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ZombiePhysicist

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May 22, 2014
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I'm currently using the Pegasus J2i bracket:

I currently have a 3.5" 16TB spinner and a 2.5" (with a 2.5->3.5 adapter) 15TB U2 SSD in there.

I was hoping to find a bracket that could hold those 2 drives and maybe one more 2.5" SATA drive for boot camp use. If it held 2 more 2.5" drives that would be even more awesome.

Does anyone know of any brackets that might accomplish that?

Also, are there some cool brackets you're enjoying and like, and think they are particularly good?

If so, please share and thank you!
 
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I just found these, seems transient.com has a few interesting options:

This two are kind of interesting:

 
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Yeah, I almost bought the transintl one, but just went with sonnet instead. The sonnet is great for what it is...

In my J3i I have:
  1. My Time Machine HDD -- a 4TB Toshiba from like 2014 (solid as a tank)
  2. My Windows SSD -- a Crucial MX500 2TB SSD
  3. My Gaming SSD -- a Crucial MX300 750GB SSD
Time Machine and Windows are both connected via SATA, and the Gaming drive is connected via USB 3.0
 
Did you go with the sonnet because it's more compact vertically and more kind of teh same size as the J2i?

I wonder what the transintl brackets, seem to be taller and if that doesnt affect air flow.

Also, they have 2 kinds of brackets I could use (see below).

In their I should take the one that can use up to 5 drives, but the spacing between the 4 2.5" drives is pretty tight, and my U2 2.5" drive is pretty fat, so it might not fit properly there. Cant tell. My hope would be that the U2 drive might just take up 2 slots, but that would leave me with 2 more slots. one for boot camp, and then one extra for whatever, if I need expansion.

But, if I choose the other bracket, it would have more room for the U2 to breathe, and I imagine that drive could use it as it's my main drive. But if I choose just the 3 drive bracket, then I start thinking about the sonnet bracket you got as it seems more compact. Then again, not sure if the tightness is a feature or a bug depending on the heat from the drives...


IMG_5639-PCV5-scaled.jpg


IMG_5642-PCV3-2--scaled.jpg
 
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I went with sonnet for some (kinda stupid reasons, lol)

  1. Being that sonnet is in SoCal -- it would arrive here in the Bay Area quicker. lol I know...
  2. I only have 3 drives, and the nMP only has 2 SATA + the single USB 3.0. I am not sure how transintl gets around these with their cables -- do they daisychain them? can you even do that? How would they connect more than 3 drives to the nMP board?
 
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I went with sonnet for some (kinda stupid reasons, lol)

  1. Being that sonnet is in SoCal -- it would arrive here in the Bay Area quicker. lol I know...
  2. I only have 3 drives, and the nMP only has 2 SATA + the single USB 3.0. I am not sure how transintl gets around these with their cables -- do they daisychain them? can you even do that? How would they connect more than 3 drives to the nMP board?

Good question. They dont seem to provide cables, which is another check box in favor of the sonnet. My guess is you get a SATA adapter card and get your own cabling for the extra drives?
 
Good question. They dont seem to provide cables, which is another check box in favor of the sonnet. My guess is you get a SATA adapter card and get your own cabling for the extra drives?

But the nMP board only has 2x SATA ports and the single USB 3.0 one, so how would you connect more than 3 drives?

Can you daisychain SATA?

Maybe there is a SATA>PCIe cable? *shrug*
 
But the nMP board only has 2x SATA ports and the single USB 3.0 one, so how would you connect more than 3 drives?

Can you daisychain SATA?

Maybe there is a SATA>PCIe cable? *shrug*
Yeah, I almost bought the transintl one, but just went with sonnet instead. The sonnet is great for what it is...

In my J3i I have:
  1. My Time Machine HDD -- a 4TB Toshiba from like 2014 (solid as a tank)
  2. My Windows SSD -- a Crucial MX500 2TB SSD
  3. My Gaming SSD -- a Crucial MX300 750GB SSD
Time Machine and Windows are both connected via SATA, and the Gaming drive is connected via USB 3.0

Hmmm, Jesus I didnt think about that. I might need a USB hub or something in there!

