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

[ZombiePhysicist]

ZombiePhysicist​

I am currently using this drive in an OWC Helios 3s and the only bottleneck is that the drive is running on PCIE 3.1 instead PCIE 4.0. From my research, I am yet to find a Thunderbolt enclosure with PCIE 4.0. Even the e-GPU ones aren't. Worth noting that using a generic StarTech U.2 card in the Helios yields same results as the OWC tray in the Helios.

I initially used the Sonnet as reference and realized that their chart was wildly inaccurate. At the time when I bought my drive, it said that Kioxia drives worked on Mac on that same chart and it also said the Samsung PM1733 worked as well (did not work via enclosure as stated in previous message). Maybe compatibility in that card is different from the enclosure but I literally have datapoints on Kioxia drives working fine for Mac both via PCIE in mac pro and via enclosure.

The CM7 is a drive I have considered as well because the speeds are frankly disgusting (in a good way) but it's worth noting that it is a PCIE 5.0 drive which is still fairly new in implementation and may open up another can of worms despite it theoretically being backward compatible with PCIE 4. Also Kioxia doesn't have the PCIE 4 performance of the CM7 in their datasheets. I just settled for the CD8 as my next drive.

Another note is that while sequential speeds are always beautiful to look at, I found that the single most important performance metric for all these enterprise u.2/u.3 nvme drives is Rand 4KiB Write in IOPS. It's the one stat that you will see real world gains in especially when using it as a boot drive.

Thanks for all that detail.

So I'm going to try to get an evaluation unit (or if I can more than one unit) to try to get to the bottom of what might work. Fingers crossed.

 

[joevt]

I am currently using this drive in an OWC Helios 3s and the only bottleneck is that the drive is running on PCIE 3.1 instead PCIE 4.0. From my research, I am yet to find a Thunderbolt enclosure with PCIE 4.0. Even the e-GPU ones aren't. Worth noting that using a generic StarTech U.2 card in the Helios yields same results as the OWC tray in the Helios.

The Helios runs PCIe 3 because it's a Thunderbolt chassis. Thunderbolt 3 and 4 are PCIe 3.x based.

Intel Thunderbolt chips are limited to PCIe gen 3. That doesn't means someone else can't make Thunderbolt chip that allows PCIe gen 4.
Search for ASMedia ASM2464PD. It's a USB4 chip that supports PCIe gen 4 speed.

PCIe gen 3 x4: 31.5 Gbps.
USB4/Thunderbolt 3/4: 40 Gbps.
PCIe gen 4 x4: 63 Gbps.

Intel Thunderbolt chips usually don't allow more than 24 Gbps. There have been benchmarks ≈25 Gbps or near 26 Gbps.

USB4/Thunderbolt 4 is limited to 40 Gbps so you will only get a little extra speed from PCIe gen 4. Maybe 30 Gbps. Try searching for some ASMedia ASM2464PD benchmarks.

I guess the ASMedia ASM2464PD will work best with USB4 host controllers that are not limited to PCIe gen 3 x4. That means integrated Thunderbolt controllers such as Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Apple Silicon but I haven't seen any tests to confirm this.

 

[djshd]

Intel Thunderbolt chips are limited to PCIe gen 3. That doesn't means someone else can't make Thunderbolt chip that allows PCIe gen 4.
Search for ASMedia ASM2464PD. It's a USB4 chip that supports PCIe gen 4 speed.

PCIe gen 3 x4: 31.5 Gbps.
USB4/Thunderbolt 3/4: 40 Gbps.
PCIe gen 4 x4: 63 Gbps.

Intel Thunderbolt chips usually don't allow more than 24 Gbps. There have been benchmarks ≈25 Gbps or near 26 Gbps.

USB4/Thunderbolt 4 is limited to 40 Gbps so you will only get a little extra speed from PCIe gen 4. Maybe 30 Gbps. Try searching for some ASMedia ASM2464PD benchmarks.

I guess the ASMedia ASM2464PD will work best with USB4 host controllers that are not limited to PCIe gen 3 x4. That means integrated Thunderbolt controllers such as Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Apple Silicon but I haven't seen any tests to confirm this.

thank you for the amazing insight

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

thank you for the amazing insight

By the way, where did you buy your drive from” It’s tough to find reputable on line resellers of these u.2/u.3 drives at least in n the more popular consumer online retailers like Amazon.

 

[djshd]

By the way, where did you buy your drive from” It’s tough to find reputable on line resellers of these u.2/u.3 drives at least in n the more popular consumer online retailers like Amazon.

got my cm6 off a private seller and cd8 off ebay

 

[Rimmsi]

Hi, after a clean install of MacOS Sonoma, it sometimes happens to me that the Micron 9200 U.2 drive connected to the 10GTek U.2 SFF-8639 card disconnects. A warning appears on the screen that the disk was not properly disconnected. Anyone having problems with Sonoma and U.2 drives? I had no problem with the U.2 drive in Monterey. Thanks.

