MP All Models Bootable PCI SSD Cards/Drives for Mac Pro (NVMe M.2, U.2, EDSFF E3.S, etc.)

[ZombiePhysicist]

Holy crap, has anyone seen, tested or used this drive!?

RA-Mac-Category | HighPoint-tech.com

www.highpoint-tech.com

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/rocketaic/ra7749ew

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/product-page/ra7749ew

Apparently these can be cross linked for up to 54GB/sec, which is just sick!

I cannot tell if this is bootable as a single mass drive. My guess is it just has lots of NVMe sticks in it and you have to raid them for the fast speeds?

 

[mcnallym]

Holy crap, has anyone seen, tested or used this drive!?

RA-Mac-Category | HighPoint-tech.com

www.highpoint-tech.com

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/rocketaic/ra7749ew

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/product-page/ra7749ew

Apparently these can be cross linked for up to 54GB/sec, which is just sick!

View attachment 2239842

I cannot tell if this is bootable as a single mass drive. My guess is it just has lots of NVMe sticks in it and you have to raid them for the fast speeds?

Windows and Linux only at the moment, no mention of Mac OS support.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Windows and Linux only at the moment, no mention of Mac OS support.

There is on this page:

RA-Mac-Category | HighPoint-tech.com

www.highpoint-tech.com

They just havent updated the other web pages.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Hi All:

So it's time for me to upgrade my storage. Per this thread, I've enjoyed my current setup for about 3+ years with my Highpoint 7120 card in my 2019 Mac Pro and it’s been great with my 15TB Micron 9300 Pro U.2 drive.

But now I need to upgrade and was hoping anyone might be able to help me with the best way to upgrade! I have 5 questions below and wonder if anyone could help me with any of these questions. Thanks so much!


Q1: I need a single 30TB bootable drive and am not sure what is the best way to achieve that. I believe High Point has these new ultra dense cards with 30TB of storage cards (e.g., the RA7749EM-S30T7-01) but I think they rely on single NVMe blades to populate the card, and as such, you must RAID them. I think, under macOS the resulting RAID drive is not bootable and so you would need to make a single, e.g., 8TB, blade bootable and then RAID the other sticks. And as a result, you could not have a single 30TB bootable drive, is that correct?

If so, that means I probably need to upgrade my drive to the 30TB Micron 9400 Pro U.3 drive and I’m wondering what would be the best card to drive that and my old drive?

Q2: Since the the 9400 Pro U.3 drive is capable of 7000MB/s transfers, would it be able to achieve such speeds on my HighPoint 7120 card be able to achieve 7000MB/s on my 2019 Mac Pro (with its PCIe 3 slots)? Perhaps if I put it in an 8 or 16lane slot?


Assuming that my 7120 card is not able to drive the 9400 Pro U.3 drive at full speed, I’m trying to figure out, what is the best new HighPoint PCI card for my 2019 Mac Pro so that I could get the 7000MB/s performance from the upgraded 9400 Pro?

I see 2 possibilities, the Rocket 1580 and Rocket 1120.

Q3: The Rocket 1120 is a PCIe 3 card; would it be able to drive the Micron 9400 Pro U.3 drive at its 7000MB/s speeds? My guess is not because it is PCIe3, but perhaps it can if I put it in an 8 or 16 lane slot? I like this card better because there is no fan.

Or

Q4: The Rocket 1580 is a PCIe4 card; would it be able to drive the Micron 9400 Pro U.3 drive at its 7000MB/sec speed considering my 2019 Mac Pro is PCIe 3? My hope is if I put it in an 8 or 16 lane slot, that this could would still be able to do 7000MB/sec transfers with more lanes despite being put in a PCIe3 slot?

I guess what I cannot tell is if any of the high point cards is able to dedicate enough bandwidth to one or 2 drives to drive them at full speed. I probalby would only hook up 2 drives to the card.

Q5: Is there some other U.2/U.3 card I should look to that might be able to get me the full 7000MB/sec speed of the Micron 9400 Pro 30TB U.3 drive? Something like the Sonnet Fusion Dual card?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Hmm, so this says it's a bootable raid, but I suspect that is only for linux/windows and not macOS.

SSD7540 NVMe RAID AIC |HighPoint Technologies, Inc.

SSD7540 is an 8-port M.2 NVMe RAID Controller, no bifurcation, standalone solution, with dedicated PCIe 4.0 x16 to deliver up to 28,000MB/s of transfer speed.

www.highpoint-tech.com

If it did boot to macOS as one giant drive, that would be awesome. Anyone know?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Well. Looks like I’m pioneering this. Ok ordered the 30Tb micron drive. Will see how it works with my 7120 card first.

