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MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

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AidenShaw

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
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The Peninsula
theatwar said:
Do I need to 'enable trim' on these drives?
Click to expand...
Definitely make sure that TRIM is enabled for the single drives.

Does SoftRAID even support TRIM on RAID-5? TRIM applies to unused space - there is no unused space on a parity RAID volume. It would be a good idea to force a TRIM (fsck or Magician) before creating the RAID volume - and then create a 5TB volume, leaving 1 TB untouched.
 
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bsbeamer

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AidenShaw said:
Does SoftRAID even support TRIM on RAID-5?
Click to expand...

It sort of does with version 5 in Mojave, assume the same for Catalina. Will note the major performance drops with RAID-5 and SoftRAID in Mojave is one of the major reasons I've 100% stopped using the product. Many suspect this is related to TRIM, but SoftRAID support blames Samsung for "poorly manufactured SSDs" as the reason why. Same drives do not report errors with SMART or DriveDx or when in hardware RAID setups.

www.softraid.com

OWC SoftRAID for Mac and Windows

The powerful software RAID utility for macOS and Windows offering max volume capacity, optimal drive performance, and data protection.
www.softraid.com www.softraid.com
 
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bsbeamer

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Speed drops from ~900MB/s+ in High Sierra to less than 100MB/s in Mojave is not normal. It's a software bug or issue with Mojave/Catalina and likely because of APFS drivers being used with this software. SoftRAID 6 was supposed to "fix" these issues and it has not been released months after announcement.
 
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theatwar

theatwar

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Dec 8, 2019
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Thanks all for your tips and advice! I really appreciate it, this forum is awesome.

It sounds like using SoftRAID to combine the drives is a bad idea for my case, especially if it slows things down and/or the software is buggy/outdated. I plan on using these drives to store large project files for AfterEffects, large Photoshop files, and also large 2K and 4K stock footage movie elements for my AE projects, so I want them as speedy as possible.

I was looking at the SoftRAID option because of I was concerned about losing data in case one of the SSDs fails, and it would be easier to manage my data on one or two large volumes rather than having a bunch of different drives. But I do back up all my files to the cloud and also to external drives on a daily basis, so perhaps there's no real need to do this.

Unless there's an alternate utility I should be looking at other than SoftRAID?

Regarding TRIM -- when I go into my "System Information" app and click on NVMExpress/Apple SSD Controller/APPLE SSD AP4096N, I see "Trim Support: Yes" in the information.

I see the same thing when I click on NVMExpress//Generic SSD Controller/Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB -- I see "Trim Support: Yes" in the information for all the SSD blades I've mounted using the Sonnet.

Does this mean I need to enable TRIM Support on my Samsung SSDs mounted on the Sonnets, or is it already enabled?
 
flowrider

flowrider

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Nov 23, 2012
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^^^^Already enabled thumbsup.gif

Lou
 
jasonmvp

jasonmvp

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moab1 said:
Will this combination work/supported? Any downsides to the Sabrent? I'm' sure the Samsung are better, but would prefer the 4TB size.
Click to expand...

The Sabrent 4TB drives are dual-sided and too thick to fit into the Sonnet. If you want to use the Sabrents you'll have to use the HighPoint card.

WRT the Sabrents, I was looking at those too. After a lot of reading, I punted. It's a "too good to be true" sort of thing. When Samsung, et al start producing 4TB NVMe drives for consumers, then reconsider. But right now, Sabrent is the only company doing it, and their quality isn't... top notch.
 
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bsbeamer

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If you “NEED” more than 2TB SSD per blade/drive, the only options are that Sabrent, U.2, SATA, or an NF1.

Samsung NF1 has 15.36TB PM983 models. I have not seen a “cheap” or even economically easy way to adapt these in a consumer/prosumer fashion. Cheapest would probably be to adapt NF1 to U.2 form factor and use U.2 bays that do not require front lock to mount.
 
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bsbeamer

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Mac_User 0101 said:
I wanted to let the forum know what I found out from Amfletec about the new Squid PCIe gen 3 carrier board for up to 6 m.2 modules (SKU-086-36). This one is using a PEX8748 (48 Lane, 12 port PCIe gen 3 [8GT/s] switch). Aside from that, I found out it's expensive... I was quoted $768.45 USD not including shipping. As an owner of the Squid gen 2 (quad m.2 carrier), I can tell you that they are well built and dependable performing cards. I forgot to ask them about the "Real-Time performance and temperature monitoring via USB connection" feature. I analyzed the photos but don't see the USB port anywhere. It must be on the board somewhere. I'm also curious about what software will be used for this monitoring and how the fans speeds are controlled. They don't really explain it in detail but I'm thinking they may have developed some software for this. I highly doubt it will be as feature rich as the Highpoint NVMe Manager webGUI, but it's a step in the right direction for Amfletec.
Click to expand...

Any experience using this with NF1's?
 
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bsbeamer

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RAID cannot he used for boot drive successfully for the majority of people and scenarios. There are ways to trick, but it’s unreliable long term.

