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MP09: How to make a bootable 6 HDD + SSD rig - lowcost with Highpoint 620
- Thread starter seisend
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Looks like you'll either have to live with it (keep the equipment and configuration as-is), or swap out the Highpoint for another card (and must presume you'll lose the ability to boot from it).
Given the HPT is booting the SSD, I'd leave it alone and deal with it. The performance isn't what the drive is capable of, but it's not stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits either.
Looks like you'll either have to live with it (keep the equipment and configuration as-is), or swap out the Highpoint for another card (and must presume you'll lose the ability to boot from it).
Given the HPT is booting the SSD, I'd leave it alone and deal with it. The performance isn't what the drive is capable of, but it's not stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits either.
hehehehe.
Well. I bought this card mainly for having additional drives in my mac pro. I think this it is the cheapest method out there and also the cleanest (like in the video I posted).. !
I just thought before I went for the HP620, it would be nice to use this setup with SATA III boot. Well, my vertex 3 might be overpower. But just for booting and starting apps; I think 380MB's read is OK.
I think I can live with this pretty well
I hope this thread can help others. We know it should work on the MP4.1. But what about the others?
I wonder if you're not getting the SATA 3 speeds because you had to connect two SATA cables together to reach your SSD? The original blue SATA cable wasn't long enough in the video you made so you had to use extension cables to reach the opti bay. Could that cause a decrease in speed? I'd disconnect the extra cable and only use one to the SSD and see if it makes a difference.
hehehehe.
Well. I bought this card mainly for having additional drives in my mac pro. I think this it is the cheapest method out there and also the cleanest (like in the video I posted).. !
I just thought before I went for the HP620, it would be nice to use this setup with SATA III boot. Well, my vertex 3 might be overpower. But just for booting and starting apps; I think 380MB's read is OK.
I think I can live with this pretty well
Hello Seisend and everybody. I have been directed to this thred by Nanofrog, read it in full and enjoyed your quest a lot. Thank you for making a video as well. I'm in the exactly same situation as you were, I need more space inside my 2009 2.26 8core Mac Pro. Intel SSD containing OS is in the 1st hd bay, 2-4 bays are 3 3TB Hitachi 7200 drives in Raid-0. I desperately need 6TB more space inside, so I decided to install 2 more 3tb drives in the lower optical bay and would like to keep my DVD in the upper. So, following nano's advice, I bought the same HP620 card, Sata Y-splitter for the power and OWC mount for two 3.5 hdds. While installing, I've faced same problems as you did. The screw in the optical compartment didn't allow me to insert both hdds+optical, but you've covered it in your video and now I can do it too(thanks for the tip
Another problem is routing Sata cables from the HP card to the lower optical. Would you mind sharing how you did it in a step-by-step fashion. I would REALLY appreciate it!!!hehehehe.
Well. I bought this card mainly for having additional drives in my mac pro. I think this it is the cheapest method out there and also the cleanest (like in the video I posted).. !
I just thought before I went for the HP620, it would be nice to use this setup with SATA III boot. Well, my vertex 3 might be overpower. But just for booting and starting apps; I think 380MB's read is OK.
I think I can live with this pretty well
According to your video, some of the sata data/power cables are too large to connect to the mac pro's sata port inside the optical bays. What is the right sata cable/adapter measurements for the Mac Pro? Thanks
Sorry for my late reply.
@ shelant:
Thank you, I'm glad you could find a use of this topic and my video.
below the DVD Bay aside the HDD Bay1 there is a little tiny gap where you'll be able to put the two SATA cables through. I did one at a time and used a pincette for help. It can be quite a pain maybe for some with big hands
About the SATA cables. You need SATA data and power cables with no margins. They have to be very slim, otherwise you have to cut the plastic margins off, this is how I did it. It's not very elegant. But if you do it carefully, it works.