 

[Bggale]

So how are you mounting that Micron drive? Do you have one of the cages that go high in your 7.1 Mac ( I forget who makes the one I have). I’m afraid to even ask what you paid for the 30Tb Micron, since I just looked at the 15 Tb one on CrAmazon! Too bad that card isn’t bootable in RAID. Let us know how it works for you.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So how are you mounting that Micron drive? Do you have one of the cages that go high in your 7.1 Mac ( I forget who makes the one I have). I’m afraid to even ask what you paid for the 30Tb Micron, since I just looked at the 15 Tb one on CrAmazon! Too bad that card isn’t bootable in RAID. Let us know how it works for you.

The 30tb isn’t bad considering the capacity. $3100.

Micron 9400 Pro 30720GB NVME U.3

9400 PRO 30720GB NVME U.3 (15mm MTFDKCC30T7TGH-1BC1ZABYYR

www.amazon.com

Yea I have the 2 bay bracket I got originally. The 2j or something like that. I might get a 3bay bracket, but will hold off until I see how I get the 30tb working and with what card. I’m thinking of making my old 15tb Ssd into my Time Machine drive. The spinner gets a bit thrashy.

 

[Bggale]

Your 2J will hold 3 drives. I have 3 in mine. I’m not familiar with 2U drives - how do they get their power? Is it in the same cable as data? Doesn’t anyone make a RAID card that the Mac sees as a single drive? That’s what I’m really looking for. It was no big deal, speed - wise, with spinners, but 3 or 4 RAIDed 2Us would be awesome!

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Your 2J will hold 3 drives. I have 3 in mine. I’m not familiar with 2U drives - how do they get their power? Is it in the same cable as data? Doesn’t anyone make a RAID card that the Mac sees as a single drive? That’s what I’m really looking for. It was no big deal, speed - wise, with spinners, but 3 or 4 RAIDed 2Us would be awesome!

My understanding is apple removed support for booting from raid drives. So apparently there are no such drives.

However, I have a suspicion if there was a raid controller that established the Raid in It’s firmware, it could present itself as a single drive.

I had a raid zero controller like that many years ago on my 5,1. If I find the link, I’ll link to it. IIRC. I had to boot into windows and use a windows utility to establish the raid0 on that card with 4 Ssd sticks. I think I still have that card in my 5,1 somewhere packed up. I guess I could try it. It’s a slow drive by todays standards, but it would just be interesting to see if I could get it to boot to prove the theory.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Found it in this thread. Addonics card:

Bootable 4TB SSD on classic Mac Pro

I just set up the Addonics Quad mSATA PCIe SSD card with 4 Samsung 840 EVO mSATA SSDs. It works great and is bootable. http://www.addonics.com/products/ad4mspx2.php http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-mSATA-0-85-Inch-MZ-MTE500BW/dp/B00HWHVOQS/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics By default it works...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Your 2J will hold 3 drives. I have 3 in mine. I’m not familiar with 2U drives - how do they get their power? Is it in the same cable as data? Doesn’t anyone make a RAID card that the Mac sees as a single drive? That’s what I’m really looking for. It was no big deal, speed - wise, with spinners, but 3 or 4 RAIDed 2Us would be awesome!

Wow. How do you get 3 drives in there? Could you take a photo by chance?

Oh and I forgot to answer your question, but cabling is a bit annoying. Will link to another thread that shows, but you have a funky cable that connects for U2 data and a data cable for power on these U2/U3 drives.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So you can see the U2 drive on top in this post with part of the cabling visible:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-support-for-nvme-u2-u3-drives-eg-micron-9300-pro-15-36tb-u-2-u-3-ssd.2179713/post-28134074

This shows a bit of a close up for the types of cables and modification I had to make to get power to the drive:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/suggestions-for-best-bootable-ssd-card-drive-for-2019-7-1-mac-pro-eg-pci-nvme-u-2-u-3-etc.2189591/post-28088851

High Point has a page listing the different types of cables you need for these various U2/U3 drives here, and some are really funky:

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/nvme-accessories

I think this is the cable you would need for the Rocket 1580 (the only PCI4 U2/U3 card I know of at the moment):

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/product-page/ts8i-8639-060

 

[Bggale]

I know Apple won’t allow booting from RAID anymore, but I thought if the Mac saw a RAID as a single drive (via firmware on the card, like you say), it would boot from it. Does anyone know if the RAID that Apple still sells is bootable? I forget the name, but it’s a big card the mounts 4 spinners, so it’s meant for storage rather than speed.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Ok, heard back from High Point and all as I feared.

So tiny bit of good news. My old 1720 card will run the 9400 pro fine. However, it will be stuck to around 3500MB/s speed.

Nor would getting their PCI4 card help on my PCI3 2019 Mac Pro.

Also, none of their NVMe stick cards can create single large bootable drive that boots on the Mac Pro.

