Highpoint 7101A - PCIe 3.0 SSD performance for the cMP

[Matt_Mac]

I used an old heatsink from a Server, so i have no link, sorry.
For fitting i used termalpad and put it on the card- cover...

i have a 7103 card and used also thermalpad between the chips and the cover, so no heat stays in...

is the pci switch in the 7101 not in contact with the Cover?

 

[Bggale]

Hi guys,

Long time lurker, first time posting as I feel I have something to add now that I bought the card and a couple of Samsung 970 EVO's 1TB.

During my setup I was having issues with the driver supplied by Highpoint, the driver was not loading even after allowing it thru the Security and Privacy control panel.

Without the driver working I was unable to get the web management of the card to connect. I thought about doing a software raid but I like to use the full functionality of the card if I could.

While trouble shooting I found that the kext was listed as disabled in the software report due to no user consent.
View attachment 872780

Doing a few more google searches lead me to this blog post about the same issue with Oracle's virtual box.

https://ilgthegeek.wordpress.com/2018/01/27/macos-install-oracle-virtualbox-on-10-13/

This was the ticket for me I booted into recovery mode (disconnected my 4k monitor, annoying) and added the following code in the terminal.

spctl kext-consent add DX6G69M9N2

After the reboot I was able to access the Highpoint's raid management page properly and set up a RAID 0 with a 64k block size and a 4k Sector size.

View attachment 872783

There are more settings in there that I didn't tackle yet, like the error reporting and such but I can easily see temps and drive status.

Note the card disappears from the NVMExpress and isn't listed in the Hardware RAID sections of the system report but the drive does show up in Storage.

Once the drive popped up in Disk Utility I formatted with APFS and ran some speed tests.

View attachment 872784
View attachment 872785

Not a bad little upgrade. I've moved only my home folder over to it as I plan on getting the new Mac Pro tower once it is released, use the internal base storage for the OS and have my home folder located on the Highpoint.

Hope this helps others that may be having issues with the driver.

So it’s not bootable in Catalina, even though it appears as a single drive? I ask because I’m looking for a hardware NVMe card. I guess the Highpoint is really a software one.

Hi guys,

Long time lurker, first time posting as I feel I have something to add now that I bought the card and a couple of Samsung 970 EVO's 1TB.

During my setup I was having issues with the driver supplied by Highpoint, the driver was not loading even after allowing it thru the Security and Privacy control panel.

Without the driver working I was unable to get the web management of the card to connect. I thought about doing a software raid but I like to use the full functionality of the card if I could.

While trouble shooting I found that the kext was listed as disabled in the software report due to no user consent.
View attachment 872780

Doing a few more google searches lead me to this blog post about the same issue with Oracle's virtual box.

https://ilgthegeek.wordpress.com/2018/01/27/macos-install-oracle-virtualbox-on-10-13/

This was the ticket for me I booted into recovery mode (disconnected my 4k monitor, annoying) and added the following code in the terminal.

spctl kext-consent add DX6G69M9N2

After the reboot I was able to access the Highpoint's raid management page properly and set up a RAID 0 with a 64k block size and a 4k Sector size.

View attachment 872783

There are more settings in there that I didn't tackle yet, like the error reporting and such but I can easily see temps and drive status.

Note the card disappears from the NVMExpress and isn't listed in the Hardware RAID sections of the system report but the drive does show up in Storage.

Once the drive popped up in Disk Utility I formatted with APFS and ran some speed tests.

View attachment 872784
View attachment 872785

Not a bad little upgrade. I've moved only my home folder over to it as I plan on getting the new Mac Pro tower once it is released, use the internal base storage for the OS and have my home folder located on the Highpoint.

Hope this helps others that may be having issues with the driver.

So even though it’s seen as a single drive, it’s not bootable in Catalina?

 

[CNDCodewarrior]

@Bggale The highpoint is a hardware raid card. But to access the card you need to have the drivers working. I couldn't get them working until I was able to activate them with the commands that I had to run in recovery mode.

From the thread here it seemed like most were using Apple disk utility to create a software raid of the drives on the card, and I didn't see anyone else running the card in hardware raid mode.

I haven't tried to boot with the card yet, just moved my home folder to it. I'm also not planning on moving my 5,1 over to catalina just too much fiddling with it.

I'm going to buy the new pro when it's released and use the drive for my home folder on the new box.

If you need any help please let me know.

