Getting my 5,1 up to speed, need help!

[soundbuff]

Hey Guys,

So I've been following this forum since years and learned a lot from the experts here to troubleshoot all my mac troubles so far. You guys are great!

Recently, I bought a MP5,1 for professional needs.

I do post production sound and although the workflow is not heavy like video editing, it does need as much speed as it can. I am running OS 10.9.5 and I can't upgrade because a lot of the softwares I use for work function really well for me on mavericks.

So this is my problem.

Problem #1

I bought a Inateck 4 Port usb pcie card to get me USB 3.0 speeds. I bought a 3.0 powered USB Hub to connect to one of the ports on the card. Connected my 2TB WD Portable and fired up Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and found that with 1 device connected the speeds dont go over 75-80Mb/s, this is true both time when the drive was connected to USB Hub and tested and also when it was connected directly to one of the ports on the PCIe card.

So, how do I get my USB 3.0 drives to work at 3.0 speeds with my Mac Pro? I am expecting atleast about 140-150Mb/s speeds though USB 3.0.

Problem #2

All my internal drives are sata 6g. My main system drive which is an SSD is connected via an OWC Accelsior S PCIe card and that bumps up transfer speeds to the max for the SSD. For all the other Hard Drives, they remain at 3G.

I have 1x3TB, 2x4TB, 1x2TB drives that are running at Sata 3G speeds. What would be the most cost efficient way to get all the drives to function at 6G speeds. I have read about upgrading all drive bays to 6G with a PCIe card, installing USB 3.1 typa A card and then using an external chassis with the drives that support USB 3.1, installing an eSata card and using an external eSata chassis. Too many options and I'm confused.

I need to get all the drives in my system to perform at max speeds because I can really feel the overall difference and system lag between this Mac Pro and my 17" MBP running 6G. Those few seconds, minutes saved due to such an upgrade really help me save lots of hours over a long period of time.


Please help! I've added some screenshots of system specs and PCI cards installed to help you.

Please let me know if you need any more info... this is just so big of a dilemma for me and its giving me a headache!

 

[Filin]

About problem #1: I will test my USB3.0 card and post results later
About problem #2: afaik, regular HDD (not SDD) has no benefit on SATA6G interface.

 

[soundbuff]

About problem #1: I will test my USB3.0 card and post results later
About problem #2: afaik, regular HDD (not SDD) has no benefit on SATA6G interface.

Really? theres no change in transfer speeds?

I just benchmarked my 7200rpm HGST drive running on stock Sata 2 connections, it gives me about 170MB/s.. so you're saying no matter what theres no point upgrading these bays to Sata 3?

 

[Filin]

Okay, about USB3.0 speed
I have "Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0 4-Port PCIe Card #USB3-4PM-E" in my cMP.
I took my Samsung 840PRO SSD and put it in USB3.0 enclosure.

What i got

]

[doublepost=1489148642][/doublepost]

Really? theres no change in transfer speeds?

I just benchmarked my 7200rpm HGST drive running on stock Sata 2 connections, it gives me about 170MB/s.. so you're saying no matter what theres no point upgrading these bays to Sata 3?

SATA2 can transfer up to 300MB/s (~260MB/s in real life), and i think thats enough for HDD

 

[raymanster]

I have the Inatek and removed it as it was causing me all sorts of issues. I'm going to replace it with a Sonnet shortly, double the price but hopefully more reliable.

 

[soundbuff]

Ok those speeds that you got with the Samsung SSD are because its an SSD, what according to you would be speeds for a traditional 5400 rpm portable drive? My USB 3.0 5400 rpm WD My passport Ultra 2TB gave me 78MB/s when tested through my USB3 PCIe card. Is that the max I can expect unless I go to a higher spec HDD or better yet an SSD?

As you stated, SATA2 can do upto 260MB/s real-life speeds, but my HGST/Toshiba nowhere gives me the performance it should, these are the specs for the drive:

Technical Details
Brand Toshiba
Model DT01ACA200 / HDKPC09
Model Year 2012
Item Weight 599 g
Product Dimensions 10.2 x 2.6 x 14.7 cm
Item model number DT01ACA200 / HDKPC09
Memory Storage Capacity 2 TB
Hard Drive Size 2 TB
Hardware Interface SATA 6.0 Gb/s
Buffer Size 64 MB
Screen Size 3.5 Inches
Wattage 6 Watts
Data Transfer Rate 6 gigabits_per_second


The other HDD's on my system are all 5400rpm so the Toshiba is the fastest in transfer speeds.