I have a U2 drive, but I think it's jerry rigged in there and needs the internal SATA port it!!?!

I'd have 3 drives total:

15TB U2 (partially plugged into SATA for power, other part into U2 control card)
16TB spinner plugged into U2

Yea, I guess I would use the USB3 port cable thing to power the 3rd drive for bootcamp, so it should work.
 
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It looks like some of your other PCIe slots are available -- maybe you can just slap your bootcamp drive in there with an OWC Accelsior S?

Then again, it appears you aren't using that USB 3.0 plug, so the J3i does make sense...
 
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It looks like some of your other PCIe slots are available -- maybe you can just slap your bootcamp drive in there with an OWC Accelsior S?

Then again, it appears you aren't using that USB 3.0 plug, so the J3i does make sense...

True and good point. It’s so nice to have so many options! Love this machine.
 
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man, that 7,1 is a work of art. Much more than the 6,1 and 5,1 were. So happy the rumours point to the 8,1 being the same case.

Yo, @ZombiePhysicist. Here's a good one and I want to get this in the future as well.


EDIT: Ahh you said for 2.5" drives. This is for M.2 drives but maybe usful if ever want M.2 drives.

Another reason why PCIe slots are important. So much STORAGE :0
 
Yo, @ZombiePhysicist. Here's a good one and I want to get this in the future as well.


EDIT: Ahh you said for 2.5" drives. This is for M.2 drives but maybe usful if ever want M.2 drives.

Another reason why PCIe slots are important. So much STORAGE :0

This ADWITS card is known to NOT work with Macs, multiple people tested it with MacPro5,1 and MacPro7,1 and it's even listed on the do not buy list of the stickie thread:

 
This ADWITS card is known to NOT work with Macs, multiple people tested it with MacPro5,1 and MacPro7,1 and it's even listed on the do not buy list of the stickie thread:

Thanks for that. I wonder why?? Are drivers the issue?
 


Lou
 
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^^^^Thanks for resurrecting this thread and posting the TeraTrio cage, that looks like a great solution 👍 Any of the posted cages that fit the 7,1 Mac Pro also fit the 14,8 Mac Pro.

Lou
 
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^^^^Thanks for resurrecting this thread and posting the TeraTrio cage, that looks like a great solution 👍 Any of the posted cages that fit the 7,1 Mac Pro also fit the 14,8 Mac Pro.

Lou
Yes, I know and that was the idea - to have one simple and affordable solution for Mac Pro 2019 and 2023 owners.
 
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Do you have a link for the TeraTrio?
I'll have final version soon, it's a 3D printable model and it will be free for everyone.

It's my small way of giving back to this Mac community. I've gotten constructive help here countless times and I hope this helps everyone with these wonderful tower machines. If you don't have access to 3D printer, any local 3D print shop can print that model for you for €20 to €40, depending on the type of material you choose.
 
Here is the TeraTrio Tray, a 3D printable object for enthusiasts who want to solve the problem of large SATA storage in the Mac Pro 2019-2023 in the most economical way. It's free and if you don't have access to a 3D printer yourself, you can easily print it at your local 3D print shop or the library.


Teratrio Tray front.png

You will notice that the more expensive commercial solutions have an "L" profile on the top that fixes the entire tray to the case in case of transport. It would be quite inconvenient, if not impossible, to solve it well in 3D printing with plastic, but in practice it turned out to be unnecessary. For this reason, I made slightly deeper grooves and when the tray is fixed on the back side, it will be strong enough that there will be no movement.

Teratrio Tray 1.png

In any case, before mounting the discs in the tray, try to position it while it is empty and make sure that all 6 mounting points have entered their slots. The studs must go all the way in. It may take some force, but be careful, our Mac Pros are precious machines!