 

[majus]

eBay listing for used HighPoint SSD7101A-1 is offering something which I don't think is correct.
1. Pic shows "HighPoint SSD 7130" on the board and on the paper label shows "SSD7101A-1". Shows "SSD 7101" on reverse side.
2. The number of mounting holes appears to be excessive; I think the real card only supports one size (2280).

Too many discrepancies for my taste, and the seller has been known to offer one thing and send something different. Before I report him to eBay I would like for the experts here to give their opinion.

The listing can be seen here: https://tinyurl.com/tv8tpo4

 

[tsialex]

eBay listing for used HighPoint SSD7101A-1 is offering something which I don't think is correct.
1. Pic shows "HighPoint SSD 7130" on the board and on the paper label shows "SSD7101A-1". Shows "SSD 7101" on reverse side.
2. The number of mounting holes appears to be excessive; I think the real card only supports one size (2280).

Too many discrepancies for my taste, and the seller has been known to offer one thing and send something different. Before I report him to eBay I would like for the experts here to give their opinion.

The listing can be seen here: https://tinyurl.com/tv8tpo4

View attachment 879004

It's a real HighPoint SSD7101-A, the second version of the PCB.

 

[majus]

It's a real HighPoint SSD7101-A, the second version of the PCB.

1. Why then do other sellers selling new product (Newegg, for instance) show the 7101-A which has that number? This one shows 7130 on the front and 7101 on the back.
2. No other vendor that I know of is selling one that supports four different sizes of M.2 blades. Is this one that new?

 

[tsialex]

1. Why then do other sellers selling new product (Amazon, for instance) show the 7101-A which has that number? This one shows 7130 on the front and 7101 on the back.
2. No other vendor that I know of is selling one that supports four different sizes of M.2 blades. Is this one that new?

See here:

SSD7102 and SSD7103 both support the 4 different M.2 sizes from the start, SSD7101-A v2.00 now supports it too.

Changes from v1.01 to V2.00:

1. Support for 4 sizes of blades, like SSD7102 and SSD7103.
2. New fan with 3-pin PWM connector like the newer brothers.
3. Square buzzer, like SSD7102 and SSD7103, instead of circular model of PCB V1.01.

Btw, PCB still has the pads for the old fan 2-pin connector, HighPoint probably can use the old one too, if they want so.

My SSD7101-A is v1.01, I think that most people here have this version, at least @crjackson2134 and @handheldgames are the same as mine.

 

[majus]

SSD7102 and SSD7103 both support the 4 different M.2 sizes from the start, SSD7101-A v2.00 now supports it too. Besides the new fan with 3-pin PWM connector like the newer brothers, the only other modification is the support for 4 different sizes of M.2.

Thank you Alex. Even HighPoint does not have that info on their web site. So the auction is, in fact, the real deal.

 

[tsialex]

Thank you Alex. Even HighPoint does not have that info on their web site. So the auction is, in fact, the real deal.

HighPoint is very sloppy with images, SSD7102 and SSD7103 use SSD7101-A v1.01 photos on the online store.

I just noticed that the buzzer changed to a square model, mine is circular.

 

[SolarisX]

Heads up - my backorder with Digi-Key for the 28 dB(A) fan, part no. BFB0512MA-C, just went through so the fan is back in stock.

Difference in air flow between the 32.5 dB(A), part no BFB0512HA-C, which I bought in December and the 28 dB model is 0.6 CFM and the difference between the stock fan and the 28 dB model is 1.1 CFM.

So to summarize:

Stock fan specs, part no. BFB0512HHA-C - 4 CFM, 37.5 dB(A), 5900RPM
Option 1 - 32.5 dB(A), part no. BFB0512HA-C - 3.5 CFM, 5100RPM
Option 2 - 28 dB(A), part no. BFB0512MA-C - 2.9 CFM, 4300RPM

I am here in Europe. The shipping with Digi-Key costs me 18, - euro. What alternative is there to these fans?
on ebay i can order the Delta BFB0512MA from China, but it seems to be a different model.

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Hi guys,

Long time lurker, first time posting as I feel I have something to add now that I bought the card and a couple of Samsung 970 EVO's 1TB.

During my setup I was having issues with the driver supplied by Highpoint, the driver was not loading even after allowing it thru the Security and Privacy control panel.

Without the driver working I was unable to get the web management of the card to connect. I thought about doing a software raid but I like to use the full functionality of the card if I could.

