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Question About MAc Pro FAAAAST External SSD as Boot drive

C

Custommm

macrumors member
Original poster
May 31, 2009
91
0
Wondering if this setup could archive near 500 Mbytes/s transfert rate...
For System Boot disk

A 120GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD connected to a
CalDigit FASTA-2e 6G eSATA cards Controller Card plugged into a Mac Pro 3.33 (all hooked up using proper 'cableage' to fully support SATA III throughput, of course)?
This is outside of any enclosure which could limit throughput, using just the SATA III cable and an IDE/SATA power adapter from USBGeek.

thanks ...


http://www.caldigit.com/FASTA-2e/
 
The card isn't bootable, so no it wouldn't work. You can however purchase a bootable RAID controller and hook it up via an external SAS/SATA enclosure.
 
Thnaks for the reply....
but their site seem to say that it is bootable:
"The FASTA-2e supports many popular technologies including, S.M.A.R.T., port multiplication, booting and support for green and high performance SATA drives. It is also fully compatible with SATA I, SATA II and SATA III drives"

Also i ask CalDigit directly....
here the conversation:

ME: "Can i Boot from My OWC SSD 6G connected on your FASTA-2e 6G eSATA cards? (Bare ,hanging drive or in pass-through external enclosure)"

Their Answer: "1. Yes, but please make sure the 'box' has the straight pass-through protocol. Also Make sure you are running the latest OSX 10.7 or above (boot option not supported under 10.6)"

----
 
Well if they say it's bootable it should work then.

I run Snow Leopard, so that probably explains my experience.
 
just out of curiosity, why do you want high throughput on your boot disk? You could use a "normal" ssd with SATA2 as a boot drive and use any of the sata3-cards to use the super fast drive as a swap/work drive. This enables you to use cards which aren't bootable.

edit: link to how you make your internal drives SATA3, but not bootable.. but you'll be able to use the normal sleds at least.

http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgrade-your-06-08-mac-pro’s-internal-bays-to-sata-3-0

// DL
 
My real concern is in fact the Real throughput of a setup like the one a want to make...
Not relying on multi ssd raid 0 array...Just one fast drive and a eSata 3 pci card....Should i get near 500 mb/s ?
 
Very interesting idea....
Wonder why they don't include Mac Pro 5.1 2010 on the title (They state 2006-2008)
Need more bootable drive from the "sled"area (2 Lion drive) (1 snow leopard)
but very interesting idea nonetheless!
Forum are just awesome!:)

Boomhowler said:
just out of curiosity, why do you want high throughput on your boot disk? You could use a "normal" ssd with SATA2 as a boot drive and use any of the sata3-cards to use the super fast drive as a swap/work drive. This enables you to use cards which aren't bootable.

edit: link to how you make your internal drives SATA3, but not bootable.. but you'll be able to use the normal sleds at least.

http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgrade-your-06-08-mac-pro’s-internal-bays-to-sata-3-0

// DL
Click to expand...
 
I will try to ask OWC about this card... Thunderbolt seem more and more a "avoidable" upgrade (if ever coming to the mac pro line)
For my need anyways....
 
I have yet to run across an external eSATA enclosure that runs at SATA III speeds - they all seem to only support SATA II regardless of the host controller or drive. Also, some eSATA PCIe cards will not negotiate properly with SATA III devices - dropping back to SATA I.

I think a SAS solution might be your only way to get there presently.
 
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