Resolved Dual boot CONFIRMED for new Apricorn Velocity DUO X2!!!

[Gav Mack]

Hmmm ... the spec sheet claims that it will boot from a 3,1 and above. I guess we will know for sure when people start receiving production models of the Duo X2 in their hands.

It's booting Windows off its own SSD that I would need to work 100%, I should have clarified that. Somehow I've managed to get it working off the second SATA port on the x2 with optical power and after it giving me a lot of grief and silence when I asked Apricorn support for help so it's in the category of 'it ain't broke so don't fix it' that will probably stay that way till a cheap dual socket 5,1 turns up to replace my 3,1.

 

[hfg]

Perhaps I am overlooking something obvious here ... ??

The Velocity Duo X2 specifications indicate that it can operate in JBOD, Spanning, and Hardware RAID-0 and RAID-1.

http://www.apricorn.com/media/uploads/Apricorn Velocity duo x2 Datasheet.pdf

I don't seem to be able to determine how you would select the Hardware RAID modes ... there are no switches on the board, and there is no "Configuration Utility" app to select the mode digitally.

Anyone figured this out yet?

True hardware RAID-0 should work in Windows on the Mac Pro which, of course, is impossible with software RAID.


EDIT: This card does have hardware RAID capability. However, according to Apricorn Tech Support, the card with SSDs must be installed in a true BIOS PC to enable that mode at boot time.

 

[zayaso]

YMW! Surely not a warp-speed solution, but it's a PCIe card that serves OS X and Windows well and at the maximum SINGLE SSD speed provided. Fingers crossed indeed for the introduction price of the DUO X2. FWIW I even suggested Apricorn a pricing 'strategy' for it's current SOLO X2 and the new DUO X2

Hi Berend,

You mention that the Duo X2 with SSD's operating single OS's (one in Win 8 and one in OSX) you are able to dual boot. Do you mean hold down the option key when the MP is rebooting? When you are in bootcamp can you select the OSX volume to restart the MP - or do you have to shutdown the MP and hold down the option on reboot to get back to OSX? Do you know if this works with Win 7 or only Win 8?

The reason I ask is because I have an MP 5,1 with a Velocity Solo X2 connected Samung 840 EVO SSD with OS X 10.9.5, and my bootcamp is on a Seagate HDD in drive bay 3. Having the same problem others are: If I boot into OS X, I can select Windows in Sys Pref as my startup disk, but once I get to Win 7, and try to use bootcamp to restart back into OS X with my SSD on the Solo X2 card is not possible as it's not recognized by bootcamp.

If the Duo X2 card works, then I will return the Solo X2 and purchase another SSD. Thank you in advance for any help / advice!

 

[hfg]

Dual Boot OS X and Windows 8 on the Velocity DUO x2 card is working for me so far. This includes normal switching between the operating systems without power-off or option-boot required.

I CCC cloned my RAID-0 OS X environment onto a single Samsung 1TB 840 EVO SSD, and simply moved my Windows SSD, a Samsung 512GB 840 Pro SSD from a Velocity Solo X2 over to a new Velocity DUO x2 card.

So far ... everything seems to be working normally in a 2012 5,1 Mac Pro.

Hope this helps those who are thinking of getting this card to host both OS X and Windows. It is the only single PCIe dual SSD card I have found which seems to boot both operating systems cleanly.

 

[crjackson2134]

Dual Boot OS X and Windows 8 on the Velocity DUO x2 card is working for me so far.

It is the only single PCIe dual SSD card I have found which seems to boot both operating systems cleanly.

Thanks. Good to know it makes this finally available. That will be good selling point.

 

[zayaso]

Dual Boot OS X and Windows 8 on the Velocity DUO x2 card is working for me so far. This includes normal switching between the operating systems without power-off or option-boot required.
....
Hope this helps those who are thinking of getting this card to host both OS X and Windows. It is the only single PCIe dual SSD card I have found which seems to boot both operating systems cleanly.