@ shelant:
Thank you, I'm glad you could find a use of this topic and my video.
below the DVD Bay aside the HDD Bay1 there is a little tiny gap where you'll be able to put the two SATA cables through. I did one at a time and used a pincette for help. It can be quite a pain maybe for some with big hands
About the SATA cables. You need SATA data and power cables with no margins. They have to be very slim, otherwise you have to cut the plastic margins off, this is how I did it. It's not very elegant. But if you do it carefully, it works.
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Sorry for my late reply.
@ shelant:
Thank you, I'm glad you could find a use of this topic and my video.
below the DVD Bay aside the HDD Bay1 there is a little tiny gap where you'll be able to put the two SATA cables through. I did one at a time and used a pincette for help. It can be quite a pain maybe for some with big hands
About the SATA cables. You need SATA data and power cables with no margins. They have to be very slim, otherwise you have to cut the plastic margins off, this is how I did it. It's not very elegant. But if you do it carefully, it works.
This is also what I did with my 4 Sriped SSD volume. I have a 4 bay enclosure in the lower optical bay. I had to run the cables in the exact spot to get them up there. It is definitely a pain but can be done, I got four of them up there. What helps is to do one at a time, and have someone pull the factory installed cable (sata+power cable already in optical bays) taut so it does not get in the way.
Thanks so much for the help. It was a huge pain for me (my fingers are a bit large), but I managed to do it!!! Thanks again for all of your help. Seisend, your pictures and a video were extremely helpful.
My next project would be to remove the optical from the case and install 3.5+2.5 ssd in the upper optical. I would like to reach total of 21tb+ssd for OS & apps.
My next project would be to remove the optical from the case and install 3.5+2.5 ssd in the upper optical. I would like to reach total of 21tb+ssd for OS & apps.
So... I've had some time to work on my rig and now I am a happy owner of 21TB total disk space inside my mac pro. not counting the ssd with the OS (I tried Lion and didn't like it at all, so staying with SL for now). What I did is, I removed the optical and installed it inside of this eSata external enclosure:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0014BJISO
Then, I used a couple of OWC brackets to install 2 3.5 hdds in the lower and 1 3.5 plus 1 2.5 ssd in the upper optical bays. I have connected all the cables the same way OP did. My backup strategy is, the main 12TB Raid-0 gets cloned onto this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004323D96
BTW, this Raid box is working perfectly well with 3TB drives and the speeds thru the eSata connection are around 170 Mb/s write (I have it set up as Raid-5)
The other 9 TB gets cloned on this:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Mercury-EliteAL-Pro-RAID
Plus, the 2nd Gen Drobo is my time machine box.
I feel that I'm covered disk-space-wise... For now...
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congratulations on your success managing your harddrives.
21 TB is a huge number
I'm using 4TB Storage, 3TB Raid 0 Scratch Disk and 640GB Win7 internal and 5TB Lacie Backup external. For me, it fits my needs for now
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@SEISEND:
Are you sure your Rocket 620 is actually the Rocket 620? Just wondering, because I bought the same card (after reading your instructions) and put it in my Mac Pro 4,1 (early 2009). Well what can I say... it does not boot. OS X Lion here.
My card reports the 9125 chipset instead of the 9123 everybody was talking about. So maybe HP have replaced the chipset during productions cycle and that's why it no longer boots.
I also have the Rocket 622 (which actually reports 9123) and it can boot, but it is eSATA.
Any thoughts?
Are you sure your Rocket 620 is actually the Rocket 620? Just wondering, because I bought the same card (after reading your instructions) and put it in my Mac Pro 4,1 (early 2009). Well what can I say... it does not boot. OS X Lion here.
My card reports the 9125 chipset instead of the 9123 everybody was talking about. So maybe HP have replaced the chipset during productions cycle and that's why it no longer boots.
I also have the Rocket 622 (which actually reports 9123) and it can boot, but it is eSATA.
Any thoughts?
on my package it says Rocket 620A Dual Port SATA .
Where do you see the chipset Info except on the device itself? I don't see it on the package. Cheers, seisend
You can see it in System Profiler if you go to the PCI Cards section. Could you check what your's is reporting?
