Caution! Troubles with 870 evo drives on cMP 5,1 !

[zedex]

Yep - there it is.. a 2.5in SATA II SSD option with native TRIM.. I inherited one with my first cMP 5,1 purchase(!) and my bet is that a 2.5in form factor SATA SSD ended up in 2011 iMacs as well (because I had a 2011 iMac with a 256GB SSD and Apple hadn't yet started shifting pins around on the [universally accepted 15+7pin] SATA interface so they could call it their own - which reminds me - PCIe flash storage didn't arrive until 2012/2013 which means the first ever Macbook Air (like 2007 or something) with it's 60GB SSD MUST have been SATA (storage) device connected to the Intel motherboard in accordance with Intel SATA Host Bus Adapter (HBA) specifications...

which means Apple has been dealing in SATA (SSD and HDD) and the attendant AHCI protocols FOREVER!!!!!

 

[jscipione]

They run about $100 new but a Sonnet Tempo PCIe card would give you sata-3 speeds on those SSDs and it would also transfer nicely into the new Mac Pro.

 

[MarkC426]

As stated in 5.1 MacPro specs, SATA SSD option

 

[KeesMacPro]

The Macbook Pro non-retina 2012:

 

[mikehalloran]

Ahn? Apple never supported SATA SSDs?

Don't tell that for all 2010 to 2012 (maybe even later since some iMacs had SATA drives much later and Apple offered SATA SSDs as a BTO) Macs that were sold with SATA SSDs - from the 2010 Mac Pro to 2012 MBPs.

Next time, please read what I actually wrote, ok?

I specifically referred to the 2.5" SATA drives being sold in the aftermarket. Apple has never supported these.

In fact, I mentioned that some 2012 iMacs and laptops and a few others had SATA SSDs but that they weren't the 2.5" SATA III SSDs being discussed.

I actually know that SSDs could be found going back to 2010 but every time I mention that, the armchair experts pile on to tell me I'm wrong. I thank you for a) confirming what I already know and b) confirming what I wrote previously.

Again, next time, read ok?

 

[tsialex]

Next time, please read what I actually wrote, ok?

I specifically referred to the 2.5" SATA drives being sold in the aftermarket. Apple has never supported these.

In fact, I mentioned that some 2012 iMacs and laptops and a few others had SATA SSDs but that they weren't the 2.5" SATA III SSDs being discussed.

I actually know that SSDs could be found going back to 2010 but every time I mention that, the armchair experts pile on to tell me I'm wrong. I thank you for a) confirming what I already know and b) confirming what I wrote previously.

Again, next time, read ok?

Please read again exactly what you wrote, I'll even make it easier for you:

The discussion of Apple Support for 2.5" SATA III SSDs is a bit ridiculous. Except the SATA blades used in certain 2012 iMacs and MacBooks, Apple has never supported SATA SSDs — not once, not ever.

SATA I HDDs in the G5, SATA II HDDs in the Mac Pro and SATA III HDDs in Fusion drives, laptops, Minis and iMacs, yes.

This doesn't mean that SATA III SSDs can't work great in the right applications, of course, but it does help explain why Apple blocks TRIM by default. This is easily defeated by running sudo trimforce enable in Terminal after booting the first time from a SATA SSD (OS 10.10.4 and later). It's not an issue for any blade SSD (SATA, AHCI or NVMe) since the MacOS does not block TRIM in anything other than 2.5"/3.5" drives.

"Except the SATA blades used in certain 2012 iMacs and MacBooks, Apple has never supported SATA SSDs — not once, not ever."​

You wrote what you wrote - recognize you were wrong, correct and learn from it. Calling someone names and reacting this way is just ridiculous.

 

[kings79]

Who cares? What are you people actually arguing about?

Who cares? Seriously.

 

[jscipione]

I don’t care about the history of Mac SSDs but I recently put two Levin 2TB SSDs in a 2012 Mac Mini. The read performance is 900MB/s as expected but the write performance is pretty low ranging from 100MB/s to 500MB/s. For my server use this is fine but if you care about write performance then you’ll have to pay a bit more to get it (on top of a Sonnet Tempo on Mac Pro for SATA-3) by getting top end Samsung, WD, Sandisk, Crucial brands and not the newest low end even from those companies.