Your best bet fi you want 7000MB/sec and a single large bootable drive is to get the 2023 Mac Pro and get their PCI4 card. Then the Micro 9400 pro could run at full speed at 7000MB/sec.

Sadly, if you want the super fast throughput cards, you can never have a large single bootable drive AND the speed. You must dedicate either 1 stick to a bootable volume and raid the rest, or just use another boot drive, and then raid all the sticks on their PCI card as a non bootable data drive. Lame. Sucks. And it's apple's fault for removing booting from RAID drives, you know, because apple's motto is doing less and less, while wasting more and more resources.

Anyway, I should get the 9400 in a few days, and will have to build a new system on it. Fingers crossed.

 

[joevt]

Ok, heard back from High Point and all as I feared.

So tiny bit of good news. My old 1720 card will run the 9400 pro fine. However, it will be stuck to around 3500MB/s speed.

What's a 1720?
4 lanes of PCIe gen 3 is limited to 3500 MB/s. You can't expect more than that.

Nor would getting their PCI4 card help on my PCI3 2019 Mac Pro.

The PCI gen 4 card has a PCIe gen 4 switch. It should be able to run the down stream M.2 devices at gen 4 speed (7000 MB/s) if the M.2 devices are gen 4. The upstream is limited to the PCIe gen 3 of the MacPro7,1 but that should be sufficient for 4 lane gen 4 M.2 devices if the upstream slot has 8 or more lanes.

Also, none of their NVMe stick cards can create single large bootable drive that boots on the Mac Pro.

I thought that was the point of the Highpoint RAID software? I guess its not really good RAID support if it can't appear as a single drive for macOS. For Windows and Linux, they use a UEFI driver in the option rom to do the RAID? Intel Macs can do UEFI option ROMs, but maybe there's an issue with the transition from UEFI to macOS.
Apple Silicon Macs don't use PCI option ROMs so you need a card with a RAID controller that makes all the NVMe drives appear as a single device. Does such a thing exist?

Your best bet fi you want 7000MB/sec and a single large bootable drive is to get the 2023 Mac Pro and get their PCI4 card. Then the Micro 9400 pro could run at full speed at 7000MB/sec.

My MacPro3,1 with gen 4 card can do near gen 4 speed for a single gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD while the gen 4 card is installed in my gen 2 x16 slot.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pcie-ssds-nvme-ahci.2146725/post-29483973
I've never tested RAID boot or how the card behaves as RAID.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Hey @joevt! It's great to see you! Hope youre doing well!

What's a 1720?

It's this is the 1720 card, and this is their latest PCIe4 card, the Rocket 1580.

4 lanes of PCIe gen 3 is limited to 3500 MB/s. You can't expect more than that.

Agreed.

The PCI gen 4 card has a PCIe gen 4 switch. It should be able to run the down stream M.2 devices at gen 4 speed (7000 MB/s) if the M.2 devices are gen 4. The upstream is limited to the PCIe gen 3 of the MacPro7,1 but that should be sufficient for 4 lane gen 4 M.2 devices if the upstream slot has 8 or more lanes.

Well these are U.2 drives, with U.2 controllers, so I think that's different from the M.2. But you usually have forgotten more than I'll learn in this life time, so I'll defer to you. All I can say Is that High Point came back to me and said it would be limited on my system as well. Perhaps I or they misunderstood, but I was pretty explicit in my request, and they seemed to reply coherently. I'll paste the response (to my earlier questions) below (redacting their names):

I thought that was the point of the Highpoint RAID software? I guess its not really good RAID support if it can't appear as a single drive for macOS. For Windows and Linux, they use a UEFI driver in the option rom to do the RAID? Intel Macs can do UEFI option ROMs, but maybe there's an issue with the transition from UEFI to macOS.
Apple Silicon Macs don't use PCI option ROMs so you need a card with a RAID controller that makes all the NVMe drives appear as a single device. Does such a thing exist?


My MacPro3,1 with gen 4 card can do near gen 4 speed for a single gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD while the gen 4 card is installed in my gen 2 x16 slot.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pcie-ssds-nvme-ahci.2146725/post-29483973
I've never tested RAID boot or how the card behaves as RAID.

Yea, youre using NVMe sticks, but unfortunately later versions of macOS cant see them as one big boot drive, which is what I need. I forget, but older versions of macOS can boot to a RAID, but as of some relatively recent version of macOS, apple removed the ability to boot from RAID. Why, who knows. And as far as I know, there are no cards that can 'spoof' their internal raid and present itself as a single drive in a way that macOS would accept for purposes of booting.

 

[joevt]

It's this is the 1720 card, and this is their latest PCIe4 card, the Rocket 1580.

