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I just bought a OCZ Vertex 4 and am seeing 280MB/sec read/write. Can anyone comment on how much more performance I would expect to see with SATA III. Trying to figure out which SATA card to get for my 2009 Mac Pro is giving me headaches. I want both USB3 and SATA III but I guess I am asking for too much in trying to get these for less than $150.
 
I just bought a OCZ Vertex 4 and am seeing 280MB/sec read/write. Can anyone comment on how much more performance I would expect to see with SATA III. Trying to figure out which SATA card to get for my 2009 Mac Pro is giving me headaches. I want both USB3 and SATA III but I guess I am asking for too much in trying to get these for less than $150.

About 400MB/s should be realistic.
I have ~250MB/s with my Samsung 830 SSD inserted in one of the HDD slots, I can tell you what difference it makes when I get my SATA-power cable.
 
About 400MB/s should be realistic.
I have ~250MB/s with my Samsung 830 SSD inserted in one of the HDD slots, I can tell you what difference it makes when I get my SATA-power cable.

Please do !!!! Could you also provide a link to the type of cable one would need.
 
Had a strange problem this morning when starting up my MP. The PCIe card is empty lying in slot 1, nothing attached.

I pressed power button, it chimed, showed the Apple, and then took several minutes to get to my desktop (I have an SSD installed. Normally, it takes 11s.)
Then, neither my cursor nor my USB keyboard worked, it showed as connected, but they didn't work.
So I had to hard reset the machine..
Waited 30s, pressed power button again. The Power-LED was on, I heard the fans of my GPU, but no chime. I opened the case, and a small LED and PCIe-card was on. So I turned the Mac off, removed the PCIe card, and tried again. It chimed, but again it took ages to get to my desktop, and still Mouse/keyboard not working.

Hard reset again, booted into the recovery partition, and fortunately everything worked fine there. I Repaired permissions on the system drive, restarted, and now everything is ok again.

First time my Mac was making real problems. Had some minor issues before, but it was always working.

Anyone experienced something similar?
 
Had a strange problem this morning when starting up my MP. The PCIe card is empty lying in slot 1, nothing attached.

I pressed power button, it chimed, showed the Apple, and then took several minutes to get to my desktop (I have an SSD installed. Normally, it takes 11s.)
Then, neither my cursor nor my USB keyboard worked, it showed as connected, but they didn't work.
So I had to hard reset the machine..
Waited 30s, pressed power button again. The Power-LED was on, I heard the fans of my GPU, but no chime. I opened the case, and a small LED and PCIe-card was on. So I turned the Mac off, removed the PCIe card, and tried again. It chimed, but again it took ages to get to my desktop, and still Mouse/keyboard not working.

Hard reset again, booted into the recovery partition, and fortunately everything worked fine there. I Repaired permissions on the system drive, restarted, and now everything is ok again.

First time my Mac was making real problems. Had some minor issues before, but it was always working.

Anyone experienced something similar?

Ok, now it got even more serious.
I got my power cable today, put the card back in, connected the drive, plugged the power cable into a empty HDD bay slot, double-checked everything, and then pressed the powr button.

The Power-LED didn't even light, but instead one of the diagnostic LEDs (next to the heatsink) went on for a few seconds, then everything powered down again.
Checked cable and card again, tried again, and once again the diagnostic LED went on.
Then I removed the PCIe card, but then SSD back in the regular slot again, and the machine booted just fine.

I'm going to send the card back now and stay with SATAII speed. It's fine.


NEVER FIX A WORKING SYSTEM!
 
So I received my cheapo ASM1061 6G card. I have the jumpers configured for one external and one internet.

Is it normal for the internal connection to show up as a "removable" drive?
Is there a way to change it so it shows up as a non-removable drive?



Here's how I have it connected...

MacPro5,1
SSD mounted in the 2nd optical bay, using the available power/sata connector.
I disconnected the b-sata cable from the logic-board.
Connected a sata "extension" cable to the B-sata cable and then to the ASM1061 6G card.

The SSD is working fine and at SataIII speeds but I would prefer for it to mount as a normal HD instead of a removable drive. :(
 
I just bought a OCZ Vertex 4 and am seeing 280MB/sec read/write. Can anyone comment on how much more performance I would expect to see with SATA III.

A real SATA3 connection would get you much higher, in the 500MB/s. I'm using the AMS 1061 card with a Vertex 4 (512GB) and Black Magic tells me I get 350MB/s writes and 370MB/s reads. Far from the drive's limits, but better than SATA2...

Is it normal for the internal connection to show up as a "removable" drive?

Same thing here.

Is there a way to change it so it shows up as a non-removable drive?

No idea.

The SSD is working fine and at SataIII speeds

Are you sure about sata3 speeds? I'm not getting them.

Loa
 
Well I'm not getting max (full) sata III speeds but, they are decent. Faster then Sata II for sure... :)

Crucial M4 SSD.

System Information shows:

Unknown AHCI Standard Controller
Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 6 Gigabit

I ran a black magic test and got...
Write- 201
Read- 415
 
Well I'm not getting max (full) sata III speeds but, they are decent. Faster then Sata II for sure... :)

Crucial M4 SSD.

System Information shows:

Unknown AHCI Standard Controller
Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 6 Gigabit

I ran a black magic test and got...
Write- 201
Read- 415

Which controller card are you using?
 
Guess you've got what you paid for....
I guess you can say that. It was definitely worth trying for 12 bucks.