 

[krakman]

2 Days ago I installed a EVO 870 2TB as my main boot drive in MP4.1>5.1

The previous drive was a 1TB 840 EVO which worked perfectly.

The only problem I have encountered is a crash on wake from sleep, but it does not happen every time.

I will try to reset NVRAM and SMC reset and report back

I'm running Catalina with all latest security updates

 

[Macschrauber]

this is the typical behaviour - also not working from a warm boot.

 

[krakman]

this is the typical behaviour - also not working from a warm boot.

Are you replying to my post? I can confirm my 870 EVO 2TB warm boots just fine.

Its just the occasional crash on wake from sleep. Which seems to happen after waking from a long sleep of a few hours rather than a short sleep.

I have done the SMC rest so lets see how that goes, and as per Tsialex's advice I will replace the BR2032 battery too.

 

[tsialex]

Are you replying to my post? I can confirm my 870 EVO 2TB warm boots just fine.

Its just the occasional crash on wake from sleep. Which seems to happen after waking from a long sleep of a few hours rather than a short sleep.

I have done the SMC rest so lets see how that goes, and as per Tsialex's advice I will replace the BR2032 battery too.

There are two different issues at play here, the SSD compatibility and the RTC battery being too low and causing the wake from sleep crashes.

Since most Samsung MLC/SLC/TLC (840 PRO, 850 PRO/850/850 EVO, 860PRO/860 EVO) drives are usually pretty compatible with Mac Pros, while QLC (QVO) drives are a source of trouble, and there are no reports of the incompatibility of the 870 series yet, I'd check the RTC battery first.

 

[krakman]

There are two different issues at play here, the SSD compatibility and the RTC battery being too low and causing the wake from sleep crashes.

Since most Samsung MLC/SLC/TLC (840 PRO, 850 PRO/850/850 EVO, 860PRO/860 EVO) drives are usually pretty compatible with Mac Pros, while QLC (QVO) drives are a source of trouble, and there are no reports of the incompatibility of the 870 series yet, I'd check the RTC battery first.

SO I changed the RTC batter for a brand new one - Still crash on Wake from sleep.

however disconnecting external USB3 10tb WD HDD fixed the problem!!!!! I left it sleeping overnight and it woke normally.

Interestingly when I used the EVO 1TB SSD the external usb did not cause any issues, it was only when I used CCC to clone my OS to the new 2TB SSD that the problem started to occur???

My next step is to format the 2TB SSD and install everything fresh.

SO for anyone interested the Samsung EVO 870 2TB works fine connected to the Mac SATA port.

 

[tsialex]

SO I changed the RTC batter for a brand new one - Still crash on Wake from sleep.

however disconnecting external USB3 10tb WD HDD fixed the problem!!!!! I left it sleeping overnight and it woke normally.

Interestingly when I used the EVO 1TB SSD the external usb did not cause any issues, it was only when I used CCC to clone my OS to the new 2TB SSD that the problem started to occur???

My next step is to format the 2TB SSD and install everything fresh.

SO for anyone interested the Samsung EVO 870 2TB works fine connected to the Mac SATA port.

Yep, USB3 cards can also be the source of KPs when waking from sleep with external drives connected. Can't say about the rest.

 

[krakman]

Yep, USB3 cards can also be the source of KPs when waking from sleep with external drives connected. Can't say about the rest.

Hi Tsialex, thanks for your advice, sorry I should have been more specific:

the external drive is USB3 but I had it plugged in to one of the Mac's USB2 ports.

I'm guessing the actual hard drive or the PCB in the enclosure is at fault or maybe something went wrong during the cloning of the OS to the new SSD??? I will track it down and report, I'm just pleased it wasn't the new SSD!

 

[MarkC426]

The Hard drive being USB3 shouldn't cause the issue (unless it's faulty).
My TM disk has been USB3 into USB2 Mac for donkeys years.

Plus numerous people have reported (in the forums) issues with 870 drives.

 

[JeffPerrin]

however disconnecting external USB3 10tb WD HDD fixed the problem!!!!! I left it sleeping overnight and it woke normally.

I thought it was common knowledge that leaving external USB drives on when sleeping a Mac was unreliable? Sometimes may work, others it may not. Behavior also depends on the drive and enclosure, but it's risky any way you cut it. Best to eject the disk before sleep...

