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

[tsialex]

I see, thanks.
So no point in searching for those on ebay.

Another question: if one would choose to completely “ignore” the 256GB apple SSD and use it only for firmware upgrades of the machine, would it be best to keep it powered inside the machine or in cold storage in a drawer? To reduce the chance of it going bad etc.

I'm not completely certain at this point, this needs to be confirmed, but I think that you can't boot without the NANDs. MP7,1 BootROM is managed and stored by the T2, and the NANDs are the T2 storage. For this type of questions we need the Apple Technician Guide available.
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I talked directly to OWC and was told differently - that there’s no issues. So I installed one and am running it with no problems so far. Hopefully that sustains, but I will be eager to download the firmware -

Could you please post an ioreg output here or by PM? There are several questions about the PCIe organisation that can be answered by the report. Even an lspci output will be helpful.
Something like:

ioreg >output.txt

For lspci you have to install pciutils: https://github.com/warexify/pciutils

I usually install from here: https://github.com/gmerlino/homebrew-pciutils

brew install --HEAD https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gmerlino/homebrew-pciutils/master/pciutils.rb

Install homebrew first: http://brew.sh

 

[Korican100]

Im confused. If the accelsior needs the update, somebody in this thread just posted their speeds w/ their new MP7,1.

Anyway, just my luck. i just bought the Got damn accelsior before seeing this thread.

 

[tsialex]

Im confused. If the accelsior needs the update, somebody in this thread just posted their speeds w/ their new MP7,1.

Anyway, just my luck. i just bought the Got damn accelsior before seeing this thread.

At the moment, there are conflicting info about this.

Since MP7,1 PCIe slots are behind a PCIe switch and the PEX8796 has a new resource, PLX call it virtual switches and Apple is calling it pools with Expansion Slot Utility, maybe the OWC firmware needs some tweaking.

 

[Korican100]

At the moment, there are conflicting info about this.

Since MP7,1 PCIe slots are behind a PCIe switch and the PEX8796 has a new resource, PLX call it virtual switches and Apple is calling it pools with Expansion Slot Utility, maybe the OWC firmware needs some tweaking.

thanks man. did you invent NVMe technology or something lol

 

[tsialex]

thanks man. did you invent NVMe technology or something lol

I read a lot about this topic when implementing the NVMe firmware mod for MP5,1 back in the day and before buying my SSD7101A-1, so I know a thing or two about this.

 

[H. Flower]

I'm not completely certain at this point, this needs to be confirmed, but I think that you can't boot without the NANDs. MP7,1 BootROM is managed and stored by the T2, and the NANDs are the T2 storage. For this type of questions we need the Apple Technician Guide available.
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Could you please post an ioreg output here or by PM? There are several questions about the PCIe organisation that can be answered by the report. Even an lspci output will be helpful.
Something like:

ioreg >output.txt

For lspci you have to install pciutils: https://github.com/warexify/pciutils

I usually install from here: https://github.com/gmerlino/homebrew-pciutils

brew install --HEAD https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gmerlino/homebrew-pciutils/master/pciutils.rb

Install homebrew first: http://brew.sh

Im slammed with deadlines, but I will try to do this soon......

And thanks for all your help with all of this.

 

[edgerider]

u2 is pciex4 by sas wiring essentially.
this card function like a sas raid card but use 2,5 » pcie ssd to make use of enterprise grade ssd in diskshelf.

I would personally go with a squid 6 port card and 6 x 2 Tb in raid 10 that would give a 6 tb rock solid 9Gb/s drive for 3000$ and in 2 years just sale the 2Tb ssd and swap 4Tb ones

 

[eric.blair]

For anyone considering an ACCELSIOR 4M2 from OWC, the currently available versions for sale are NOT yet compatible with MP7,1. Being told a firmware update will be required, which will not be available until next week at the earliest. I'm sure the holiday will slow down a bit too.

Unsure if this is a user-end firmware update, or something OWC needs to do, or via Windows only.