 

[djshd]

Hi, after a clean install of MacOS Sonoma, it sometimes happens to me that the Micron 9200 U.2 drive connected to the 10GTek U.2 SFF-8639 card disconnects. A warning appears on the screen that the disk was not properly disconnected. Anyone having problems with Sonoma and U.2 drives? I had no problem with the U.2 drive in Monterey. Thanks.

I didn't even bother updating from Ventura because I can't afford issues on work critical hardware.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So I still haven't found a 30TB SSD yet that is bootable. Curious if anyone else has seen anything worth looking in to. Weirdly I cannot find any such drives even on amazon anymore. It's not clear to me what places even sell these enterprise drives.

But I came to weird thought. I have a maxed out MBP M1max with 8tb. I don't care about the speed of the cpu much so there has been zero reason for me to upgrade the machine. If Apple were to provide a 16tb upgrade, I would have and will, immediately.

Weirdly, because of apple greed/lock-in strategy on both RAM and storage, and their lazy stingy storage provisions (seriously we're up to 8tb when that capacity was state of the art in spinner storage probably over a decade ago--and the high end SSD market has 256tb drives out now), that they give me zero reasons to upgrade. Because they provide no meaningful increases in capacity on their machines, I upgrade their computers less. I suspect that is the case for many of their machines, laptops, studios, etc. Funny, their greed may end up costing them more than the marketing/accounting wonks thought they'd clean up on by preventing 3rd party upgrades.

 

[0Jeff]

So I still haven't found a 30TB SSD yet that is bootable. Curious if anyone else has seen anything worth looking in to. Weirdly I cannot find any such drives even on amazon anymore. It's not clear to me what places even sell these enterprise drives.

But I came to weird thought. I have a maxed out MBP M1max with 8tb. I don't care about the speed of the cpu much so there has been zero reason for me to upgrade the machine. If Apple were to provide a 16tb upgrade, I would have and will, immediately.

Weirdly, because of apple greed/lock-in strategy on both RAM and storage, and their lazy stingy storage provisions (seriously we're up to 8tb when that capacity was state of the art in spinner storage probably over a decade ago--and the high end SSD market has 256tb drives out now), that they give me zero reasons to upgrade. Because they provide no meaningful increases in capacity on their machines, I upgrade their computers less. I suspect that is the case for many of their machines, laptops, studios, etc. Funny, their greed may end up costing them more than the marketing/accounting wonks thought they'd clean up on by preventing 3rd party upgrades.

https://www.micron.com/products/ssd/product-lines/9400#:~:text=30.72TB%20capacity%20is%20the,of%20this%20document's%20initial%20publication.

Micron 6500 ION - SSD - Enterprise - encrypted - 30.72 TB - internal - 2.5" - U.3 PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe) - SHA-512 - Self-En - Newegg.com

Buy Micron 6500 ION - SSD - Enterprise - encrypted - 30.72 TB - internal - 2.5" - U.3 PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe) - SHA-512 - Self-En with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

This is a bootable 30tb drive

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

https://www.micron.com/products/ssd/product-lines/9400#:~:text=30.72TB%20capacity%20is%20the,of%20this%20document's%20initial%20publication.

Micron 6500 ION - SSD - Enterprise - encrypted - 30.72 TB - internal - 2.5" - U.3 PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe) - SHA-512 - Self-En - Newegg.com

Buy Micron 6500 ION - SSD - Enterprise - encrypted - 30.72 TB - internal - 2.5" - U.3 PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe) - SHA-512 - Self-En with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

This is a bootable 30tb drive

So I tried the 9400 pro and it, sadly, is not bootable with macOS. It does show up in Windows.

Have you confirmed that the ION 6500 is bootable? I think we've had reports that it too is not bootable in macOS.

 

[Rimmsi]

As far as I remember, the only 100% reliable U.2 ssd in MacOS are the Micron 9100, 9200 and 9300. If you're using windows, the options are pretty much limitless. I think even the Intel p4800x/p5800x had some troublecwith booting MacOS.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

As far as I remember, the only 100% reliable U.2 ssd in MacOS are the Micron 9100, 9200 and 9300. If you're using windows, the options are pretty much limitless. I think even the Intel p4800x/p5800x had some troublecwith booting MacOS.

Yea, the only one in this thread known to work is the 15TB Micron 9300 Pro (I've been using it on the 7,1 Mac Pro since 2019 with HighPoint cards). I'm hoping some of the modern newer drives will prove to work too. But so far no reports of that. I personally have tried the 9400 Pro 30TB and know it's not compatible. There is a rough and not fully accurate compatibility table that Sonnet has been maintaining from this post and was just updated on feb 12.