 

[mikehalloran]

I thought it was common knowledge that leaving external USB drives on when sleeping a Mac was unreliable? Sometimes may work, others it may not. Behavior also depends on the drive and enclosure, but it's risky any way you cut it. Best to eject the disk before sleep...

If not common knowledge, it should be.

Disconnecting a USB external and re-connecting to wake it up is something I've considered normal for over 20 years — worse if through a hub. USB 2 or 3 makes no difference but USB 3 or 3.1 over USB-C is worst of all. Brand of enclosure, likewise, has never made a difference and I've tried many. Been dealing with this since the G4 and G5.

My samples drives over Thunderbolt and Time Machine over Ethernet are rock solid and trouble free.

The only USB peripherals I use anymore are USB 2 audio interfaces and keyboards or DVD burners and license dongles (iLok, eLicenser) that never give me grief.

My Band In The Box USB 3 external is for archival and backup only—it, too, needs to be unplugged and reconnected on occasion making it useless from a reliability standpoint. Its data has been copied over to one of my TB connected SSDs that behave perfectly. USB to Lightening cables that I use to back up my iOS devices also have this same problem.

 

[avro707]

The Hard drive being USB3 shouldn't cause the issue (unless it's faulty).
My TM disk has been USB3 into USB2 Mac for donkeys years.

Plus numerous people have reported (in the forums) issues with 870 drives.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, others have no issues with them. I'm one of those with a 870 Evo 2.5" SSD connected to the cable that would normally take the second DVD drive. It has ran flawlessly, from starts, sleep mode, restarts, etc. It has been super dependable. It's not the fastest drive around, but it works.

The following I copied from the system information.

Spoiler: drive info

Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)
Model: Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB
Revision: SVT01B6Q
Serial Number: S6P5NF0R512609V
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk2
Medium Type: Solid State
TRIM Support: Yes
Bay Name: Lower
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

The NVME Samsung SSDs with the firmware revisions beginning with a "1" are troublesome, but those ones starting with a "2" are okay (eg, 2B2QGXA7). But those are a different thing altogether.

 

[KeesMacPro]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, others have no issues with them. I'm one of those with a 970 Pro 2.5" SSD connected to the cable that would normally take the second DVD drive. It has ran flawlessly, from starts, sleep mode, restarts, etc. It has been super dependable. It's not the fastest drive around, but it works.

The following I copied from the system information.

Spoiler: drive info

Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)
Model: Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB
Revision: SVT01B6Q
Serial Number: S6P5NF0R512609V
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk2
Medium Type: Solid State
TRIM Support: Yes
Bay Name: Lower
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

The NVME Samsung SSDs with the firmware revisions beginning with a "1" are troublesome, but those ones starting with a "2" are okay (eg, 2B2QGXA7). But those are a different thing altogether.

Personally, it's not clear what you're trying to point out.

First you mention a 970 Pro , which is a NVMe blade, but post a spoiler of a 870 EVO SATA drive.
Then you mention firmware issues of certain Samsung NVME blades......

Anyway, this thread is about issues with the 870 EVO SATA SSD.

 

[KingCachapa]

jumping in here because I have 2x 870 EVO SSDs (4TB/e) in a 5,1 connected via PCIe card (slot 3) and I'm seeing some weird behavior that I'm not sure where it's coming from.

FWIW I'm in the latest version of Big Sur on an NVME drive, and I have 4 HDDs connected via an external housing. This is connected via a USB C to USB A cable, which connects to the cMP via Highpoint 1244A usb card.

When I test the external HDDs using blackmagic speed test, I get around 200MB/s.

When I test the 870 Evo SSDs, I'm seeing around 500MB/s.

Right now when I was transferring 2 folders at once that add up to approx 1TB – from one of the HDDs to one of the 870 EVOs, it's resulting in ridiculously low transfer speeds.
It begins by telling me "5 DAYS"! and after a while it went to "16 hours".
I came back to it after a while, and the transfer failed and the error reads "this operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (code 100006)"

External HDDs auto-ejected and reconnected as a result. Then the transfer window came back for a brief moment and I could see it failed at around 400GB of the transfer and it said 53 minutes left which sounds more on par (1TB @ 200MB/s should be around 1.5 hours no?).

So, what gives? What am I missing? Is this really the 870s acting up? @tsialex shining the bat signal at you happy to run tests with whatever program so you can look under the hood if need be.