RAID has on occasion been tied to poor write speeds in macOS after High Sierra with SSDs. This is usually sudden and unexplained. Sometimes appears to be TRIM stuck, other times appears to just be the OS not “liking” the RAID setup.

RAID and APFS might “work” but has been tied to data loss that I’ve witnessed from firsthand tests on MP5,1 and with externals connected to iMac and Mini.

RAID transferred to another machine does not work well with APFS under many scenarios. It can be salvaged but for some reason seems to perform better when setup directly. Clone data and repopulate if needing to move.

Avoid APFS if at all possible.
 
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Grumply

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My OWC 8TB Accelsior just arrived. I've installed it into Slot 2 (x16) of my 5,1 but it's topping out at about 1400MB/s Read/Write. It hits those speeds for the each of the four M.2 NVMEs individually, and remains the same even with all four striped into a RAID 0.

Is there's something I need to do, a switch I need to hit, or a setting I need to change to gets the RAID 0 speeds up closer to the 2900MB/s that was mentioned earlier?
 
haralds

haralds

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Grumply said:
My OWC 8TB Accelsior just arrived. I've installed it into Slot 2 (x16) of my 5,1 but it's topping out at about 1400MB/s Read/Write. It hits those speeds for the each of the four M.2 NVMEs individually, and remains the same even with all four striped into a RAID 0.

Is there's something I need to do, a switch I need to hit, or a setting I need to change to gets the RAID 0 speeds up closer to the 2900MB/s that was mentioned earlier?
Click to expand...
I think the PCIE 2.0 bus tops out at 1500MB/s. That's all she does.
 
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tsialex

tsialex

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Jun 13, 2016
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Grumply said:
My OWC 8TB Accelsior just arrived. I've installed it into Slot 2 (x16) of my 5,1 but it's topping out at about 1400MB/s Read/Write. It hits those speeds for the each of the four M.2 NVMEs individually, and remains the same even with all four striped into a RAID 0.

Is there's something I need to do, a switch I need to hit, or a setting I need to change to gets the RAID 0 speeds up closer to the 2900MB/s that was mentioned earlier?
Click to expand...
Post a screenshot of SystemReport/PCIExpress and a ioreg, something is wrong since the card is similar, same PCIe switch, as IOCREST/SYBA.
[automerge]1577227916[/automerge]
haralds said:
I think the PCIE 2.0 bus tops out at 1500MB/s. That's all she does.
Click to expand...
No, a 8x switched card with the ASMedia 2824 tops at around 2900MB/s.
 
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joevt

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Jun 21, 2012
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Grumply said:
My OWC 8TB Accelsior just arrived. I've installed it into Slot 2 (x16) of my 5,1 but it's topping out at about 1400MB/s Read/Write. It hits those speeds for the each of the four M.2 NVMEs individually, and remains the same even with all four striped into a RAID 0.

Is there's something I need to do, a switch I need to hit, or a setting I need to change to gets the RAID 0 speeds up closer to the 2900MB/s that was mentioned earlier?
Click to expand...
Sounds like your slot 2 is running at PCIe 1.0 speed or you inserted the card in slot 3 or 4. Do you have the new MacPro5,1 firmware that came with Mojave installer?

You can try installing pciutils then use my pcitree.sh script to check the current link width and link speed, then use the fast.sh script to try to change the speed to PCIe 2.0.
#474
#482
 
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moab1

macrumors member
Dec 12, 2019
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I just installed the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe card and 4 x 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 into my new Mac Pro 2019.
Installed into Slot 5
Configured as APFS (Case Sensitive) each drive.
Then RAID 0 all 4 drives together to create a single volume (non boot drive)
APFS (Case Senstive), 64kb chunks, GUID.

Here's my first speed test (attached).
Does this speed look correct? A single drive was about half that, but thought I'd get faster than 6300 write speeds with 4 in a RAID 0.

The Sonnet card makes a little bit of noise. nothing major, but compared to the completely silent Pro, it is evident.
Is the fan necessary given the Pro's fans? Could it be removed easily or would that not be advised?
 

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joevt

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Jun 21, 2012
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Grumply said:
Here's the system report:
Click to expand...
System Information.app is not sufficient for diagnosing PCI problems. It only lists endpoint devices (the NVMe drives for example). It does not list PCIe bridge devices (the PCIe switch that lets you connect 4 NVMe drives to a slot).

ioreg would be more useful since it lists everything. The following will list information only about PCI devices:
Code: 
ioreg -iw0 -p IODeviceTree -c IOPCIDevice > ioregdevIOPCIDevice.txt
 
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Grumply

macrumors 6502
Feb 24, 2017
285
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Melbourne, Australia
joevt said:
System Information.app is not sufficient for diagnosing PCI problems. It only lists endpoint devices (the NVMe drives for example). It does not list PCIe bridge devices (the PCIe switch that lets you connect 4 NVMe drives to a slot).

ioreg would be more useful since it lists everything. The following will list information only about PCI devices:
Click to expand...

Thanks. If I PM you the text file, is the status of the PCI ports something you can check without wasting too much of your time? (it's beyond my powers of comprehension)
 
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