@hfg
This is great news! May I ask how you prepared your system for this operation ( ex: PRAM reset; bootcamp SSD in a drive bay first with the Duo x2 in slot alone, etc, etc). Also- did you try this with Win7?

Thank you

 

[hfg]

@hfg
This is great news! May I ask how you prepared your system for this operation ( ex: PRAM reset; bootcamp SSD in a drive bay first with the Duo x2 in slot alone, etc, etc). Also- did you try this with Win7?

Thank you

I already was running with OS X on a RAID-0 SSD array with a Tempo Pro SSD PCIe card and Windows 8 SSD on a Velocity Solo x2 PCIe card.

-- I cloned the RAID-0 image to a single 840EVO 1TB SSD to prepare that for the Velocity DUO card. I had that SSD mounted in a drive bay, and I made sure it booted and ran OK after cloning. I added the recovery partition as part of the clone with CCC.

-- I booted the existing Windows 8 configuration with the Velocity DUO card installed in the system so that Windows would load any new drivers it required for the new card. (I did have some strange boot issues with both cards in the computer at the same time and which PCIe slot had which card. But swapping slots fixed that enough to get things working.)

-- Next I simply mounted both SSDs on the Velocity DUO x2, installed it, and it booted OS X right off. I rebooted into Windows 8, then rebooted back to OS X using the normal process. It thankfully ran right off with no problems.

-- I just put it all back together and so far all seems to be well.

 

[Macsonic]

I already was running with OS X on a RAID-0 SSD array with a Tempo Pro SSD PCIe card and Windows 8 SSD on a Velocity Solo x2 PCIe card.

-- I cloned the RAID-0 image to a single 840EVO 1TB SSD to prepare that for the Velocity DUO card. I had that SSD mounted in a drive bay, and I made sure it booted and ran OK after cloning. I added the recovery partition as part of the clone with CCC.

-- I booted the existing Windows 8 configuration with the Velocity DUO card installed in the system so that Windows would load any new drivers it required for the new card. (I did have some strange boot issues with both cards in the computer at the same time and which PCIe slot had which card. But swapping slots fixed that enough to get things working.)

-- Next I simply mounted both SSDs on the Velocity DUO x2, installed it, and it booted OS X right off. I rebooted into Windows 8, then rebooted back to OS X using the normal process. It thankfully ran right off with no problems.

-- I just put it all back together and so far all seems to be well.

Hi HFG. With the Velocity DUO x2, were you able to time how long the card boots up starting from the chime sound? I read from other reviews, not sure if it was from Amazon, with the older Velocity X2, the boot up time took longer at around 40 seconds. Does the Sonnet Tempo boot faster?

Would you have a comparison of the Sonnet Tempo and the Velocity DUO x2 in terms of real world speed in moderate to heavy tasks in using Adobe apps? I know apps open quite fast but I wanted to have an idea on the speed of real world processing tasks. Not using Black Magic. Thanks

 

[hfg]

Hi HFG. With the Velocity DUO x2, were you able to time how long the card boots up starting from the chime sound? I read from other reviews, not sure if it was from Amazon, with the older Velocity X2, the boot up time took longer at around 40 seconds. Does the Sonnet Tempo boot faster?

Would you have a comparison of the Sonnet Tempo and the Velocity DUO x2 in terms of real world speed in moderate to heavy tasks in using Adobe apps? I know apps open quite fast but I wanted to have an idea on the speed of real world processing tasks. Not using Black Magic. Thanks

The startup time is heavily influenced by other system components including the amount of RAM, external disks, I/O initialization, etc. Plus, any disk attached as a PCIe device is the last to be serviced as the system looks for the bootable drive. Thus, I don't really notice much of a difference in boot time using the Velocity DUO as the rest of my system is unchanged. I am still hosting my Aperture photo library on the RAID-0 Tempo Pro card, so I don't expect much difference in performance there either.