Thanks!
Yes I have the 9123 Chipset. I was looking before too, but didn't check the name itself, lol. hmm. Maybe you could try it with SL?
Well that explains it I guess. My Rocket 620A reports 9125 chipset. I will try to find another one that has the 9123 chipset.
Bummer. That seemed about the only possible (internal) solution to boot off of a SATA3 SSD without paying huge money. I hope I can find a 9123 based Rocket620.
Thanks for checking!
Yes, pretty annoying to hear that the 9125 chipset doesn't work, that would change a lot for future upgraders... Wish you good luck finding it. The only other thing i could think of is that it doesn't work with LION maybe.
Highpoint RocketRaid 620-OEM + OWC 128GB SSD on MacPro 2007
Won't boot SSD from the Highpoint RocketRaid 620-OEM.
SSD as a "removable disk" off the RR620 IS POOR: abysmally slow and unstable.
Got RR 620 from newegg for $10 and an OWC 128GB SSD, and a good SATA 6GB/s cable.
SSD does boot if I plug it straight into the hard drive sled built-into the MacPro. Of course the SSD is incredibly fast but was hoping to reach full rates using the PCI card.
The OWC SSD 128GB speed:
200MB/s, 260 MB/s write vs read
Hitachi 7200 RPM Deskstar
56MB/s, 55MB/s write vs read
SSD actually does work off the RocketRaid 620 insofar as the Mac boots another one of my hard drives, after failing to boot off the SSD, and the SSD shows up as a removable disk. However, the drive is incredibly unstable and slow. The speed test shows slow write times and it cannot do a read test (see second pic).
PCI card does show up as a SATA PCI card but is mostly unknown. Tried the driver "HPT-Quad-eSATA-mac-v100-100120.dmg" but that does absolutely nothing for bootability.
SSD off the motherboard SATA is great, I run two windows machines on Parallels 7.0 and it's way faster compared to off the hard drives now. It'd be nice to squeeze an extra 10 or 20% speed off the SSD using the 6GB/s SATA PCI card but I'm not sure it'll make a difference since my old MP uses 667 GHz DDR2 RAM so perhaps my bus speed may limit speed improvements anyhow..
Pic 1: RocketRaid 620-OEM from newegg
Pic 2: Speed of RocketRaid 620 connected to the SSD (OWC 128GB)
Pic 3: Speed of SSD (OWC 128GB) connected to MacPro SATA in hard drive bay.
Pic 4: Speed of Hitachi 7200 RPM hard drive
MacPro2007 8-core 3.0GHz, 13GB RAM, 2x NVIDIA 7300GT video, 3 hard drives 7200rpm, 1 SSD, 3x 23" LCD, OS X Snow Leopard.
Won't boot SSD from the Highpoint RocketRaid 620-OEM.
SSD as a "removable disk" off the RR620 IS POOR: abysmally slow and unstable.
Got RR 620 from newegg for $10 and an OWC 128GB SSD, and a good SATA 6GB/s cable.
SSD does boot if I plug it straight into the hard drive sled built-into the MacPro. Of course the SSD is incredibly fast but was hoping to reach full rates using the PCI card.
The OWC SSD 128GB speed:
200MB/s, 260 MB/s write vs read
Hitachi 7200 RPM Deskstar
56MB/s, 55MB/s write vs read
SSD actually does work off the RocketRaid 620 insofar as the Mac boots another one of my hard drives, after failing to boot off the SSD, and the SSD shows up as a removable disk. However, the drive is incredibly unstable and slow. The speed test shows slow write times and it cannot do a read test (see second pic).
PCI card does show up as a SATA PCI card but is mostly unknown. Tried the driver "HPT-Quad-eSATA-mac-v100-100120.dmg" but that does absolutely nothing for bootability.
