Experience w/ OWC Accelsior?

[Boomhowler]

I got mine (a 480 GB version) a week ago and it has been working great but for one compability issue with the mac pro 2008.

If you want to get an accelsior for a 2008-model you should NOT put it in one of the top (pci-e 1.0 * 4 slots). It gets only max 190 MBps read/write in those slots. I also could not get the drive to boot when I tried to move it to one of the other slots without reinstalling. After moving the drive to "slot 2", just above the GPU, and reinstalling the system it now works as advertised with read/write speeds far above any sata6Gbps-drive. >700MBps up and down

A dream for a workstation, even though it's already more than 4 years old. Runs matlab, video encoding and even the occational game without hiccups Best purchase I've ever made.

 

[VirtualRain]

That is in part because "blade SSDs" are not just SSDs. Typically what you are purchasing is an additional SATA controller , if not also a greater than 6Gb/s throughput RAID controller. That plus the multiple SSDs ends costing more than a single SSD controller coupled to a larger multiple of Flash chips.

If using the drive sleds of any of the current or previous Mac Pro models the useful bandwidth you get out of the "cheaper" SSDs is not as high.

So you are paying extra for extra performance and extra equipment. If don't need that additional value then the price probably isn't worth it, but that doesn't mean the price is too high.

They want $750 for the 480GB version. The two blades are equivalent to a pair of Vertex 3 SSDs which can be had for around $200 ($400 for the pair)... Which means that OWC thinks their SATA3 PCIe card is worth $350... And it's no RAID card (eg. no processing for parity calculations). So it is overpriced for what you get. It still may be worth it to some, but not to me. And those dual Sandforce controllers are a potential ticking time bomb.

 

[phpmaven]

I got mine (a 480 GB version) a week ago and it has been working great but for one compability issue with the mac pro 2008.

If you want to get an accelsior for a 2008-model you should NOT put it in one of the top (pci-e 1.0 * 4 slots). It gets only max 190 MBps read/write in those slots. I also could not get the drive to boot when I tried to move it to one of the other slots without reinstalling. After moving the drive to "slot 2", just above the GPU, and reinstalling the system it now works as advertised with read/write speeds far above any sata6Gbps-drive. >700MBps up and down

A dream for a workstation, even though it's already more than 4 years old. Runs matlab, video encoding and even the occational game without hiccups Best purchase I've ever made.

You're getting >700mbps? I have the same exact setup as you and I'm getting 650 or so. Can you post a picture of a AJA disk test?

Thx.

 

[Boomhowler]

You're getting >700mbps? I have the same exact setup as you and I'm getting 650 or so. Can you post a picture of a AJA disk test?

Thx.

Yeah, maybe it's more like 650/720. Here's a pic:


https://www.dropbox.com/s/a00cmpupz65muow/Screen Shot 2012-08-26 at 7.09.40 PM.png

 

[deconstruct60]

They want $750 for the 480GB version. The two blades are equivalent to a pair of Vertex 3 SSDs which can be had for around $200 ($400 for the pair)... Which means that OWC thinks their SATA3 PCIe card is worth $350...

Other OWC 240GB drives are $250-314 for 2.5" 6Gb/s and around $319 for the mSATA variants that going in some Mac laptops.

2 * ( 250-314 ) is $500-628 so it is only $250-$122 for the card. Not the $350 you all hand waving about.

And it's no RAID card (eg. no processing for parity calculations).

RAID is RAID. Parity calculations don't define RAID. The card runs in RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes.... which makes it a RAID card.

Parity isn't the material issue. Especially in light of the fact that the Sandorce controllers have a parity RAID system they implement anyway. It is far more important the controller than makes the devices look like a single storage device be able to keep up with the throughput and add any additional latency.

So it is overpriced for what you get.

Given there aren't many competitive ( boots OS X , throughput , Mac knowledgable support, etc. ) cards it competes with it currently has a price premium.

And those dual Sandforce controllers are a potential ticking time bomb.

Again you biased viewpoint on the issue. There are few other suppliers that don't also have some issues that have to be worked around.

 

[derbothaus]

And those dual Sandforce controllers are a potential ticking time bomb.