Two days ago I was told by OWC Sales that they were still testing compatibility. Yesterday I found this page which lists compatibility with the 2019 Mac Pro, even though the main product page at OWC does not. I chatted with OWC Tech Support and was told the following:

owcdigital.com and macsales.com are managed differently. Because owcdigital is purely a marketing website, and macsales.com is an e-commerce website, this can affect some of the information on newer products while testing of new macs and OWC-product compatibility is underway. However, in regards to the Accelsior 4M2, I can confirm its compatible, the tab just needs to be updated with that information, which our web developers are working on.​

​

Per Apple's PCIe specifications on the 2019 Mac Pro, it has plenty of slots for a card like this so I have no doubts about the Accelsior 4M2's compatibility https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210408 ​

​

We apologize for any confusion.​

Now, whether or not that means we won't have some hiccups I can't say, because obviously the Mac Pro has 'plenty of slots' for this card etc.

 

[ldstern10]

If you install heatsinks on the blades and PCIe switch, remember that PEX8747 is rated for 70ºC maximum operating temperature and dissipates 8W.

Keep it well below 70ºC at all times.

Sorry to ask another question re this issue. The link you provided shows the HP 7101 with heatsinks installed but also shows the replacement fan. I would assume before installing, the top cover would be replaced since the fan has not been removed. Can you once again clarify for me whether if the fan is removed and heatsinks applied, the cover/top plate can be left off. Thanks again.

 

[tsialex]

Sorry to ask another question re this issue. The link you provided shows the HP 7101 with heatsinks installed but also shows the replacement fan. I would assume before installing, the top cover would be replaced since the fan has not been removed. Can you once again clarify for me whether if the fan is removed and heatsinks applied, the cover/top plate can be left off. Thanks again.

SSD7xxx top cover is the original heatsink for the card and make contact with the blades and switch. The fan is on the PCB and not in the cover. The cover dissipates the heat adequately and have considerable mass.

You need to remove the top cover to install passive heatsinks over the blades and the PCIe switch if you want it fanless. Some people made it totally fanless, others changed the fan for one less noisier and used heatsinks over the PCIe switch and blades too. Others just changed the fan, keeping the original cover.

If you use big enough heatsinks the PCIe booster from MP5,1 fan can make the card totally silent, probably will work for MP7,1 since the air flow is similar.

Btw, ask more details directly on the SSD7101A-1 thread, I have one but I have no problem with the fan noise, I’m not an an audio engineer and my card is not modded.

 

[ldstern10]

SSD7xxx top cover is the original heatsink and make contact with the blades/switch. The fan is on the PCB and not in the cover. All people that removed the top cover installed passive heatsinks over the blades and the PCIe switch. Some made it fanless, others changed the fan for one less noisier. If you use big enough heatsinks the PCIe booster from MP5,1 fan can make the card totally silent, probably will work for MP7,1 since the air flow is similar.

Btw, ask more details directly on the SSD7101A-1 thread, I have one but I have no problem with the fan noise, I’m not an an audio engineer and my card is not modded.

Thanks much. Appreciate your help.

 

[Bradleyone]

It would be interesting to know if the High Point SSD7103 boots a Mac Pro 7,1 when fully populated with 4 M.2 sticks in RAID 0 configuration.

With hardware drivers, it sounds like it theoretically should, and it would make a killer boot drive for the Mac Pro.

 

[bxs]

Yes, it's raid'd 0 into a single volume.

I'm using it for media, so I don't know if you can boot from it (sorry, I know the thread title is about bootable)

Booting from a RAIDed APFS is not supported by Apple.

 

[bsbeamer]

I don't really understand the fascination or need to have a bootable macOS NVMe system drive when the provided Apple-issued SSDs are plenty fast for the OS itself. Get the 1TB "upgrade" and be done with it for basically the life of the machine. The big deal with adding NVMe or via NVMe RAID is for storage and working on your "stuff" at fast speeds. Keep them separate, especially on a machine that is supposed to be a workstation.

If you're looking to have an at-the-ready clone of your OS that can step in basically immediately if your Apple-issued SSD fails, a single NVMe blade in a standard PCIe adapter would be more than sufficient, or do this externally with the plan to bring internally if the need ever arises.