 

[tsialex]

jumping in here because I have 2x 870 EVO SSDs (4TB/e) in a 5,1 connected via PCIe card (slot 3) and I'm seeing some weird behavior that I'm not sure where it's coming from.

FWIW I'm in the latest version of Big Sur on an NVME drive, and I have 4 HDDs connected via an external housing. This is connected via a USB C to USB A cable, which connects to the cMP via Highpoint 1244A usb card.

When I test the external HDDs using blackmagic speed test, I get around 200MB/s.

When I test the 870 Evo SSDs, I'm seeing around 500MB/s.

Right now when I was transferring 2 folders at once that add up to approx 1TB – from one of the HDDs to one of the 870 EVOs, it's resulting in ridiculously low transfer speeds.
It begins by telling me "5 DAYS"! and after a while it went to "16 hours".
I came back to it after a while, and the transfer failed and the error reads "this operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (code 100006)"

External HDDs auto-ejected and reconnected as a result. Then the transfer window came back for a brief moment and I could see it failed at around 400GB of the transfer and it said 53 minutes left which sounds more on par (1TB @ 200MB/s should be around 1.5 hours no?).

So, what gives? What am I missing? Is this really the 870s acting up? @tsialex shining the bat signal at you happy to run tests with whatever program so you can look under the hood if need be.

Start with SMART check with DriveDX, then try installing the 870 drives with the native SATA ports.

 

[mikehalloran]

jumping in here because I have 2x 870 EVO SSDs (4TB/e) in a 5,1 connected via PCIe card (slot 3) and I'm seeing some weird behavior that I'm not sure where it's coming from.

FWIW I'm in the latest version of Big Sur on an NVME drive, and I have 4 HDDs connected via an external housing. This is connected via a USB C to USB A cable, which connects to the cMP via Highpoint 1244A usb card.

When I test the external HDDs using blackmagic speed test, I get around 200MB/s.

When I test the 870 Evo SSDs, I'm seeing around 500MB/s.

Right now when I was transferring 2 folders at once that add up to approx 1TB – from one of the HDDs to one of the 870 EVOs, it's resulting in ridiculously low transfer speeds.
It begins by telling me "5 DAYS"! and after a while it went to "16 hours".
I came back to it after a while, and the transfer failed and the error reads "this operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (code 100006)"

External HDDs auto-ejected and reconnected as a result. Then the transfer window came back for a brief moment and I could see it failed at around 400GB of the transfer and it said 53 minutes left which sounds more on par (1TB @ 200MB/s should be around 1.5 hours no?).

So, what gives? What am I missing? Is this really the 870s acting up? @tsialex shining the bat signal at you happy to run tests with whatever program so you can look under the hood if need be.

Start with SMART check with DriveDX, then try installing the 870 drives with the native SATA ports.

USB is going to sleep on you.

Smart Check won't tell you anything meaningful but SATA or eSATA ports do not have the sleep issue that plagues many users over USB. Also, you can enable TRIM which cannot be done over USB-anything.

eSATA drive docks and PCIe cards are readily available and inexpensive. Unless both the card and docks state that they support Multiport, they don't so it's one dock to a port. With the 5.1 MP, it makes no difference between internal SATA ports and external eSATA.

Hmmmm... looks like the $25 eSATA docks are gone but this comes with the cable you need. Ignore that it has two drive slots; only one drive can be accessed over eSATA.
eSATA drive dock on Amazon

If you shop carefully on eBay, you can probably find them for a lot less — make sure it includes the correct cable.

TRIM is part of the MacOS since 10.6.8 and makes SSD cells ready to receive new data in about half the time of Garbage Collection—despite all the misinformation from OWC a few years back, that's what it is and all it does. To enable TRIM, boot from your System drive (must be an SSD) in OS 10.10.4 or later and run the following Terminal Command:

sudo trimforce enable

It will ask you to authenticate and then give you a few yes/no questions to make sure you really want to do this. You do. One done, it will enable TRIM on all SSDs connected over PCI, Thunderbolt (I know), SATA and eSATA. It will not do so with drives connected over USB or Ethernet and has no effect on mechanical HDDs.

 

[KingCachapa]

Start with SMART check with DriveDX, then try installing the 870 drives with the native SATA ports.