And of course, anyone with common sense will now ask the question of cooling all of this. The pleasant surprise is that the Mac Pro has a really good cooling solution and the drives are even within factory specifications at default settings. If you live in a really hot place, you can always boost the cooling a bit via the excellent Macs Fan Control program which I highly recommend.

MacsFanControl.jpg
MacPro2019HDDcagediskspace.jpg

The gap between the disks is enough to leave the cooling at factory settings.

The next extremely important thing for the longevity of the drives is that they are positioned straight on all axes. There is an allowable factory deviation, but try to be as precise as possible about this. It is important to know that the three top studs on the Mac are adjustable!

The tilt occurs because all the materials from which the 3D print is made have different elasticity. When the tray is loaded with more than 2 kg of hard disks, certain deformation will normally occur. So first roughly adjust the top three studs on an empty tray, and then through some trial and error make the adjustment when the tray is loaded with discs.

TeraTrio Tray HDD cage disk level.jpg

It takes a little time and patience, but I can tell you from experience that it is possible to adjust them almost perfectly.

MacPro2019open001.jpg

There is one more detail that is not absolutely necessary, but is welcome - these are small rubber shock absorbers that are normally used to mount mechanical hard drives. They will reduce vibrations and possible noise. I personally had them in stock from various old computers, but I believe they can be easily obtained online.

HDDcagerubber.jpg

The Mac Pro only has two SATA channels on the motherboard. Some people solve this bottleneck by getting a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter that connects to the internal USB port, but that doesn't seem like an elegant solution to me.

A true geek will always connect a SATA drive directly to the SATA bus without a converter. I had two solutions ready that I bought for my old Mac Pro (5,1). The first is the Debroglie SATA 3 PCI card (€20 on AliExpress), which brings two SATA channels, but also space for two 2.5" disks. The second solution is a separate Tishric SATA controller with as many as 6 channels (€25 also on AliExpress). As I don't need more than 50 TB at the moment, I chose Debroglie because I could add an existing SATA SSD to that card, which I use for less important stuff. In this scenario you will need a SATA extension cable.

SATA3PCIcontroler.jpg

But the connection task doesn't end there! All these disks also require power. Of course, you guessed it, Apple would have done better if they had used industry standard power connectors. However, they use the "mini" form of the connector (probably for the sake of aesthetics) which, along with them, is still only used by HP on its workstations. A set of such cables is sold by specialized Apple dealers for $200! Be economical, order the same for Hewlett-Packard workstations from AliExpress for just a couple of euros.

MacPro2019open003.jpg

And another hint for those who want to go to extremes: if you put 4 rubber feet on the bottom of the TeraTrio Tray and two on the back to provide distance from the motherboard, the whole thing fits on the bottom of a Mac Pro machine, on top of MPX module, provided you don't have a full-length PCI card! With the aforementioned Tishric SATA controller with 6 channels, you can instantly have 132 TB if you choose popular Toshiba's 22 TB drives.

With the new generation of Seagate Exos M 36 TB drives, we can reach 216 TB in just 3.5" hard drives. They announced that a 60 TB model will be released soon. That means 360 TB in cheap drives inside the Mac itself! However, if price is not an issue, you can buy 3.5" SATA SSDs designed for server farms. Currently, the largest is the Nimbus Data ExaDrive DC with a capacity of 100 TB, but the price is such that I don't want to write it here.

Now that we've come this far, let's go all the way! In the spirit of "Hold my beer..." we can theorize that if we stick to cheap solutions with classic hard drives and add the theoretically possible 136 GB of SSD capacity, both internally and via PCI slots, we arrive at 0.5 PB (yes, petabyte!) of internal capacity for this Mac. Not bad for a desktop workstation that is now affordable even for enthusiasts.

MacPro2019table003.jpg

If someone had told me back when I had my first Macintosh (Centris 610) that one day I would be able to have a Mac at home with two terabytes of RAM and half a petabyte of storage, I would have thought it was some crazy science fiction story! :)

I wish other DIY enthusiasts good luck and I will be available here for any questions and doubts! :)
 
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