I've been burned. This should be a concern. Backups help with that. This product seems to fill a niche and I am glad it exists. Other than that, good luck.

 

[VirtualRain]

Again you biased viewpoint on the issue. There are few other suppliers that don't also have some issues that have to be worked around.

I'm not sure who's biased here, but you certainly are trying very hard to justify their exorbitant pricing on this product. The fact is that in the last few months, SSD prices have dropped to under $1/GB yet the pricing on this product hasn't dropped at all. And the high prices of OWCs other SSDs are hardly good justification for the high price of this product.

I acknowledge the convenience of the form factor and for some, the premium price may be worth it, but not for me. I'd also prefer a solution where I can select the drives I use. A pair of Velocity X2 cards may be the answer... Faster, cheaper, and choice of drives. The only drawback is that it consumes two slots.

 

[jamiemcd]

The fact is that in the last few months, SSD prices have dropped to under $1/GB yet the pricing on this product hasn't dropped at all.

The price for the Accelsior was $360, $530, $950, and $2080 back when Macworld reviewed it in May. The Mac Observer review in July listed them at $338, $500, $800, and $1620. Now in August the prices are $330, $496, $765, and $1530. So the prices are coming down, though so far only to the $1.59/GB level, and that is on the top two. I'm holding off a bit longer to see if there is a September drop.

 

[Ronnie roo]

Speed test Blackmagic v Quickbench

I've had my 480GB OWC Accelsoir since June, using it as a boot drive in a 2008 Mac Pro with 20GB ram, running Snow Leopard with about 350GB of free space

I've been using Blackmagic Disk Speed test on a weekly basis to keep a eye on it's speed which had been showing Write approx 550mb/s, Read 650mb/s over the summer. That has now dropped over the last week to approx Write 480 mb/s Read , Read approx 625mb/s.

Yesterday I tried out Quickbench and it's giving me speeds Write of 711mb/s
Read 632 mb/s

Which test is the most reliable? and can anyone suggest why the Blackmagic
Write speed has dropped.

When I empty my trash I have always securely erased it and when i changed over to the SSD i've carried on securely erasing it - would this be an issue?

thanks

 

[sngraphics]

Setting Acceslior up for a time machine backup?!?!

I purchased a 120GB Accelsior to use as my boot drive.
So far no problems.
I partitioned one of my HDs to use one of those partitions as a Time Machine Backup for the Accelsior.
But things do not seem to be working OK.
When I am in Time Machine preferences it doesn't seem like it is recognizing
the Accelsior as the boot disk to be backed up because when I click on the options button it stating the Estimated size of full backup is 2.53TB?
It looks like it wants to backup the cloned version of the Accelsior that is also
one of the partitions on the same drive that has the Time Machine partition.
After I start the backup it is reading the drive to be cloned but I get a "Failed" message before anything is backed up.
I hope this all makes sense.
Is the Accelsior recognized by Time Machine as a boot volume?
If anyone has any ideas, answers or even questions it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sngraphics]

Could there be an issue with Time Machine backing up an Accelsior because it is being recognized as an external HD and not as an internal HD?!?!

 

[rogerdee123]

Hi,

I am new to the Mac world and to this forum. So to you all: Greetings from The Netherlands/Europe.

I did buy a Mac Pro 2010 (5.1) Westmere 12 core.

I am loving this machine and also bought the Acceslior 240GB from OWC. The MAC pro has all the latest updates. I have tried running os version 10.6 and now 10.7.

I was doing a Google search and found this topic here.

I am having issues with the OWC. Sometimes the OWC shows up, sometimes it doesn´t when booting, and trying to find out what the problem is. I have the revision code:0x0010 (OWC)

I did contact some people i know in the computer world and they all had the same conclusion that it has something to do with firmware issues.

I contacted OWC and they want me to send it back for RMA. Maybe it has something to do with firmware? i don´t know.

Greetings

I've also had this same problem with a 240GB on my MP 5,1. I've returned two of the cards to OWC and am on my third one now. The first one operated for about a week (daily power-on/power-off) before disappearing and the second one worked only for one cycle (power-on/power-off). I also live overseas and the shipping costs have made this a very expensive option. I'm not that confident in it and every time I turn on the computer I wonder if it's going to show up or not. I like OWC but this experience has shaken my confidence in them.