While trouble shooting I found that the kext was listed as disabled in the software report due to no user consent.
View attachment 872780

Doing a few more google searches lead me to this blog post about the same issue with Oracle's virtual box.

https://ilgthegeek.wordpress.com/2018/01/27/macos-install-oracle-virtualbox-on-10-13/

This was the ticket for me I booted into recovery mode (disconnected my 4k monitor, annoying) and added the following code in the terminal.

spctl kext-consent add DX6G69M9N2

After the reboot I was able to access the Highpoint's raid management page properly and set up a RAID 0 with a 64k block size and a 4k Sector size.

View attachment 872783

There are more settings in there that I didn't tackle yet, like the error reporting and such but I can easily see temps and drive status.

Note the card disappears from the NVMExpress and isn't listed in the Hardware RAID sections of the system report but the drive does show up in Storage.

Once the drive popped up in Disk Utility I formatted with APFS and ran some speed tests.

View attachment 872784
View attachment 872785

Not a bad little upgrade. I've moved only my home folder over to it as I plan on getting the new Mac Pro tower once it is released, use the internal base storage for the OS and have my home folder located on the Highpoint.

Hope this helps others that may be having issues with the driver.

Do you think the performance is better using hardware raid vs software?

It doesnt sound like you tested it but can you boot macos from the highpoint raid?

also sounds like once the 7,1 is out (assuming you upgrade) there will be plenty of room in the tower for it.

 

[w1z]

I am here in Europe. The shipping with Digi-Key costs me 18, - euro. What alternative is there to these fans?
on ebay i can order the Delta BFB0512MA from China, but it seems to be a different model.

Most of the delta fans on AliExpress are knock-offs and I don't know of any alternatives besides the ones I researched, bought and shared, sorry.

 

[CNDCodewarrior]

Do you think the performance is better using hardware raid vs software?

It doesnt sound like you tested it but can you boot macos from the highpoint raid?

also sounds like once the 7,1 is out (assuming you upgrade) there will be plenty of room in the tower for it.

Technically Performance should be better or very very close, since I didn't have the cash to pop 4 NVME's in there we can only extrapolate from @handheldgames testing and the numbers I posted. I'll Pop into a Mac OS installer and see if it sees the raid array for boot and get back to you.

Hardware raid off loads the smarts of a raid to the chip on the card, your Mac's CPU's don't have to do the calculations depending on raid type etc. I'm no expert on it, but I would assume in high CPU/Disk access tasks you would want to have the hardware raid so that your storage and CPU tasks are not waiting on each other.

Be back in a few with the boot test.

 

[CNDCodewarrior]

@Ludacrisvp No joy on being bootable. Not sure if it's the 5,1's firmware or if it's the cards.

The installer sees the drive, but wouldn't boot.

Booted into recovery mode to see what was going on and the drives for whatever reason are not being shown to the OS as one disk.

Double checked the setup and the card should be showing a logical 2TB drive to the Mac from the hardware raid card.

I'm at boot ROM Version: 144.0.0.0.0 So that should be the latest greatest.

Don't want to do too much more poking at it, even though I've got a good timemachine backup just don't feel like making a brick and restoring for a few hours

I feel like single NVME would be bootable off the card so you could leave one card out of the raid use it as boot and then raid the other 3 available slots. Would need to test this for sure but don't currently have the other NVMe's to do that with.

Sorry for the bad news.

Looks like the 7103 and the 7110 might be bootable

http://highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/CS-product_nvme.htm#bottom

 

[majus]

Usually if the SSD don't show into NVMExpress tab, it's incompatible. Did you have the most current firmware? Did you asked Plextor for more info?

Last week I bought the HP7101A-1, and 4 Samsung 970 EVO Plus blades (direct from Samsung). The controller appears in PCI (fully occupied) but the blades do not appear in NVME Express. They formatted and partitioned just fine and I have copied files to some of them.

Since the blades don't appear in the System Report should I inquire about whether they have the correct firmware? I assumed since I bought them recently, and directly, they would have the latest. As it is now I don't know of a way to determine the firmware number of the blades since they don't appear in the report.

I just occurs to me that my machine firmware is pre-High Sierra. Could that be the culprit?

 

[tsialex]

Last week I bought the HP7101A-1, and 4 Samsung 970 EVO Plus blades (direct from Samsung). The controller appears in PCI (fully occupied) but the blades do not appear in NVME Express. They formatted and partitioned just fine and I have copied files to some of them.

Since the blades don't appear in the System Report should I inquire about whether they have the correct firmware? I assumed since I bought them recently, and directly, they would have the latest. As it is now I don't know of a way to determine the firmware number of the blades since they don't appear in the report.

I just occurs to me that my machine firmware is pre-High Sierra. Could that be the culprit?