SSD off the motherboard SATA is great, I run two windows machines on Parallels 7.0 and it's way faster compared to off the hard drives now. It'd be nice to squeeze an extra 10 or 20% speed off the SSD using the 6GB/s SATA PCI card but I'm not sure it'll make a difference since my old MP uses 667 GHz DDR2 RAM so perhaps my bus speed may limit speed improvements anyhow..
Pic 1: RocketRaid 620-OEM from newegg
Pic 2: Speed of RocketRaid 620 connected to the SSD (OWC 128GB)
Pic 3: Speed of SSD (OWC 128GB) connected to MacPro SATA in hard drive bay.
Pic 4: Speed of Hitachi 7200 RPM hard drive
MacPro2007 8-core 3.0GHz, 13GB RAM, 2x NVIDIA 7300GT video, 3 hard drives 7200rpm, 1 SSD, 3x 23" LCD, OS X Snow Leopard.
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Hi all,
since there were mixed results with the Highpoint Rocket 620/622, with some people getting them to boot and others not (I couldn't boot and explained why in this thread), my search for a card continued and I was finally able to find one that works.
It's based on ASMedia chipset. It's very fast too (faster than the Highpoint). Details can be found in this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1280517/
Hope this helps.
Cheers
since there were mixed results with the Highpoint Rocket 620/622, with some people getting them to boot and others not (I couldn't boot and explained why in this thread), my search for a card continued and I was finally able to find one that works.
It's based on ASMedia chipset. It's very fast too (faster than the Highpoint). Details can be found in this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1280517/
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Thanks for your post. I'm going to look into it and also update this thread.
-seisend
Cheap 6Gbps 2port internal PCIe controller
FYI - i bought this cheap 2 port internal to use in my Mac Pro while my Areca Card was getting repair. It boots OSX 10.6 & 7 in ACHI mode with out any issue.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0046XSBBC/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details
--------------
This is best i could do with 2 Vertex 3 in RAID 0 on Mac Pro using Areca 1880ix controller. Same controller on P67 Sandy Bridge I avg 3 x times faster.
FYI - i bought this cheap 2 port internal to use in my Mac Pro while my Areca Card was getting repair. It boots OSX 10.6 & 7 in ACHI mode with out any issue.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0046XSBBC/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details
--------------
This is best i could do with 2 Vertex 3 in RAID 0 on Mac Pro using Areca 1880ix controller. Same controller on P67 Sandy Bridge I avg 3 x times faster.
Code:
[SIZE="1"]disktester fill-volume --num-files 9999 --fill 01 X
foundOption: --num-files 9999
foundOption: --fill 01
Volume: X
Num files: 9999
Space to fill: 240.4GB
File size: 24MB
Transfer size: 4096KB
Fill with: "0x5555555555555555"
Free space to remain: 1.45GB = 0.60%
Verify: true
Creating 9999 files of size 24MB on volume "X"
9999 files of size 24MB created in /Volumes/X/disktester-blobs
Total data written: 234.4GB
Slowest write speed: 462MB/sec
Average write speed: 829MB/sec
Fastest write speed: 1927MB/sec
Average write time per file: 28.95 milliseconds
Results in MB/sec for fill-volume write cycle on X
File# MB/sec -- fill-volume write cycle on X
End listing for fill-volume write cycle on X
Scanning "/Volumes/X/disktester-blobs"...[5000]9999
9999 files in 11 folders.
---------------------------------- Iteration 1 ---------------------------------
Verify: true
Reading 9999 files totaling 234.4GB...