 

[aminadab]

I've had bad luck with two cards, one 120 and another 240. Both have been returned once and now the 240 is being replaced a second time. The first issue with both cards was drive failure. I'd have constant beachballing and the grey progress bar after forced shutdowns. Repairing the drives through Disk Utility soon proved impossible, and they were replaced. Now the 240 has simply died and won't mount at all. It has been RMA'd.

I was running either 10.7.4 or 10.8.0 when I had the first issues. During my latest issue with the 240 I was running 10.8.2. Interestingly, OWC cautioned me about utilizing sleep with 10.8.2 and said that there is a known issue. The workaround was to disable sleep. While this doesn't help me out -- the drive is now dead -- it may be helpful for some here.

I'm currently running 10.6.8 on the 120 and things have been fine. I won't upgrade to ML anytime soon and will probably just sell the new 240 they send me as a replacement.

 

[Hotjacket]

Damn, I so wish I had read these forums before buying my Accelsior card!

It's fast ... *really* fast ... but mine has been terribly unreliable, and has cost me literally weeks of productivity.

My Mac Pro started out beachballing ... then, like aminadab, kept booting into what looks like safe mode, with the progress bar (but shutting down after 30 minutes or so).

It's now completely inoperable ... I can't even erase the disk in recovery mode (it doesn't get past the "Unmounting Disk" phase).

I have a 6-core Mac Pro 5.1, and an Accelsior 960. I am returning the Accelsior and will go with standard SSD for my boot drive... the speed increase was nice, but not at the expense of reliability :-(

 

[VideoFreek]

I have a 6-core Mac Pro 5.1, and an Accelsior 960. I am returning the Accelsior and will go with standard SSD for my boot drive... the speed increase was nice, but not at the expense of reliability :-(

What version of OS X are you running? I'm running the latest version of ML and having similar issues to you and aminadab, though not as severe. In my case, I notice frequent volume corruption issues showing up--unallocated blocks and so forth--that can be fixed via Drive Utility. I had already associated these issues with sleep, so aminadab's comment about what OWC had told him was very interesting. I plan to follow up with them. Just another data point, but there may be a broader issue here...

Oh, BTW, I clone the thing nightly to an internal hard drive, which I'd recommend everyone do until these stability issues are resolved.

UPDATE (Oct. 27): It turned out that the sleep issues were acknowledged by OWC, and they've now issued a fix that's available on their website. Since applying it over 2 weeks ago, I've had no further issues.

 

[phpmaven]

Damn, I so wish I had read these forums before buying my Accelsior card!

It's fast ... *really* fast ... but mine has been terribly unreliable, and has cost me literally weeks of productivity.

My Mac Pro started out beachballing ... then, like aminadab, kept booting into what looks like safe mode, with the progress bar (but shutting down after 30 minutes or so).

It's now completely inoperable ... I can't even erase the disk in recovery mode (it doesn't get past the "Unmounting Disk" phase).

I have a 6-core Mac Pro 5.1, and an Accelsior 960. I am returning the Accelsior and will go with standard SSD for my boot drive... the speed increase was nice, but not at the expense of reliability :-(

Since its been rock solid for the vast majority of us, why not work with OWC to get it replaced/resolved? They have excellent customer service.

 

[7racer]

I have a MP 3,1 with the apple card raid in it.

Can I still install this car and use it as the boot disk without interfering with the RAID?

 

[jamiemcd]

November pricing

The price for the Accelsior was $360, $530, $950, and $2080 back when Macworld reviewed it in May. The Mac Observer review in July listed them at $338, $500, $800, and $1620. Now in August the prices are $330, $496, $765, and $1530. So the prices are coming down, though so far only to the $1.59/GB level, and that is on the top two. I'm holding off a bit longer to see if there is a September drop.

I received their email today announcing latest prices: $309, $489, $725, and $1475. Save an extra $5 if you use Amazon checkout.

I decided to purchase the 480GB.

Update: Looks like you have to use this link from their newsletter to get the lowered prices.

 

[Demigod Mac]

I too was having the issue where it would take 5 minutes on a disk repair progress bar at startup at seemingly random intervals. On two cards!