My only real difference is that I now have both operating systems hosted on a single card rather than 2 cards, having simply moved the base OS X files off of the RAID-0 and on to a single SSD (which should theoretically slightly improve the performance of many small file loads without the RAID overhead). Physically, all I did was replace a Velocity Solo card with the Velocity DUO card and move some files to free up some space.

-howard

 

[Macsonic]

The startup time is heavily influenced by other system components including the amount of RAM, external disks, I/O initialization, etc. Plus, any disk attached as a PCIe device is the last to be serviced as the system looks for the bootable drive. Thus, I don't really notice much of a difference in boot time using the Velocity DUO as the rest of my system is unchanged. I am still hosting my Aperture photo library on the RAID-0 Tempo Pro card, so I don't expect much difference in performance there either.

My only real difference is that I now have both operating systems hosted on a single card rather than 2 cards, having simply moved the base OS X files off of the RAID-0 and on to a single SSD (which should theoretically slightly improve the performance of many small file loads without the RAID overhead). Physically, all I did was replace a Velocity Solo card with the Velocity DUO card and move some files to free up some space.

-howard

Thanks Howard for the valuable inputs. I will think things over as to which card to get, the Sonnet Tempo or Apricorn Velocity. Have a good weekend.

 

[zayaso]

The startup time is heavily influenced by other system components including the amount of RAM, external disks, I/O initialization, etc. Plus, any disk attached as a PCIe device is the last to be serviced as the system looks for the bootable drive...

-howard

Howard,

Thanks for this information- I'm going to purchase another SSD and try this out on my Velocity Solo X2 card. I know OS X boots with SSD just fine, my concern is Win 7 and booting back to OS X from within boot camp.

 

[gugy]

The startup time is heavily influenced by other system components including the amount of RAM, external disks, I/O initialization, etc. Plus, any disk attached as a PCIe device is the last to be serviced as the system looks for the bootable drive. Thus, I don't really notice much of a difference in boot time using the Velocity DUO as the rest of my system is unchanged. I am still hosting my Aperture photo library on the RAID-0 Tempo Pro card, so I don't expect much difference in performance there either.

My only real difference is that I now have both operating systems hosted on a single card rather than 2 cards, having simply moved the base OS X files off of the RAID-0 and on to a single SSD (which should theoretically slightly improve the performance of many small file loads without the RAID overhead). Physically, all I did was replace a Velocity Solo card with the Velocity DUO card and move some files to free up some space.

-howard

Howard,
If I understand you correctly, is ideal to have the OS system files on a separate SSD just for that and use another SSD to working files and set up as scratch disk (Photoshop) to improve performance. Is that correct?

 

[hfg]

Howard,
If I understand you correctly, is ideal to have the OS system files on a separate SSD just for that and use another SSD to working files and set up as scratch disk (Photoshop) to improve performance. Is that correct?

That is not really a requirement, I just had the parts already and wanted to maximize the performance in any way possible. In earlier testing, I did notice that my photo library of very large files did seem to perform better on the RAID-0 array of SSDs, so I preserved that. I don't use a scratch disk, but it is my understanding that having one is beneficial in Photoshop to avoid searching for contiguous disk space on a storage drive.

I do prefer to keep Windows on a separate disk from OS X since it is convenient and I can use nominal sized less expensive SSDs. I don't trust Windows and Window utilities not to corrupt the drive at some point and I don't want my OS X environment to be the victim.

 

[hfg]

Howard,

Thanks for this information- I'm going to purchase another SSD and try this out on my Velocity Solo X2 card. I know OS X boots with SSD just fine, my concern is Win 7 and booting back to OS X from within boot camp.

That is a valid concern when Windows is on a "external" drive, which PCIe drives are as well. I don't currently have a bootable Windows 7 installation to test, as I am using Windows 8.

Prior to installing the Velocity DUO card yesterday, I too had the issue of returning to OS X from Bootcamp using the provided Apple driver tool. It would return to running Windows after the reboot unless I used the option-key boot manager.

