Quad mSata PCIe cards, bootable, RAIDable in cMP?

[ZombiePhysicist]

Has anyone successfully used any quad mSATA PCI cards to boot a classic Mac Pro? I'd love to be able to take 4 1TB mSATA cards, slap them in one of the PCI cards to make a single bootable 4TB SSD drive. Has anyone done this?

This thread seems to say that some of these quad mSATA cards work, but it's not clear if it's bootable, much less capable of acting as a single drive:

I bought the Quad mSata adapter from Addonics. Happy to report you can both BOTH OSX and bootcamp (I have Windows 7 and 8) drives without any issues. I am currently using 2 mSatas in JBOD mode - 1 running Windows 8 boot drive and another one as a video scratch disk for Final Cut. Planning to get another mSata and run the pair in RAID0. From what I have been told, the max speed you can get is close to 700MBs due the card being only a PCI-E 2X.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/19144310/
http://www.addonics.com/products/ad4mspx2.php

There also seems to be a Lycom mSATA Quad SSD card:

I'm impressed with Lycom mSATA Quad SSD card. TRIM supported OOTB (I had it enabled for Plextor), speed is pretty decent

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/19212753/
http://www.lycom.com.tw/PE-125.htm

Looks like samsung makes 1tb mSATA SSDs that should fit the bill, but do not want to buy the card and 4 of the mSATAs without knowing if it will work.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...UTF8&qid=1422160165&sr=1-2&keywords=1tb+msata

I also found this card, that seems to work with classic Mac Pros, but its not clear if its bootable, or if you can make a single RAID 0 bootable drive out of it.
http://www.amazon.com/Syba-mSATA-Marvell-Chipset-Shared/dp/B00KKO6N98#customerReviews

Thanks for any help!

 

[ShawnF]

Has anyone successfully used any quad mSATA PCI cards to boot a classic Mac Pro? I'd love to be able to take 4 1TB mSATA cards, slap them in one of the PCI cards to make a single bootable 4TB SSD drive. Has anyone done this?

This thread seems to say that some of these quad mSATA cards work, but it's not clear if it's bootable, much less capable of acting as a single drive:


https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/19144310/
http://www.addonics.com/products/ad4mspx2.php

There also seems to be a Lycom mSATA Quad SSD card:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/19212753/
http://www.lycom.com.tw/PE-125.htm

Looks like samsung makes 1tb mSATA SSDs that should fit the bill, but do not want to buy the card and 4 of the mSATAs without knowing if it will work.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...UTF8&qid=1422160165&sr=1-2&keywords=1tb+msata

I also found this card, that seems to work with classic Mac Pros, but its not clear if its bootable, or if you can make a single RAID 0 bootable drive out of it.
http://www.amazon.com/Syba-mSATA-Marvell-Chipset-Shared/dp/B00KKO6N98#customerReviews

Thanks for any help!

I am using the Addonics Quad mSata. Got 2x256GB Crucial mSata running in RAID 0 alongside a 1x512GB Crucial mSata bootable Mavericks drive. No issues for the last 6 months.

Both drives will appear as external ejectable drives under OSX but otherwise I am getting good read/write speeds.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I am using the Addonics Quad mSata. Got 2x256GB Crucial mSata running in RAID 0 alongside a 1x512GB Crucial mSata bootable Mavericks drive. No issues for the last 6 months.

Both drives will appear as external ejectable drives under OSX but otherwise I am getting good read/write speeds.

Thanks Shawn, and the 2x256 raid0 drive, is it bootable in OS X? Id like to put 4x1TB drives in raid0 and boot it as a 4tb SSD in OS X.

Thanks!

 

[ShawnF]

Thanks Shawn, and the 2x256 raid0 drive, is it bootable in OS X? Id like to put 4x1TB drives in raid0 and boot it as a 4tb SSD in OS X.

Thanks!

Never tried using the RAID0 drives for boot purposes. I use it for FCPX scratch disk. That said, I don't see why it will not be able to boot OSX.

I used the Marvell Storage Utility to create the RAiD0 while in Windows Bootcamp. Then I booted into OSX which recognises the drives as empty and requires initialisation and formatting into HFS. I could then use the drive and get around 700MB+ read/write using the BlackMagic Disktester.

You don't get TRIM support in RAID (I think) though but wasn't an issue for me since the drive is only active when I use FCPX so Garbage Collection has ample time to work. Might be another matter if you are using it as a boot drive.