Do not know anyone who needs their bootable system partition at 8TB. Those that do usually choose not to manage their media/photos/documents, or have already max'd out the Apple-issued SSD and see it much more often with laptops more than desktops.

 

[jasonmvp]

I don't really understand the fascination or need to have a bootable macOS NVMe system drive when the provided Apple-issued SSDs are plenty fast for the OS itself. Get the 1TB "upgrade" and be done with it for basically the life of the machine. The big deal with adding NVMe or via NVMe RAID is for storage and working on your "stuff" at fast speeds. Keep them separate, especially on a machine that is supposed to be a workstation.

I'm 100% with this guy. I do kind of wish Apple had made a 512GB option at a slight price reduction, using two of the 256GB drives. 1TB for a system drive is a bit overkill, IMHO, when all of my important stuff will end up on tertiary storage. But, oh well.

• OS and apps on the included RAID0 storage (1TB. Full stop)
• Projects, media, other important stuff on tertiary storage.

Easy peazy. Then you don't need to worry about whether your aftermarket storage is bootable or not.

 

[bxs]

Is the entire 8tb raid'd into a single volume that is bootable?

Apple does not support booting APFS from a RAID setup.... with exception for the Apple internal SSD that is kind of specially controlled via (I believe) the T2 chip controller.

The OWC Accelsior has 4 blades inside and comes formatted as RAID-0. Using the Accelsior's included SoftRAID one can un-RAID the blades into separate blades. Then one blade can be setup as APFS and be bootable. The other 3 blades can be setup as RAID-0 or RAID-5 using SoftRAID.

So if you were to have an 8TB (4x 2TB blades) Accelsior you could have

1) One 2TB bootable blade (~1.5 GB/s) - Could be sliced up to provide 2x 1TB APFS Containers.
2) Three 2TB blades for 6TB as RAID-0 (~4.5 GB/s) or setup as RAID-5 and get 3 GB/s. (and yes, SoftRAID can setup RAID-5 across 3 blades)

If you have multiple Accelsior cards installed you have even more choices/options. For example, having two 8TB Accelsiors installed and using SoftRAID to strip them as RAID-0 should give you 16TB with around 12 GB/s, with a cost of around $2,500.

All Accelsior units have 4 blades inside. The size of the blade is simply the (overall size) / 4, Thus for an 8TB unit each blade will be 2TB in size.

 

[bxs]

OK, so for the OWC 8TB Im getting:

Black Magic Speed Test: 4.75, 5.2

Setup with SoftRAID was a cinch. I optimized for digital video.

No noise!

Looking and sounding good to me!

This is good news indeed.👍

Was that with SoftRAID setup as RAID-0, RAID-5 or some other RAID configuration ? I suspect it must have been SoftRAID RAID-0 based on those i/o rates.

Based on this info, I'm going to downgrade my MP7,1 order for 4TB SSD to 1TB SSD (saving some $1,000) and go for the OWC Accelsior 8TB that costs $1,249.

Note the stated Endurance for this Accelsior unit: 380TB total bytes written (TBW), equal to 149 GB per day for 7 years. Thus, let's say 5TB is written each week, then for a year this comes to 260TB. Thus at this writing rate the Edurance will be exceeded after 1.5 years. Offhand, this does not sound good to me. Just what does "Endurance" mean in this context ? I just got off the phone with OWC tech person and when I enquired about this "Endurance" the tech person became concerned that the stated Endurance information might be incorrect on the OWC web site. He was thinking the 380TB should be 3800TB ! I ask for a call back so I could learn if the 380TB was an error and should be some other value. Another thought about the 380TB is that it could be per internal blade. No matter, if the unit fails within the 5 yr warranty (even if the Endurance is exceeded) OWC will replace the unit. Also, if "Endurance" is exceeded I was told the unit would fail for writing.

Question: What x8 PCIe slot in the MP7,1 did you install the Accelsior in ? Thanks...

 

[sugarfreemedia]

what is the advantage of using OWC SoftRAID over Apple OS RAID? Is this a process that runs constantly in the background? I'm reluctant to use a third-party background task which can break with a new OS update.