That issue seems to have gone away with the Velocity DUO card containing both operating systems ... it cleanly reboots back to whichever OS X image I select (I have 3) using the bootcamp OS X reboot selection window.

 

[gugy]

That is not really a requirement, I just had the parts already and wanted to maximize the performance in any way possible. In earlier testing, I did notice that my photo library of very large files did seem to perform better on the RAID-0 array of SSDs, so I preserved that. I don't use a scratch disk, but it is my understanding that having one is beneficial in Photoshop to avoid searching for contiguous disk space on a storage drive.

I do prefer to keep Windows on a separate disk from OS X since it is convenient and I can use nominal sized less expensive SSDs. I don't trust Windows and Window utilities not to corrupt the drive at some point and I don't want my OS X environment to be the victim.

Thanks, I forgot to mention that I don't have Windows on my Machine. All Mac OS.

 

[hfg]

Duo X2 does have Hardware RAID capability

From Apricorn Tech Support:

The Velocity can be configured as a hardware RAID 0 and used in the MacPro. Unfortunately, the RAID will need to be configured with the card mounted in a PC with a BIOS that can be accessed during boot time. The EFI bios in the MacPro does not support this feature.
Here are the steps you would need to follow.
- Mount the two drives you want to use on the card. They should be identical drives with matching firmware. They should be brand new, or recently zeroed.
- Boot the PC and when you see the Marvell BIOS displayed you’ll hit Control M to enter the BIOS of the Marvell chipset (on the Velocity Duo)
- Once in the BIOS use the Enter key to start the configuration wizard. Use the spacebar to select your drives. Use the arrow keys to change your RAID type. Once completed Save the configuration and exit the BIOS.
- Once the RAID has been configured you can shut down the PC and move the DUO to the MacPro.
- The MacPro will identify the RAID as a single drive that you can format and use any way you would like.

There are several videos in youtube showing people creating the RAID. Apricorn will soon make their own video. In the meantime I found this one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPxjCCKs_wQ the beginning is not relevant. The part you’ll be interested in is between :50 and 2:00


This information was to be included on their Web Site soon.

 

[crjackson2134]

From Apricorn Tech Support:

The Velocity can be configured as a hardware RAID 0 and used in the MacPro. Unfortunately, the RAID will need to be configured with the card mounted in a PC with a BIOS that can be accessed during boot time. The EFI bios in the MacPro does not support this feature.
Here are the steps you would need to follow.
- Mount the two drives you want to use on the card. They should be identical drives with matching firmware. They should be brand new, or recently zeroed.
- Boot the PC and when you see the Marvell BIOS displayed you’ll hit Control M to enter the BIOS of the Marvell chipset (on the Velocity Duo)
- Once in the BIOS use the Enter key to start the configuration wizard. Use the spacebar to select your drives. Use the arrow keys to change your RAID type. Once completed Save the configuration and exit the BIOS.
- Once the RAID has been configured you can shut down the PC and move the DUO to the MacPro.
- The MacPro will identify the RAID as a single drive that you can format and use any way you would like.

There are several videos in youtube showing people creating the RAID. Apricorn will soon make their own video. In the meantime I found this one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPxjCCKs_wQ the beginning is not relevant. The part you’ll be interested in is between :50 and 2:00


This information was to be included on their Web Site soon.

Wow, it's great that you can use hardware raid, but it stinks that they don't have a utility to configure this on a Mac. I do have several older PC towers that I could do this with but it truly is a short-coming that it can't be handled on a Mac. Thumbs down to Apricorn and marvell for this. It wouldn't stop me from getting one, but it sure takes the shine off of the chrome for me.

 

[theitsage]

I might have missed the pricing information. I'm guessing this card is more expensive than the Solo X2 ($100 retail).

I have been using a pair of Syba SI-PEX40057 which has the Marvell 88SE9230 chipset. The cards boot OS X as well as Windows brilliantly. everything is behaving exactly as if you were using the internal SATA II ports - hold Option key to select boot volume, about 10s to OS X desktop after the chime, etc. $40 each.