First time getting DriveDX. Thanks for that. It's not reporting anything out of the ordinary (it seems) for the 2 870 EVO drives. Healthy. When interacting with the main OS on NVME and transferring back and forth works just fine too so far.

With this said however, when I first opened the program it listed ALL my drives successfully. I installed the plugin it recommended once it noticed I was using external drives as well, but here's the thing:

Now these HDDs that are on an external bay – they are mounted and work (aforementioned speed problem still withstanding) but they are NOT showing up at all under DriveDX anymore.
No matter what I do – I tried even connecting these HDDs to a native USB2 port just to see if it would make a difference with DriveDX detection but no luck.

So I'm still stuck with the issue of worryingly slow transfers that involve an external HDD going to a 870 EVO drive on PCIe SSD. Any ideas?
This is really odd since again, when I test all drives independently via BlackMagic Speedtest, I get good / expected responses, but when transferring actual data between the two (external HDD direct to USB card, to internal pcie drive) there seems to be a massive bottleneck somewhere.

Connecting directly to the native internal SATA bays – appreciate the suggestion but the drives respond well otherwise and this is not what I want to do at all due to halving speeds. It doesn't make sense for me. Starting to think my issue is not the 870 EVO drives but something else.

 

[KingCachapa]

USB is going to sleep on you.

Smart Check won't tell you anything meaningful but SATA or eSATA ports do not have the sleep issue that plagues many users over USB. Also, you can enable TRIM which cannot be done over USB-anything.

eSATA drive docks and PCIe cards are readily available and inexpensive. Unless both the card and docks state that they support Multiport, they don't so it's one dock to a port. With the 5.1 MP, it makes no difference between internal SATA ports and external eSATA.

Hmmmm... looks like the $25 eSATA docks are gone but this comes with the cable you need. Ignore that it has two drive slots; only one drive can be accessed over eSATA.
eSATA drive dock on Amazon

If you shop carefully on eBay, you can probably find them for a lot less — make sure it includes the correct cable.

TRIM is part of the MacOS since 10.6.8 and makes SSD cells ready to receive new data in about half the time of Garbage Collection—despite all the misinformation from OWC a few years back, that's what it is and all it does. To enable TRIM, boot from your System drive (must be an SSD) in OS 10.10.4 or later and run the following Terminal Command:

sudo trimforce enable

It will ask you to authenticate and then give you a few yes/no questions to make sure you really want to do this. You do. One done, it will enable TRIM on all SSDs connected over PCI, Thunderbolt (I know), SATA and eSATA. It will not do so with drives connected over USB or Ethernet and has no effect on mechanical HDDs.

Hey thanks for taking the time. TRIM should be enabled already since I'm using OpenCore and have been for quite some time now.

Appreciate the recommendations for eSATA but I've already invested in both a decent PCIe SSD card (Sonnet Tech. Tempo dual) and a decent HDD external storage housing (OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad). SSDs in the Sonnet read 500+ MB/s and the HDDs in the OWC HDD housing read around 220-250MB/s and interact just fine with the main OS (latest Mojave) on NVME.

They all work otherwise, but I'm facing a massive slowdown specifically when going from –| External HDDs -> 870 EVOs on PCIe SSD, which so far every time I try also result in an eventual failure before the transfer is completed. Farthest I got was halfway on a 1TB multi-file transfer.

@tsialex btw I also read this from the DriveDX people -> "macOS 11 Big Sur does not load any non-Apple drivers during the startup process. Therefore, if the external drive was connected before or during system boot, macOS will not load a third-party driver for it. Previously, this behavior (the so-called “Secure Boot” ) was in the case of Macs with a T2 chip, since Big Sur it now applies to all Macs (even without a T2 chip).

Workaround:
after the end of the system startup, physically disconnect (unplug) the external USB drive(s) and connect back. This will force macOS to load the driver for the newly connected drive(s). Then restart DriveDx."

––

So I tried this making sure specifically to reconnect the HDD bay only once everything has started and logged in. I'm attempting again the 1TB test transfer and I'm currently at 256GB of 985GB copied with about an hour left it says.
I still got the same "5 Day" estimate at the beginning but it picked up speed.

These external HDDs still not showing up ever again in DriveDX though xD idk what's up with that (they did show up at least once, when they recommended the plugin / drivers needed).