Oddly enough they had me RMA the first card just a few weeks ago. My first card was listed as a Marvell Raid Controller in the system profile, this new one is properly labeled OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD. Still a Marvell, but it looks like OWC tweaked the device name in recent revisions.

Turns out the problem is that sometimes the Mac Pro does not properly power down the Accelsior prior to sleep/restart/shutdown, so sometimes data corruption occurs and you get that disk repair bar.

Here's a link to the driver that OWC posted recently:

http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.cfm?page=/manuals/item/owcaccelsior.html

I just installed the driver and rebooted. Crossing my fingers now... hopefully it'll be rock-solid reliable from this point on.

 

[subwelt]

Here's a link to the driver that OWC posted recently:

http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.cfm?page=/manuals/item/owcaccelsior.html

Thanks for the link. I too have issues with my 480GB card. It sometimes disappears and I have to reboot to make it show up again. Maybe this is also connected to the sleep problem. I will have to to wait and see...
I installed the firmware update just now.

 

[Gus999]

A little late to this party, but I wanted to mention that my 240 GB died as well. I had some random crashes/beachballs, then it just wouldn't mount. Then it did magically mount once, I copied a bunch of stuff off, then it disappeared again. Haven't seen it since.

MacPro 3.1 (2008). I was running 10.7.x, then 10.8. I've got an RMA, hopefully the replacement will be OK. I've got the driver installed.

Prior to the problems, it ran great for around four months.

 

[jamiemcd]

I bought my 480GB Accelsior in November 2012. It was awesome and I used SpeedTools QuickBench to measure its performance.

Unfortunately in March, I started seeing beach balls a lot. Whenever I was copying a large file (around 15GB) it would hang for several minutes. Sometimes it would come back and other times I would have to do a hard restart.

I called OWC technical support and they suggested repairing permissions and reseating the card. I did that and it seemed to help at first, but the problem showed up after a few more days. So I requested an exchange. OWC was quick at getting an RMA number to me. Unfortunately, their policy is that the customer has to pay to ship it to them, which if you buy insurance for such an expensive card, is about $25. When my Dell monitor broke under warranty, Dell paid shipping both ways. So did Apple on my Macbook Pro.

I asked the OWC tech about the failure rate of their Accelsiors and he said it was quite low. I'll be skeptical of that if SSD #2 also fails. I clone my SSD each night to a traditional hard drive and since the Accelsior did not totally fail, I was able to clone it right before pulling it out.

 

[scottrichardson]

I recently got a 960gb accelsior. It was definitely faster at LARGE transfers than a standard SATA2 SSD however a standard SSD is faster at the important 4k, 8k and 16k blocks - which are common in apps and Mac OS X.

So I ordered a sonnet tempo SSD pro pci card and sat 2 x Samsung SSD 840 pro 512gb drives in it. The card gives you full SATA3 6gbps speeds for EACH drive. I raided them together as a raid 0 stripe using disk utilities and the results are WAY faster than the accelsior. Not only does it fix the slowness at 4k, 8k and 16k blocks, but it soundly smashes them. And when looking at large transfers, I get 1000mb+/sec vs 650mb/sec on the accelsior. And it costs $250 less all up.

Go find my recent thread with comparison benchmarks between the sonnet and accelsior.

Scotti

 

[Tesselator]

That's a nice price. The prices VirtualRain listed are about right and average. mSATA is cheaper than full sized SSDs - has been for awhile now.

It's kinda weird.. i noticed there's a regular here who makes stuff up just so he can argue about. Not sure what's up with that. <shrug>

 

[VirtualRain]

I asked the OWC tech about the failure rate of their Accelsiors and he said it was quite low. I'll be skeptical of that if SSD #2 also fails. I clone my SSD each night to a traditional hard drive and since the Accelsior did not totally fail, I was able to clone it right before pulling it out.

Everyone should realize that these Accelsiors use Sandforce 22xx controllers. They are used in OWCs SSDs and OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs and both of these are notorious for premature failure. So I'm not surprised to see some posts above with these Accelsiors running into the same problems after a few weeks or months. Make sure you do some research and know what you're buying into before you buy these Accelsior cards even when their pricing comes in line with other options.