In my 5,1 Mac Pro, I have 2 SSDs on one PCIe card, and 3 SSDs on the other. Each card has 2 matching pairs of Toshiba SSDs to use for a RAID0 of 4 drives, booting OS X. The lone Samsung 840 EVO drive is running Windows 10 TP.

The only con comparing to this DUO X2 is the ceiling IO of around 700MB/s per card. If I was to pair a RAID0 of 2 drives mounted on a single card, I'm seeing high 600s. 2 drive RAID0 mounted on 2 cards yields high 900s. In a 4 SSD RAID0, it shows low 1300s.

The hardware RAID controller is unfortunately accessible within Windows only. When booting Windows, the POST screen briefly shows the drives mounted on each card. However, I am not able to get into the card's BIOS by pressing Control + M. Marvell Utility in Windows allows me to set hardware RAID. I opt not to use it though.

The DUO X2 is definitely the better choice for a one PCIe SATAIII solution. You don't want to see the inside of my Mac Pro right now - 5 SSDs, SATA cables and foil tape .

 

[crjackson2134]

I might have missed the pricing information. I'm guessing this card is more expensive than the Solo X2 ($100 retail).

I have been using a pair of Syba SI-PEX40057 which has the Marvell 88SE9230 chipset. The cards boot OS X as well as Windows brilliantly. everything is behaving exactly as if you were using the internal SATA II ports - hold Option key to select boot volume, about 10s to OS X desktop after the chime, etc. $40 each.

In my 5,1 Mac Pro, I have 2 SSDs on one PCIe card, and 3 SSDs on the other. Each card has 2 matching pairs of Toshiba SSDs to use for a RAID0 of 4 drives, booting OS X. The lone Samsung 840 EVO drive is running Windows 10 TP.

The only con comparing to this DUO X2 is the ceiling IO of around 700MB/s per card. If I was to pair a RAID0 of 2 drives mounted on a single card, I'm seeing high 600s. 2 drive RAID0 mounted on 2 cards yields high 900s. In a 4 SSD RAID0, it shows low 1300s.

The hardware RAID controller is unfortunately accessible within Windows only. When booting Windows, the POST screen briefly shows the drives mounted on each card. However, I am not able to get into the card's BIOS by pressing Control + M. Marvell Utility in Windows allows me to set hardware RAID. I opt not to use it though.

The DUO X2 is definitely the better choice for a one PCIe SATAIII solution. You don't want to see the inside of my Mac Pro right now - 5 SSDs, SATA cables and foil tape .

It's $109 after rebate at newegg

 

[theitsage]

Wow, it's great that you can use hardware raid, but it stinks that they don't have a utility to configure this on a Mac. I do have several older PC towers that I could do this with but it truly is a short-coming that it can't be handled on a Mac. Thumbs down to Apricorn and marvell for this. It wouldn't stop me from getting one, but it sure takes the shine off of the chrome for me.

You can technically do it in a Mac. The requisite is Windows. Marvell RAID Utility (MRU) software allows one to set up RAID 1, 0 and even Fusion drive.

----------

It's $109 after rebate at newegg

Thank you for the link. That's a much better deal than the Solo X and definitely the easiest way to add a pair of SSDs.

 

[crjackson2134]

You can technically do it in a Mac. The requisite is Windows. Marvell RAID Utility (MRU) software allows one to set up RAID 1, 0 and even Fusion drive..

Could it be done using a VM install of windows (not really expecting it to), or does it have to be a boot camp install? Also does this Raid utility work with the DUO X2?

 

[hfg]

I have been using a pair of Syba SI-PEX40057 which has the Marvell 88SE9230 chipset. The cards boot OS X as well as Windows brilliantly. everything is behaving exactly as if you were using the internal SATA II ports - hold Option key to select boot volume, about 10s to OS X desktop after the chime, etc. $40 each.

