 or more sata hard disks (2 in dvd slot). You could run windows, dual booting if you wanted and apple supported the drivers.
The 2013 was kind of a joke. small and quiet, but expansion was minimal.
2019 looked beefy, but the expansion was more like a cash register for apple, not really democratic. There were 3rd party sata hard disk solutions,
the 2023 model was basically a joke. I think maybe the pcie slots were ok for nvme cards, not a lot else (unless apple made it).
nowadays an apple computer is more like an iphone - apple would prefer if everything was welded shut.
Funny timing to say that
https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...