 

[mstasko]

Never tried using the RAID0 drives for boot purposes. I use it for FCPX scratch disk. That said, I don't see why it will not be able to boot OSX.

I used the Marvell Storage Utility to create the RAiD0 while in Windows Bootcamp. Then I booted into OSX which recognises the drives as empty and requires initialisation and formatting into HFS. I could then use the drive and get around 700MB+ read/write using the BlackMagic Disktester.

You don't get TRIM support in RAID (I think) though but wasn't an issue for me since the drive is only active when I use FCPX so Garbage Collection has ample time to work. Might be another matter if you are using it as a boot drive.

Just wondering ShawnF what your boot times are with this type of RAID setup..? I bought the same card with two Crucial 256GB drives and built a RAID0 via Disk Utility. Blackmagic speeds are roughly 700MBs R/W but my boot performance is horrible, 2~3mins.. Addonics support suggested that I should build my Raid via the utility that they provided but I am not 100% sure that is the issue so before I junk my Raid and start over I thought I would reach out to see what you your numbers are... I have a cMP 4.1 that was updated to 5.1 with a pair of x5677 and 24GB of memory. Thanks! Mike

 

[ShawnF]

Just wondering ShawnF what your boot times are with this type of RAID setup..? I bought the same card with two Crucial 256GB drives and built a RAID0 via Disk Utility. Blackmagic speeds are roughly 700MBs R/W but my boot performance is horrible, 2~3mins.. Addonics support suggested that I should build my Raid via the utility that they provided but I am not 100% sure that is the issue so before I junk my Raid and start over I thought I would reach out to see what you your numbers are... I have a cMP 4.1 that was updated to 5.1 with a pair of x5677 and 24GB of memory. Thanks! Mike

I run my Windows 7 Bootcamp and OSX Mavericks drives separate in single non-RAID setup. Windows boots about 1minute. OSX under 30 seconds from a cold boot. I use remaining slots to connect 2x256GB Crucial SSD in RAID 0 that I run as a scratch disk for video editing.

Hope that helps!

 

[Thomaspin]

No issues with 4 x 256GB Crucial mSATA SSDs - JBOD, 2 RAID0 pairs or 4 in one RAID0 - in an Addonics. 700mb/s in RAID0. Lots of data here:http://pindelski.org/Photography/2015/05/26/using-msata-drives-in-the-mac-pro-part-xxvii/. I boot from mine all the time.

With 64GB (8 x 8GB) of RAM there's a 20 second wait to the chime on cold start, 10 seconds thereafter to the login screen. I do not use Windows so while Adonnics says their card works with Windows, I do not know if it's bootable.

 

[mstasko]

Thanks for the feedback... I solved the issue..
Went ahead and cleared the SMC & pram and low and behold my boots are now 20-25 secs...
Turns out the second time is the charm. I had zapped it already once but decided to try it a 2nd time and my boots time are consistently "quick" now.

Thanks again!

 

[666sheep]

You don't get TRIM support in RAID (I think) though

Just a side note: TRIM is active on RAID member disks, not on a logical volume, because it's tied to hardware.

 

[JD575]

Just a side note: TRIM is active on RAID member disks, not on a logical volume, because it's tied to hardware.

Thanks 666! I was wondering about the Trim functionality. I assume you just enabled it in the terminal? Are you using RAID 0? I cannot see individual disks and I am using RAID 0.

Just to confirm the original poster's question, mine is bootable and in RAID 0. I am using 3 840 EVOs 120gb. I have not checked the speed.

 

[mstasko]

Anyone monitoring their SSDs with a SMART monitoring program?

This morning I dl one to check the condition of an old harddrive in the system and it reported a failure warning on the RAID0 setup mentioned above (2 Crucial SSDs). The software is complaining about - Reallocation Event Count, value of 16 is based on 14 hrs. of use. I have not dug into the error too much yet, my assumption is that it is fine, but I thought I'd throw it out to see if others are seeing the same thing with this setup. The software that I used is SMART Utility.

 

[666sheep]

Thanks 666! I was wondering about the Trim functionality. I assume you just enabled it in the terminal? Are you using RAID 0? I cannot see individual disks and I am using RAID 0.

Yes, software RAID precisely. I assume you're using pseudo-hardware one from the card. On your setup TRIM won't work.

 

[JD575]

Yes, software RAID precisely. I assume you're using pseudo-hardware one from the card. On your setup TRIM won't work.

Yes I am using hardware setup. I did run it and it said that it was successful. But no way of checking?