If I was to get a Dual eSATA 6gbps RAID enclosure and put 2x4TB 7200 rpm 6G drive in there, plop in a eSATA card in the PCI bus.. how much speed can I look to achieve in a RAID 0 Striped situation with my MP5,1?


[doublepost=1489151714][/doublepost]

I have the Inatek and removed it as it was causing me all sorts of issues. I'm going to replace it with a Sonnet shortly, double the price but hopefully more reliable.

How was it unreliable? Did you benchmark the speeds you were getting?

 

[macuser453787]

Ok those speeds that you got with the Samsung SSD are because its an SSD, what according to you would be speeds for a traditional 5400 rpm portable drive? My USB 3.0 5400 rpm WD My passport Ultra 2TB gave me 78MB/s when tested through my USB3 PCIe card. Is that the max I can expect unless I go to a higher spec HDD or better yet an SSD?

As you stated, SATA2 can do upto 260MB/s real-life speeds, but my HGST/Toshiba nowhere gives me the performance it should, these are the specs for the drive:

Technical Details
Brand Toshiba
Model DT01ACA200 / HDKPC09
Model Year 2012
Item Weight 599 g
Product Dimensions 10.2 x 2.6 x 14.7 cm
Item model number DT01ACA200 / HDKPC09
Memory Storage Capacity 2 TB
Hard Drive Size 2 TB
Hardware Interface SATA 6.0 Gb/s
Buffer Size 64 MB
Screen Size 3.5 Inches
Wattage 6 Watts
Data Transfer Rate 6 gigabits_per_second


The other HDD's on my system are all 5400rpm so the Toshiba is the fastest in transfer speeds.

If I was to get a Dual eSATA 6gbps RAID enclosure and put 2x4TB 7200 rpm 6G drive in there, plop in a eSATA card in the PCI bus.. how much speed can I look to achieve in a RAID 0 Striped situation with my MP5,1?

HDDs, which are standard "platter" drives, tend to be rated by manufacturers at about 150 MB/s theoretical, and in real world timed file copy tests that number is even less. By real world I do not mean using benchmark software, but dragging and dropping a file and measuring the actual time it takes to finish copying using a stopwatch, then doing the math once the copy completes to figure out actual real world MB/s.

So standard platter HDDs will not saturate a SATA II connection at 300 MB/s, and maybe not even a SATA I connection at 150 MB/s (again, those are theoretical maximums).

You would see a performance increase by creating a RAID stripe of two drives, and the actual speed will depend on the HDDs themselves and probably other factors also. In general, figure on roughly twice the speed of one drive when you stripe two drives.

Also eSATA has a theoretical maximum IO of 6 Gbps (i.e. 600 MB/s), so it should easily be able to handle the maximum IO of 2 striped HDDs. If you were to get a 4-bay eSATA enclosure then you could stripe 4 HDDs in it and get a lot closer to saturating the eSATA connection. (Or you could use 2 SSDs in the 2-bay enclosure, though the IO limiter at that point would be the eSATA connection, and you would not have 8TB capacity, though you could have 4TB capacity using a couple of Samsung 850s.)

 

[Filin]

Ok those speeds that you got with the Samsung SSD are because its an SSD

Sure, but i tried to show you, that USB3.0 card is not bottleneck in your case.
Low speed you achieved is result of WD performance.

what according to you would be speeds for a traditional 5400 rpm portable drive? My USB 3.0 5400 rpm WD My passport Ultra 2TB gave me 78MB/s when tested through my USB3 PCIe card. Is that the max I can expect unless I go to a higher spec HDD or better yet an SSD?

With 5400 prm i got the same result. And as you can see Max depend of drive, not of USB card.

As you stated, SATA2 can do upto 260MB/s real-life speeds, but my HGST/Toshiba nowhere gives me the performance it should, these are the specs for the drive:

Mostly all Hdd (except 10000 rpm and hybrids) have real performance below SATA2's Max. SATA3 for HDD is mostly marketing.

If I was to get a Dual eSATA 6gbps RAID enclosure and put 2x4TB 7200 rpm 6G drive in there, plop in a eSATA card in the PCI bus.. how much speed can I look to achieve in a RAID 0 Striped situation with my MP5,1?