Remove any HighPoint drivers, they hide the blade details. macOS already have excellent native support for the PEX switches and you can use the blades without any HighPoint drivers.

Update your BootROM to the current one, 144.0.0.0.0.

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions thread)

 

[majus]

Specifically, what is it about the HP7101A-1 that prevents it from being used as a boot device? Is it their firmware or is it my machine's?

 

[tsialex]

Specifically, what is it about the HP7101A-1 that prevents it from being used as a boot device? Is it their firmware or is it my machine's?

Nothing prevents SSD7101-A being bootable in a MP5,1 since the MP5,1 BootROM already supports it natively since 140.0.0.0.0. One thing of note, macOS don’t support bootable RAID arrays since High Sierra. So, you can use one blade for boot and 3 for an array.

It’s non-bootable with PCs.

 

[ldstern10]

@Ludacrisvp No joy on being bootable. Not sure if it's the 5,1's firmware or if it's the cards.

The installer sees the drive, but wouldn't boot.
View attachment 880278

Booted into recovery mode to see what was going on and the drives for whatever reason are not being shown to the OS as one disk.

View attachment 880279

Double checked the setup and the card should be showing a logical 2TB drive to the Mac from the hardware raid card.

View attachment 880280

I'm at boot ROM Version: 144.0.0.0.0 So that should be the latest greatest.

Don't want to do too much more poking at it, even though I've got a good timemachine backup just don't feel like making a brick and restoring for a few hours

I feel like single NVME would be bootable off the card so you could leave one card out of the raid use it as boot and then raid the other 3 available slots. Would need to test this for sure but don't currently have the other NVMe's to do that with.

Sorry for the bad news.

Looks like the 7103 and the 7110 might be bootable

http://highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/CS-product_nvme.htm#bottom

I have a new Mac Pro 7.1 with the 7101, two non raided Samsung 970 Pros. Is it possible to boot Windows 10 on one of the SSDs?

 

[bsbeamer]

Can you confirm the HighPoint 7101 is working "out of the box" with standard NVMe blades? We are still waiting on 100% confirmation for this. Fully expected, just not confirmed.

 

[ldstern10]

Can you confirm the HighPoint 7101 is working "out of the box" with standard NVMe blades? We are still waiting on 100% confirmation for this. Fully expected, just not confirmed.

Yes, it is working. I have not installed the Highpoint drivers or utility. I will try to setup Win 10 on one of the drives using the USB install method since Mac boot camp assistant does not work with external drives. BTW, the 7101 is totally silent in my Mac Pro without modification. Also, I don’t plan to use to boot Mac OS; booting Mac off internal drive.

 

[bsbeamer]

Thanks for the confirmation, will help a lot of the MP7,1 folks make decisions.

 

[CNDCodewarrior]

I have a new Mac Pro 7.1 with the 7101, two non raided Samsung 970 Pros. Is it possible to boot Windows 10 on one of the SSDs?

Not sure I've got mine raided at the card level and my home folder is currently loaded on it.

Issue with Catalina though trying to get the drivers loaded was a much longer process. You have to do the recovery mode trick I posted before as well as run the combo updater to get the kernel extensions to load properly. Took me a good 3 tries of different things and a lot of google searching to fined the issue.


These two sites gave me the "kernels" of a hint to get it working

How Kernel Prelinking Works on macOS Catalina (or not)

Update on October 30, 2019: This issue is fixed in macOS 10.15.1. In this article we’d like to outline some technical details about how the installation of a kernel extension works on macOS Catalina, about potential pitfalls in this process, what…

blog.obdev.at

Why Catalina may have problems with extensions

Why third-party kernel extensions may have problems working in Catalina, and whether those KEXTs will become SEXTs.

eclecticlight.co

And FYI if folks do the hardware raid on 10.14.x and then move the card to 10.15 you have to get the drivers installed before your raided drives will show up properly. Other wise the OS just sees the separate disks and asks to initialize them.

 

[ldstern10]

For raid 0 set up on the 7101 on a Mac Pro 7.1 using 3 Samsung 970 Pros, what is the best config: use disk utility, use soft raid, or set up thru the 7101 using Highpoint Mac driver?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[CNDCodewarrior]

For raid 0 set up on the 7101 on a Mac Pro 7.1 using 3 Samsung 970 Pros, what is the best config: use disk utility, use soft raid, or set up thru the 7101 using Highpoint Mac driver?

Thanks for any suggestions.

It was a lot of fiddling to get the drivers to load properly. For a easy quick setup softraid or disk utility would be the way to go.