Oh, that's 7120, not 1720 - I figured it was a typo.

Well these are U.2 drives, with U.2 controllers, so I think that's different from the M.2.

I think the only difference is the connector. It's still just PCIe for the interface and NVMe for the controller.

All I can say Is that High Point came back to me and said it would be limited on my system as well. Perhaps I or they misunderstood, but I was pretty explicit in my request, and they seemed to reply coherently. I'll paste the response (to my earlier questions) below (redacting their names):

They don't seen to understand that each port of the PCIe switch (upstream or downstream) can have a different link rates.
The document at https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/BC-0484EN says "Each port speed (Gen1/2/3/4) independent of others". This is usually true for all PCIe switches, ever since PCIe 2.0.

Yea, youre using NVMe sticks, but unfortunately later versions of macOS cant see them as one big boot drive, which is what I need. I forget, but older versions of macOS can boot to a RAID, but as of some relatively recent version of macOS, apple removed the ability to boot from RAID.

Right. Disk Utility's software raid would setup a boot partition to handling the early booting of Mac OS X which includes loading the RAID drivers to load the rest of Mac OS X from the software RAID. It only worked with HFS+, so I think it was possible up to High Sierra.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/big-sur-and-raid-0.2268116/post-29238587

Why, who knows. And as far as I know, there are no cards that can 'spoof' their internal raid and present itself as a single drive in a way that macOS would accept for purposes of booting.

There are SATA RAID controllers that can do it. Plenty of external USB and Thunderbolt drives that uses RAIDed SATA drives.
I guess doing RAID with PCIe devices is more difficult?[/QUOTE]

 

[Bggale]

How do I mount 3 drives in my J3i? I’m out of town at the moment, but I found this on the web:
Mount up to Three SATA Drives in Your Mac Pro (2019)
Sonnet's Fusion™ Flex J3i makes it easy, enabling you to securely install and connect up to three SATA drives (sold separately) in the available space next to the PCIe card slots.

 

[Bggale]

I assumed you meant J3i when to said 2J, btw…

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I assumed you meant J3i when to said 2J, btw…

Ah. You have the sonnet version. I might need to get that. But I might pull the spinner and put it in my NAS And use my old 15tb Ssd as my Time Machine and have an all Ssd solution.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Oh, that's 7120, not 1720 - I figured it was a typo.


I think the only difference is the connector. It's still just PCIe for the interface and NVMe for the controller.


They don't seen to understand that each port of the PCIe switch (upstream or downstream) can have a different link rates.
The document at https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/BC-0484EN says "Each port speed (Gen1/2/3/4) independent of others". This is usually true for all PCIe switches, ever since PCIe 2.0.


Right. Disk Utility's software raid would setup a boot partition to handling the early booting of Mac OS X which includes loading the RAID drivers to load the rest of Mac OS X from the software RAID. It only worked with HFS+, so I think it was possible up to High Sierra.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/big-sur-and-raid-0.2268116/post-29238587


There are SATA RAID controllers that can do it. Plenty of external USB and Thunderbolt drives that uses RAIDed SATA drives.
I guess doing RAID with PCIe devices is more difficult?

[/QUOTE]

Aye sorry for the model number mix up.

Interesting. So are you suggesting that my 7120 might be able to do some better speed up/downstream? Or if I get their pcie4 card that it may do better up/down?

 

[joevt]

Interesting. So are you suggesting that my 7120 might be able to do some better speed up/downstream? Or if I get their pcie4 card that it may do better up/down?

The 7120 is limited to PCIe gen 3 (≈3500 MB/s per NVMe).
You need a PCIe gen 4 card to get PCIe gen 4 speed from a gen 4 NVMe (≈7000 MB/s per NVMe). This requires at least a gen 2 x16 slot or a gen 3 x8 slot.
Since you have a gen 3 x16 slot, the total will be limited to ≈14000 MB/s).
You can test multiple storage drives simultaneously using ATTO Disk BenchMark.app without having to create a software RAID.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

The 7120 is limited to PCIe gen 3 (≈3500 MB/s per NVMe).
You need a PCIe gen 4 card to get PCIe gen 4 speed from a gen 4 NVMe (≈7000 MB/s per NVMe). This requires at least a gen 2 x16 slot or a gen 3 x8 slot.
Since you have a gen 3 x16 slot, the total will be limited to ≈14000 MB/s).
You can test multiple storage drives simultaneously using ATTO Disk BenchMark.app without having to create a software RAID.

Ok. I guess it's worth a test.

I will first get it working on my 7120. Then I'll get the 1580 and test it out.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Before I buy the 1580. Is anyone aware of any other Mac compatible PCIe4 U.2/U.3 PCIe cards?

I figure I should check out the landscape before buying another card. Thanks for any suggestions.