# Files Amt Read Speed
170 4GB 819MB/sec
343 8.05GB 825MB/sec
519 12.2GB 830MB/sec
695 16.3GB 833MB/sec
871 20.4GB 835MB/sec
1044 24.5GB 834MB/sec
1217 28.5GB 834MB/sec
1390 32.6GB 833MB/sec
1563 36.6GB 833MB/sec
1736 40.7GB 832MB/sec
1907 44.7GB 831MB/sec
2079 48.7GB 831MB/sec
2252 52.8GB 831MB/sec
2425 56.8GB 831MB/sec
2599 60.9GB 831MB/sec
2775 65.1GB 832MB/sec
2948 69.1GB 832MB/sec
3121 73.2GB 832MB/sec
3296 77.3GB 832MB/sec
3471 81.4GB 832MB/sec
3643 85.4GB 832MB/sec
3816 89.5GB 832MB/sec
3990 93.5GB 832MB/sec
4152 97.3GB 829MB/sec
4320 101.3GB 829MB/sec
4492 105.3GB 828MB/sec
4664 109.3GB 828MB/sec
4838 113.4GB 828MB/sec
5010 117.4GB 828MB/sec
5179 121.4GB 828MB/sec
5347 125.3GB 827MB/sec
5517 129.3GB 827MB/sec
5687 133.3GB 826MB/sec
5861 137.4GB 827MB/sec
6036 141.5GB 827MB/sec
6207 145.5GB 827MB/sec
6376 149.5GB 826MB/sec
6545 153.4GB 826MB/sec
6715 157.4GB 826MB/sec
6884 161.4GB 825MB/sec
7053 165.3GB 825MB/sec
7226 169.4GB 825MB/sec
7400 173.5GB 825MB/sec
7575 177.5GB 825MB/sec
7748 181.6GB 826MB/sec
7918 185.6GB 825MB/sec
8090 189.6GB 825MB/sec
8257 193.5GB 825MB/sec
8429 197.6GB 825MB/sec
8601 201.6GB 825MB/sec
8775 205.7GB 825MB/sec
8951 209.8GB 825MB/sec
9125 213.9GB 826MB/sec
9293 217.8GB 825MB/sec
9463 221.8GB 825MB/sec
9633 225.8GB 825MB/sec
9803 229.8GB 825MB/sec
9976 233.8GB 825MB/sec
9999 234.4GB 825MB/sec
Data forks read: 9999
Resource forks read: 0
Total files read: 9999
done.
Read 9999 files totaling 234.4GB in 291.0 seconds @ 825MB/sec
No verification failures
Results in MB/sec for fill-volume on X
File# Write Read
End listing for fill-volume on X
Command "fill-volume" executed in 580.66 seconds[/SIZE]
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I found a workaround!
I was on my last ditch effort, and was prepared to order another controller, but found a method that worked in my scenario. You need a desktop PC with a PCIe (or boot camp).
Put the RocketRaid 620 into the PC.
1) Download the software package for the RR622 controller.
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/BIOS_Driver/rr62x/BIOS/rr622-bios-v1.1-1...
2) Update the BIOS on the RocketRAID 620 controller to convert it to a RocketRAID 622 controller.
3) Boot to MS-DOS prompt and run the LOAD.exe utility use the option
Load /f "BIOS version"
4) The command will change the RR6220 into a RR622
5) Shutdown and reinsert into Mac Pro, it will now be detected as a RR622 which you can load the drivers for OS X and it will work.
6) There is a web GUI for the RR622 which uses a browser http://localhost:7402 or https://localhost:7402
with default user name: RAID and password: hpt
Let me know if this helps?
I was on my last ditch effort, and was prepared to order another controller, but found a method that worked in my scenario. You need a desktop PC with a PCIe (or boot camp).
Put the RocketRaid 620 into the PC.
1) Download the software package for the RR622 controller.
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/BIOS_Driver/rr62x/BIOS/rr622-bios-v1.1-1...
2) Update the BIOS on the RocketRAID 620 controller to convert it to a RocketRAID 622 controller.
3) Boot to MS-DOS prompt and run the LOAD.exe utility use the option
Load /f "BIOS version"
4) The command will change the RR6220 into a RR622
5) Shutdown and reinsert into Mac Pro, it will now be detected as a RR622 which you can load the drivers for OS X and it will work.
6) There is a web GUI for the RR622 which uses a browser http://localhost:7402 or https://localhost:7402
with default user name: RAID and password: hpt
Let me know if this helps?