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Korican100

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 9, 2012
1,216
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I have a 2008 Mac Pro. On the Mobo there are two ODD sata ports, that I ran a striped pair of SSD's as my boot drive in the optical bay.

Welp, I just got my hands on a 2009 and noticed there are two ODD sata ports, but they already had cables in them. I take it one of these sata ports are being used for the DVD drive, and the other for the second optical bay.

This confuses me, because on my 2008 the DVD drive ran off of ATA cable/molex power - And in addition had the two ODD sata ports.

So does that mean I lose a sata port on my 2009 due to no more ATA?

Does anyone have a solution for my striped pair of SSD's? I dont want to run them in my main bays.
 
Get a PCIe card for your SSDs, you will gain SATA III speeds if your SSDs are capable of that. There are a variety of PCIe cards available in dual drive, single drive with second drive extension, and single drive capability. There are several threads here on MacRumors with detailed discussions on this that you can search for.

I use a Sonnet Tempo Pro with a pair of 512GB SSDs in RAID-0 as my OS X boot drive.
 
Get a PCIe card for your SSDs, you will gain SATA III speeds if your SSDs are capable of that. There are a variety of PCIe cards available in dual drive, single drive with second drive extension, and single drive capability. There are several threads here on MacRumors with detailed discussions on this that you can search for.

Yes I already have a velocity x2, but I use that as a scratch disk for my videoediting.

I had the striped ssd's as my boot, and ran them in my optical bay. But I still want the DVD drive to work. This sucks that going from 2008 to 2009 you essentially lose one sata port, or the use of your dvd drive
 
Yes I already have a velocity x2, but I use that as a scratch disk for my videoediting.

I had the striped ssd's as my boot, and ran them in my optical bay. But I still want the DVD drive to work. This sucks that going from 2008 to 2009 you essentially lose one sata port, or the use of your dvd drive

If you have a spare PCIe slot, you can have more than 1 card in there. I have the Sonnet Tempo Pro for OS X and a Solo x2 card for Windows in my 5,1.

You can also run the second SATA port from your x2 up into the optical bay as you did with the 2008. Put that SATA cable on the DVD drive (I know, overkill for SATA III), then use the matched pair of SATA II cables already in the optical bay for your RAID-0 SSD. It will be SATA II, but your 2008 was as well (and you may have only purchased 3G SSDs for that anyway).
 
If you have a spare PCIe slot, you can have more than 1 card in there. I have the Sonnet Tempo Pro for OS X and a Solo x2 card for Windows in my 5,1.

You can also run the second SATA port from your x2 up into the optical bay as you did with the 2008. Put that SATA cable on the DVD drive (I know, overkill for SATA III), then use the matched pair of SATA II cables already in the optical bay for your RAID-0 SSD. It will be SATA II, but your 2008 was as well (and you may have only purchased 3G SSDs for that anyway).

Ah I see what you are saying.

What if I get another Velocity x2 pcie card, and throw one of the SSD's (from the striped pair) on the card, and then connect the other SSD to the extra sata port on the card, running the power from one of the open bays to the additional card? That should work right? (The ssd's are actualy 6g!)
 
Ah I see what you are saying.

What if I get another Velocity x2 pcie card, and throw one of the SSD's (from the striped pair) on the card, and then connect the other SSD to the extra sata port on the card, running the power from one of the open bays to the additional card? That should work right? (The ssd's are actualy 6g!)

That will work, however you will get better performance by having your RAID-0 using both cards for better bandwidth (the x2 only has one controller for both channels, so doing RAID-0 on one card is slightly slower than using 2 cards.)

I would put my RAID-0 SSDs on the 2 Solo x2 cards, then put my scratch disk in the optical bay on the second port extension. You will still have a spare SATA interface for the future if needed, or route that outside as a eSATA port on the back of your MacPro.
 
That will work, however you will get better performance by having your RAID-0 using both cards for better bandwidth (the x2 only has one controller for both channels, so doing RAID-0 on one card is slightly slower than using 2 cards.)

I would put my RAID-0 SSDs on the 2 Solo x2 cards, then put my scratch disk in the optical bay on the second port extension. You will still have a spare SATA interface for the future if needed, or route that outside as a eSATA port on the back of your MacPro.

I guess I am confused again. The Velocity x2 says it can handle two SSD Sata III drives up to 800/800 MBs. So wouldn't it be easy as just throwing my striped pair on it to get those speeds?

Also, if I put my striped disk on the ODD sata port, I will be back down to 3g speeds.

(thanks for helping me with this BTW)
 
I guess I am confused again. The Velocity x2 says it can handle two SSD Sata III drives up to 800/800 MBs. So wouldn't it be easy as just throwing my striped pair on it to get those speeds?

Also, if I put my striped disk on the ODD sata port, I will be back down to 3g speeds.

(thanks for helping me with this BTW)

There is a thread here somewhere ("Solo x2 available ... ") where a user posted his results using RAID-0 on a single Solo x2 card vs. using a pair of Solo x2 cards. As I recall, his results were that the RAID0 on a single card using both ports was about 1.6x the single SSD speed on that card, and RAID0 on 2 separate cards was about 2x the single SSD speed. This was attributed having dual SATA controllers and some speed advantage to using 2 separate bus/PCI lane slots.

Your sig shows SATA II 3G SSDs, I take it that you have upgraded them to faster parts since you wrote that? I initially saw that and made the suggestion to use the ports already in the optical bay as that would be exactly how your 2008 was configured. If you have faster SSDs, by all means try to get them on a SATA III PCIe interface to take advantage of them. :)

If you are going to add another Solo x2 card to your system, the best overall speed with SATA III SSDs will be to put the RAID-0 SSDs mounted on the cards, and run your "scratch" SSD from one of the second ports on that card, mounting the drive up in the optical bay where you will also get the power for it (power for the second port is not available from the card itself).

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/15526142/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1418445/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1597968/

-howard
 
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If your not using the sata hookups in the ODD bay,

Disconnect the unused cable at the front of the 09 Mac pro motherboard
Attach a sata extension cable to it and hook the other end into your controller.

This enables you to use the existing sata / power combo cable in the ODD bay for a sata 3 ssd without having to make a huge mess.

im currently routing the extension cable under the PCIe fan witgout issue for over a year and countung b
 
If your not using the sata hookups in the ODD bay,

Disconnect the unused cable at the front of the 09 Mac pro motherboard
Attach a sata extension cable to it and hook the other end into your controller.

This enables you to use the existing sata / power combo cable in the ODD bay for a sata 3 ssd without having to make a huge mess.

im currently routing the extension cable under the PCIe fan witgout issue for over a year and countung b

Ha ... good idea, thanks for posting that! That would clean up the otherwise difficult cable routing up to the optical bay.
 
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