Particularly wonder about the newer Solidigm (formerly Intel) and Kioxia drives.

 

[Rimmsi]

It's interesting that the table lists the Micron 7450 as compatible, even though we know it can't be used on MacOS.

 

[reglit]

Yea, the only one in this thread known to work is the 15TB Micron 9300 Pro (I've been using it on the 7,1 Mac Pro since 2019 with HighPoint cards). I'm hoping some of the modern newer drives will prove to work too. But so far no reports of that. I personally have tried the 9400 Pro 30TB and know it's not compatible. There is a rough and not fully accurate compatibility table that Sonnet has been maintaining from this post and was just updated on feb 12.

View attachment 2350691

Particularly wonder about the newer Solidigm (formerly Intel) and Kioxia drives.

I also tried Pblaze 6930 30.72tb which is identical to 9400pro internally. So sad it doesn't work either. However if you are looking for high-performance 15.36tb ssd, you can try Dapstor R5100 15.36tb. It works perfectly on Mac(feedback from many of my friends) and it is one of the fastest PCIe gen4 ssd.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I also tried Pblaze 6930 30.72tb which is identical to 9400pro internally. So sad it doesn't work either. However if you are looking for high-performance 15.36tb ssd, you can try Dapstor R5100 15.36tb. It works perfectly on Mac(feedback from many of my friends) and it is one of the fastest PCIe gen4 ssd.

I wonder if Dapustor makes a 30tb drive?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

It's interesting that the table lists the Micron 7450 as compatible, even though we know it can't be used on MacOS.

Their list is a decent overview but does have inaccuracies. They report that the 15tb 9300 Pro is not compatible with macOS, but it is. I've been running it since 2019.

 

[reglit]

I wonder if Dapustor makes a 30tb drive?

No they don't. I have checked with them previously.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

In the mean time, E1.S drives are becoming an appliance thing, but Apple is nowhere:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1759760199429001510

 

[reglit]

In the mean time, E1.S drives are becoming an appliance thing, but Apple is nowhere:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1759760199429001510

Is there any way to let Apple be aware of this issue? It will save my life if they could offer better support for enterprise level storage.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Is there any way to let Apple be aware of this issue? It will save my life if they could offer better support for enterprise level storage.

I forget, there was a link for support/suggestions. Someone posted it in the AVP section and I used it. I keep meaning to save it for future reference. And you're right, it would be great if we lob in some request. It probably falls on deaf ears, but worth a try.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I forget, there was a link for support/suggestions. Someone posted it in the AVP section and I used it. I keep meaning to save it for future reference. And you're right, it would be great if we lob in some request. It probably falls on deaf ears, but worth a try.

Found it:

Product Feedback

We would love to hear your comments about any of our hardware and software products. Send us your thoughts.

www.apple.com

Rather obvious link yet I keep forgetting it.

 

[reglit]

Found it:

Product Feedback

We would love to hear your comments about any of our hardware and software products. Send us your thoughts.

www.apple.com

Rather obvious link yet I keep forgetting it.

Thanks a lot for the link. I have submitted a feedback. Hopefully they will notice this issue in the near future.

 

[paulraphael]

I personally have tried the 9400 Pro 30TB and know it's not compatible. There is a rough and not fully accurate compatibility table that Sonnet has been maintaining from this post and was just updated on feb 12.

I know this thread is primarily about boot drives, but has anyone had luck using a 30TB u.2 for a non-boot drive on a Mac?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I know this thread is primarily about boot drives, but has anyone had luck using a 30TB u.2 for a non-boot drive on a Mac?

I have not. I only tried the 9400 Pro and it would not even show up on the mac, but did show up on windows.

That said, there are a bunch of options if you want more than 15tb and dont need the boot option. A few at OWC for starters. And I think a few a high point too.

OWC SSD Upgrade Kits For Mac Pro (2019 - Current)

Get everything you need to upgrade your Mac Pro (2019 - Current) for a total system performance and capacity boost. All OWC SSDs backed by a lifetime warranty.

eshop.macsales.com

 

[paulraphael]

I have not. I only tried the 9400 Pro and it would not even show up on the mac, but did show up on windows.

That said, there are a bunch of options if you want more than 15tb and dont need the boot option. A few at OWC for starters. And I think a few a high point too.

OWC SSD Upgrade Kits For Mac Pro (2019 - Current)

Get everything you need to upgrade your Mac Pro (2019 - Current) for a total system performance and capacity boost. All OWC SSDs backed by a lifetime warranty.

eshop.macsales.com

Thanks. I've got a Micron 9300 pro 7.68 in a Helios Thunderbolt enclosure now. It's great. I'm just wondering where to go when eventually I need something bigger.