I don't tried such configuration and can't say for sure.

 

[soundbuff]

Also eSATA has a theoretical maximum IO of 6 Gbps (i.e. 600 MB/s), so it should easily be able to handle the maximum IO of 2 striped HDDs. If you were to get a 4-bay eSATA enclosure then you could stripe 4 HDDs in it and get a lot closer to saturating the eSATA connection. (Or you could use 2 SSDs in the 2-bay enclosure, though the IO limiter at that point would be the eSATA connection, and you would not have 8TB capacity, though you could have 4TB capacity using a couple of Samsung 850s.)

Ok that makes sense. So I think an eSATA solution is viable for my purposes. Any issue regarding which sSATA card to buy and which slot to plop into?

With 5400 prm i got the same result. And as you can see Max depend of drive, not of USB card.

Thx so much for trying it out! So that rules out any need for me to change the card. And for USB I should rather upgrade my HDD's if I need more speed.

What are your thoughts on USB3.1? Compatible with MP5,1?

 

[raymanster]

[doublepost=1489151714][/doublepost]
How was it unreliable? Did you benchmark the speeds you were getting?[/QUOTE]

When it did work the benchmarks were good. I can't remember the exact figures, but they were what you would expect from a USB 3 hard drive.

The problem I had was my Mac wouldn't reboot properly, it would just stay on the grey screen. Also shutdown would take a looooong time. These problems disappeared when I removed the card.

I'm wondering if the card I got is faulty as so many people seem to have a good experience. While I said I would get the Sonnet I might just try another Inateck as it's half the price. If it still doesn't work I will be more diligent and return it.

 

[soundbuff]

The problem I had was my Mac wouldn't reboot properly, it would just stay on the grey screen. Also shutdown would take a looooong time. These problems disappeared when I removed the card.

I'm wondering if the card I got is faulty as so many people seem to have a good experience. While I said I would get the Sonnet I might just try another Inateck as it's half the price. If it still doesn't work I will be more diligent and return it.

yea maybe try that cuz honestly my card has been running smoothly so far, I did notice some problems with sleep, but since the past few months its been alright and no problems so far. Haven't changed anything so dont know how the problem corrected itself.

 

[Filin]

What are your thoughts on USB3.1? Compatible with MP5,1?

You can find detailed info here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/usb-3-x-pcie-cards-for-classic-mac-pro.1501482/
But to make it short - i think it works not good enough in cMP

 

[raymanster]

yea maybe try that cuz honestly my card has been running smoothly so far, I did notice some problems with sleep, but since the past few months its been alright and no problems so far. Haven't changed anything so dont know how the problem corrected itself.

You've convinced me, I just put in an order for another one, hopefully will be with me tomorrow. Sleep issues reported don't worry me as I don't put my Pro to sleep (leave it on 24/7).

 

[h9826790]

All I can see is that you try to remove the wrong bottleneck. The bottleneck for HDD is INSIDE the drive, not the SATA II / USB 3.0 connection. If you want more speed, you need to buy a faster drive.

Also, what you are measuring is just the sequential speed. If you use HDD to deal with very small files. The performance can further drop to ~1MB/s.

 

[soundbuff]

Yep I did realize that upgrading the drives is the answer.

So what I am considering now, which should benefit my situation, is to get a M.2 SSD with a cheap Lycom Adapter and use that as main work drive. Most of my projects will fit nicely in a 240gb ssd. That will definitely gimme that extra boost so that my session dont lag. Right now theres a lot of lag which is corrected whenever I transfer my projects to my SSD.

So yea use the M.2 as the main drive and then use a regular 7200rpm 4TB drive as backup. Setup CCC to backup M.2 data continually to HDD which is basically me trying to create a hybrid drive situation in which I can actually use the M.2 in its entirety. Then when I am done with my projects, delete folder from M.2 (if its already backed up) and then create a new one. Won't have to bother checking the 4TB to see if backups are happening normally. Will either use the M.2 as work drive OR rather use my existing SSD and work drive and use M.2 as boot drive, I guess it will an AHCI M.2 which will be boot drive.

 

[h9826790]

Use the faster SSD for work. System won't run significantly faster on a better SSD. Don't waste your fast SSD for 0.5s apps loading, use it to do the real work (e.g. your production).