 

[bxs]

what is the advantage of using OWC SoftRAID over Apple OS RAID? Is this a process that runs constantly in the background? I'm reluctant to use a third-party background task which can break with a new OS update.

SoftRAID is owned by OWC. OWC purchased it several years ago. The original SoftRAID company was a split-off from Apple's Disk Utility coders primarily who ran it themselves until they sold off to OWC.

Apple's system has embedded software driver code for SoftRAID. When SoftRAID issues an update it will typically update the Apple's embedded driver software, but not always.

SoftRAID offers RAID configurations beyond what Apple's Disk Utility offers. For example, SoftRAID offers RAID 5, 6 and 10 as well as RAID 0 and 1.

The SoftRAID UI is very easily understood and in many cases make configuring disks very easy to do.

Search for SoftRAID and find out more for yourself.

I've used SoftRAID for a number of years and before it was sold off to OWC. I've had few problems with it, and less so once I got used to it. I purchased SoftRAID because it offered more RAID configuration than did Apple's Disk Utility.

 

[bsbeamer]

what is the advantage of using OWC SoftRAID over Apple OS RAID? Is this a process that runs constantly in the background? I'm reluctant to use a third-party background task which can break with a new OS update.

SoftRAID 6 has been delayed for months, so your reluctance might be justified.

macOS does not natively truly support APFS RAID, so that's why 3rd party tools are needed. You can (usually) set it up within Disk Utility or with some cheats, but there are known and reported issues. Clients have reported data loss and random speed drops to less than spinning HDD speeds with dual SSD RAID when setup this way.

Hardware-based RAIDs are much more reliable in macOS, especially after High Sierra.

 

[bxs]

SoftRAID 6 has been delayed for months, so your reluctance might be justified.

macOS does not natively truly support APFS RAID, so that's why 3rd party tools are needed. You can (usually) set it up within Disk Utility or with some cheats, but there are known and reported issues. Clients have reported data loss and random speed drops to less than spinning HDD speeds with dual SSD RAID when setup this way.

Hardware-based RAIDs are much more reliable in macOS, especially after High Sierra.

I appreciate your personal experience with SoftRAID.

I've used SoftRAID with our MP6,1s, iMac Pros, MBP13,3 running latest macOS versions and have had little trouble with SoftRAID. I use RAID-5 primarily as well as the odd RAID-0 using SoftRAID.

What SoftRAID version have you used; the Lite version or full-blown SoftRAID version 5 ?

 

[bsbeamer]

Used nearly every version through current release version 5. Worked well with High Sierra and previous. Mojave and after really changed things, mostly with APFS issues.

Version 6 was supposed to "FIX" all of these issues and concerns, but it flat out has been more than a year since they originally said it was due for release, nearly 18 months since they said 6 was in beta testing. Then they again said at NAB 2019 they would have Version 6 in several months...

At some point, you need to move on. Third party tools like this are just not reliable when they're not updated for the OS and continually delayed. You cannot build your workflow around them. Hardware RAID just doesn't break since the OS sees it as a "normal" one device drive. Works a lot more smoothly in macOS.

 

[AidenShaw]

using two of the 256GB drives

Those aren't drives - they're flash memory cards for the T2 SSD controller.

 

[jasonmvp]

Those aren't drives - they're flash memory cards for the T2 SSD controller.

SSD. Solid. State. DRIVES.

Everyone else knew what I was talking about. Take your useless pedantic replies and go... play in traffic for all I care.

 

[AidenShaw]

with exception for the Apple internal SSD that is kind of specially controlled via (I believe) the T2 chip controller.

That isn't RAID - or at least not if you define RAID as "Redundant Array of Independent Disks". There's nothing independent (or inexpensive) about the Apple flash cards. Most flash-based devices, even higher performance thumb drives, stripe data across multiple banks of flash to get better performance. These are not seen as RAID by the OS.
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DRIVES

The plural is inappropriate.
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Everyone else knew what I was talking about.

Actually, there are a lot of people here who think that the flash cards are SSDs. They are not. In fact, does anyone even know if the T2 treats the cards in parallel, or in series? (If the performance of the two card 512 GB setup is about twice that of the one card 256 GB version it's probably in parallel.)