In my 5,1 Mac Pro, I have 2 SSDs on one PCIe card, and 3 SSDs on the other. Each card has 2 matching pairs of Toshiba SSDs to use for a RAID0 of 4 drives, booting OS X. The lone Samsung 840 EVO drive is running Windows 10 TP.

The only con comparing to this DUO X2 is the ceiling IO of around 700MB/s per card. If I was to pair a RAID0 of 2 drives mounted on a single card, I'm seeing high 600s. 2 drive RAID0 mounted on 2 cards yields high 900s. In a 4 SSD RAID0, it shows low 1300s.

What are you using to mount the 5 ea. SSD drives, and where did you put it?

Are these cards 2-lane PCIe cards ... and are you running 2 cards in parallel with your RAID-0 to obtain those speeds?

I have found that the DUO x2 card (2 lane) is slower than the Tempo Pro (4 lane) with the exact same pair of SSDs in RAID-0.

 

[theitsage]

What are you using to mount the 5 ea. SSD drives, and where did you put it?

Are these cards 2-lane PCIe cards ... and are you running 2 cards in parallel with your RAID-0 to obtain those speeds?

I have found that the DUO x2 card (2 lane) is slower than the Tempo Pro (4 lane) with the exact same pair of SSDs in RAID-0.

I read a few pages back and according to the description of the DUO X2, it has the same limitation as the Syba cards - not able to use the full speed of 2 SSDs in a RAID0 on the same card.

To answer your questions, the 2 Syba cards are in slot 2 and 3. They are 2-lane PCIe. The placement of the SSDs are not finalized at the moment. Currently, they are in the space of the front fan (by the power button board). The 4 Toshiba drives are attached together with foil tape and spacers in between for airflow. I used a 1 to 4 SATA power adapter to run them. The Samsung 840 EVO is in an ICY DOCK in Bay 1. Then all SATA data cables are run to the PCIE slots. I will add pictures later.

The 4 Toshiba SSD

Inside the Mac Pro

Cable Hookup on the Syba cards

1 SSD on Syba card

2 SSD RAID0 with 2 cards

4 SSD RAID0 with 2 cards

 

[theitsage]

Could it be done using a VM install of windows (not really expecting it to), or does it have to be a boot camp install? Also does this Raid utility work with the DUO X2?

I'm certain VM won't work. The Marvell RAID Utility software installs its driver for the Syba cards instead of using Windows' driver to make changes to them.

Also of note, one can only set up a hardware RAID for drives connected to the same card. In another word, even with 4 SSDs on one Syba card, it won't run any faster than 700MB/s or so.

 

[hfg]

I read a few pages back and according to the description of the DUO X2, it has the same limitation as the Syba cards - not able to use the full speed of 2 SSDs in a RAID0 on the same card.

To answer your questions, the 2 Syba cards are in slot 2 and 3. They are 2-lane PCIe. The placement of the SSDs are not finalized at the moment. Currently, they are in the space of the front fan (by the power button board). The 4 Toshiba drives are attached together with foil tape and spacers in between for airflow. I used a 1 to 4 SATA power adapter to run them. The Samsung 840 EVO is in an ICY DOCK in Bay 1. Then all SATA data cables are run to the PCIE slots. I will add pictures later.

Thanks for all the details. Wow, you sure have them packed in there!
Your system flies!!


I thought maybe you were using one of the 5.25" mounted multi-bay 4 or 6 drive enclosures such as these:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004G8QERK...UTF8&colid=2L3FGY5GU7T4&coliid=I172Z88I7JSG4X

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATZIWJM...=UTF8&colid=2L3FGY5GU7T4&coliid=IH3A1W0I9LGQL

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007C1KPQY...UTF8&colid=2L3FGY5GU7T4&coliid=I1UTE9D7GRPGIZ

Unfortunately, they present a wiring nightmare in an unmodified Mac Pro.