The only thing is I wish I could use all four ports. I would like to use two internal and also have the ability to an external eSata occasionally as well... Oh well. :(
 
I tried the linked card but my drive fails to show up under that controller. Do I need to mess with the dip switches ? Card shows up as Unknown Standard Controller.

I do have what may be a stupid question. How is my drive to be powered. Can I just connect the SATA cable from the controller card to my drive or do I have to add more power [and if so, where do I get this power in my Mac Pro 4,1].
 
As I stated in earlier posts, the cheap card never yielded me SATA 3 speeds in my 2008 Mac Pro and I continued to search for a good solution. Well, my search finally ended. I picked up an Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 and connected my Crucial M4 512GB SSD to it. It boots fine and I'm extremely happy with the results.
 

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Thanks just ordered one from amazon, with $79 after $20 rebate and extended returns until end January, worth a punt.
 
Is anyone here using one of these?

Highpoint 2720SGL

I saw someone here claim this is supported without drivers in a Mac. :confused:

Any sleep/boot issues?

EDIT: Review here. I'm curious why this hasn't got more attention here? It seems ideal for an affordable multi-drive SATA3 card with RAID0 support.
 
Last edited:
Is anyone here using one of these?

Highpoint 2720SGL

I saw someone here claim this is supported without drivers in a Mac. :confused:

Any sleep/boot issues?

EDIT: Review here. I'm curious why this hasn't got more attention here? It seems ideal for an affordable multi-drive SATA3 card with RAID0 support.

I meant to get back to you sooner, I have tried this card with both the BIOS firmware and EFI, neither are bootable. I contacted highpoint and they explained that unfortunately it is not bootable but is fully capable and utilised is OS X. I can attest to it being a fantastic card, all RAID options as advertised work via the simple RAID management web interface, drivers are easily installed. It's not bootable but currently I run a 256GB SSD on a Apricorn Velocity X2 and have 4 Agility 3 SSD's in RAID 0 via the 2720SGL. I also use Windows and have another 4 Agility 3 SSD's in RAID 0 hooked up to the second cable. Both OS use the RAID arrays to their full potential, fantastic speeds. I have 8 SSD's attached in form of 2 arrays. All of my programs run from the arrays. I can say that yes, it's not bootable but I use a bootable Velocity X2 for that so no drawback as the OS Windows or OS X wouldn't utilise a read speed of 4 RAID 0 SSD's.

One card with two breakout cables into the second optical bay containing 8 SSD's is a perfect fit and well hidden.

As I said, sorry for the late reply but hope this helps.

EDIT: It is bootable under a hackintosh - due to the nature of a hackintosh.
 
I meant to get back to you sooner, I have tried this card with both the BIOS firmware and EFI, neither are bootable. I contacted highpoint and they explained that unfortunately it is not bootable but is fully capable and utilised is OS X. I can attest to it being a fantastic card, all RAID options as advertised work via the simple RAID management web interface, drivers are easily installed. It's not bootable but currently I run a 256GB SSD on a Apricorn Velocity X2 and have 4 Agility 3 SSD's in RAID 0 via the 2720SGL. I also use Windows and have another 4 Agility 3 SSD's in RAID 0 hooked up to the second cable. Both OS use the RAID arrays to their full potential, fantastic speeds. I have 8 SSD's attached in form of 2 arrays. All of my programs run from the arrays. I can say that yes, it's not bootable but I use a bootable Velocity X2 for that so no drawback as the OS Windows or OS X wouldn't utilise a read speed of 4 RAID 0 SSD's.

One card with two breakout cables into the second optical bay containing 8 SSD's is a perfect fit and well hidden.

As I said, sorry for the late reply but hope this helps.

EDIT: It is bootable under a hackintosh - due to the nature of a hackintosh.

Thanks. I might do the same as you... boot my Crucial M4 off a Velocity X2 and run some other SSD's off this card in RAID0. Are there any issues with either the Velocity or this card resuming from sleep under OSX?
 
Thanks. I might do the same as you... boot my Crucial M4 off a Velocity X2 and run some other SSD's off this card in RAID0. Are there any issues with either the Velocity or this card resuming from sleep under OSX?

None whatsoever. A user mentioned a bootcamp issue in another thread. He couldn't mention what the problem was, his setup or the symptoms. He has a support ticket with Apricorn but my bootcamp running on a partition that is on my 256GB SSD on the Apricorn runs like a dream.

Don't let one user ruin your purchase choice, it's a great card and they both work wonderfully together, sleep/resume works great, I run a Apple SSD and TRIM is fully supported through the PCI-E slot, meaning TRIM can be enabled on generic SSD's without issue. Let me know how it goes.
 
None whatsoever. A user mentioned a bootcamp issue in another thread. He couldn't mention what the problem was, his setup or the symptoms. He has a support ticket with Apricorn but my bootcamp running on a partition that is on my 256GB SSD on the Apricorn runs like a dream.

Don't let one user ruin your purchase choice, it's a great card and they both work wonderfully together, sleep/resume works great, I run a Apple SSD and TRIM is fully supported through the PCI-E slot, meaning TRIM can be enabled on generic SSD's without issue. Let me know how it goes.

Ok Thanks. I'll be sure to report back. Now seems like the time to buy, there are some good sales on this stuff for Black Friday. :)
 
I thought I read the ASM1061 eSata cards support Port Multiplier?

I got a Sans Digital 4 Bay JBOD during Cyber Monday and none of the drives are mounting. Although my single drive eSata enclosure works just fine.

I have the card setup; 1 internal & 1 external.
 
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