 

[soundbuff]

Use the faster SSD for work. System won't run significantly faster on a better SSD. Don't waste your fast SSD for 0.5s apps loading, use it to do the real work (e.g. your production).

Yep gonna keep it like that!

Thanks for the help everyone, you guys helped save a lot a money that I could wasted!
[doublepost=1489193513][/doublepost]

You've convinced me, I just put in an order for another one, hopefully will be with me tomorrow. Sleep issues reported don't worry me as I don't put my Pro to sleep (leave it on 24/7).

do let me know how the new card worked out for you!

 

[fhturner]

Sounds like you've already got things mostly figured out, but I'll chime in, too...

I just benchmarked my 7200rpm HGST drive running on stock Sata 2 connections, it gives me about 170MB/s.. so you're saying no matter what theres no point upgrading these bays to Sata 3?

Yeah, you're not going to find any hard drives that will need more than 3Gbps SATA II, even if they can negotiate a 6Gbps SATA III link. I believe the entire set of 4 HDD bays has a bottleneck of something like 600-700MB/s, but with even 4 drives each at, say, 200MB/s in a RAID0, I doubt you'll ever notice a loss of 100-200MB/s. I'd think about 6Gbps SATA for any SSDs you want to use, and occupy the built-in bays w/ HDDs.

My USB 3.0 5400 rpm WD My passport Ultra 2TB gave me 78MB/s when tested through my USB3 PCIe card. Is that the max I can expect unless I go to a higher spec HDD or better yet an SSD?

78MB/s is definitely well in excess of USB2 transfer rates (practically only about 35MB/s at best), so you're getting USB3 for sure, just maybe not as fast as you'd like to see. Keep in mind there are potentially several limiting factors here. First, the USB-to-SATA bridge circuitry in the enclosure may be a bottleneck (would be unusual for the bridge itself to be THAT slow tho). Next, the firmware of that bridge board might not jive well w/ your USB3 card. Then, the drive mechanism may just not be that fast. And finally— perhaps most importantly— remember that a drive w/ data on it will not benchmark out as fast as one that's empty. If you have 1/2 of that drive full, with most of the data toward the outer edge, the test file will be created closer to the center, where the transfer rate isn't as fast.

The other HDD's on my system are all 5400rpm so the Toshiba is the fastest in transfer speeds.

Not necessarily. It's important to remember that a drive's transfer speed is dependent on more factors than just its rotational speed. A newer, higher capacity, 5400RPM disk w/ data packed more tightly on its platters will outperform an older 7200RPM drive where the data is not packed as tightly. So, the 7200 vs. 5400 comparison really only matters when all else is equal...at least as far as raw transfer rate goes.

If I was to get a Dual eSATA 6gbps RAID enclosure and put 2x4TB 7200 rpm 6G drive in there, plop in a eSATA card in the PCI bus.. how much speed can I look to achieve in a RAID 0 Striped situation with my MP5,1?

A bit different than you're talking about, but I configured a 4 x 4TB RAID5 using NAS drives (5900RPM, I think) in an 8-bay enclosure for a client, using both eSATA links and 2 drives in the top half and 2 in the bottom half. I was able to sustain 450-500MB/s, which I thought was pretty good. But it should go even faster w/ more drives in it, since the pair of eSATA buses should aggregate to a theoretical max of about 1200MB/s.

In your case, w/ a pair of new 4TB HDDs, I would expect to see double whatever a single is, so probably 300-400MB/s. But here's the thing— you can get that same performance just using the internal bays! Neither drive will exceed its SATA II link, but together, their aggregate will exceed that single 3Gbps link.

HTH,
Fred

 

[soundbuff]

Sounds like you've already got things mostly figured out, but I'll chime in, too...
In your case, w/ a pair of new 4TB HDDs, I would expect to see double whatever a single is, so probably 300-400MB/s. But here's the thing— you can get that same performance just using the internal bays! Neither drive will exceed its SATA II link, but together, their aggregate will exceed that single 3Gbps link.

Thanks a lot for that detailed reply. All my answers in one place!

As you're pointing out, there should be no issues with getting the same performance as a raid setup from the internal drive bays. As i understand, the internal drive bays default to software raid, is the OSX soft raid reliable for a Raid 0 or 1 setup. What kind of success rates and longevity have people experienced with OSX raid?