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SATA 6Gb/s pcie

costabunny

costabunny

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 15, 2008
2,466
71
Weymouth, UK
So what i want to know is this;

Is there a pcie card out there to convert my sleds to SATA6Gb/s?

I know there are raid cards with the mini sas connectors to connect an 8087 cable to the sleds, but i dont need raid. I would like to get a similar card but bot too expensive (dont want to pay for raid if i wont use it).
Not sure if there is something out there that can do this without costing hundreds of pounds

Can anyone point me in the right direction here?
 
JavaTheHut said:
Do you want it bootable too?
Click to expand...

Booting isn't essential as the only disk in the sleds that I 'might' want to boot from in an emergency is the clone disk and I can always connect it to the Velocity Solo for that.

I would just like to get the full SATAIII speeds from the sleds without having to buy a dedicated RAID card that I won't fully utilise.
 
Im looking into the same thing right now.
After all my research it seems to be the best option and you get a second port for sata 3 for either external or internal use.
http://www.apricorn.com/vel-solox2.html

Getting it on all your sleds ends up being really expensive, although it can be one. I think OWC has an option but again really expensive
 
Last edited:
I am curious ... if you are using hard disk drives in you sleds, what is it that you hope to gain by modifying them for SATA III rather than the stock SATA II interface?
 
hfg said:
I am curious ... if you are using hard disk drives in you sleds, what is it that you hope to gain by modifying them for SATA III rather than the stock SATA II interface?
Click to expand...

Well my seagate 7200 does 120mb/s on the sataII and it does 180mb/s on the sataIII (the velocity solo card).

As I do a lot of large file transfers the extra speed would be helpful for me.
 
Just some info, hard disks do not benefit from SATA3 speeds. Even the best hard drives cannot read and write at 3Gbps, which is SATA2 speed. SATA3 is good mostly for SSDs, which can handle the 6Gbps data transfer. PCIe cards, such as the Apricorn card, are bootable under OS X. The one that was linked is the Velocity Solo x2. While this has increased performance over the Velocity Solo x1, it's also twice the price. I have an x1 in my system, and it's blazing fast, especially compared to just a standard hard drive. There are other solutions, but the only reason to REALLY need that kind of performance is for booting your OS quickly. Hope this helps.
-N
 
costabunny said:
Well my seagate 7200 does 120mb/s on the sataII and it does 180mb/s on the sataIII (the velocity solo card).

As I do a lot of large file transfers the extra speed would be helpful for me.
Click to expand...

That is surprising ... I wonder if the cache buffer on the drive is fooling the disk test program into showing higher rates, but only to the buffer, not the actual disk drive.

Have you considered a RAID-0 of hard disks to improve your large file transfers? On a smaller scale, I have a 1TB SSD RAID-0 on a Sonnet Tempo Pro PCIe card which really improves my photo library speeds (all very large files).


-howard
 
hfg said:
That is surprising ... I wonder if the cache buffer on the drive is fooling the disk test program into showing higher rates, but only to the buffer, not the actual disk drive.
Click to expand...

Yep thats a possibility. I was leaning that way after seeing the results. still its an anomaly that I have not seen before

Have you considered a RAID-0 of hard disks to improve your large file transfers? On a smaller scale, I have a 1TB SSD RAID-0 on a Sonnet Tempo Pro PCIe card which really improves my photo library speeds (all very large files).
-howard
Click to expand...

my aperture library also lives on the SATA III pcie card (SSD 1TB) - its my AV files I would like a bit more speed. Not because its affecting anything, just because I can. I do a fair bit of transcoding for people (archiving video footage and taking older files and bringing them up to H.264). When shoving files around I'd like to have it at peak.

I have mirrored disks in the sleds and a single for OS cloning.
 
costabunny said:
Hmm that is the kind of thing I want - at £160 shipped its not completely insane, but it does have the RAID controller chip on board that I will likely not use.

It is now on the shortlist (well it IS the shortlist so far)

thanks

keep em coming
Click to expand...
But remember that:
1. you need an extension cable to go from the front of the system to the back ~85usd
2. your 4 bays are no longer bootable so now you need to make a place for a drive that is(like the optical bay another 20usd).

I looked into this setup and I felt like there were a lot of "this will work but you loose this"..
It would be nice if these also made the bays bootable sadly no though
 
UncleSchnitty said:
But remember that:
1. you need an extension cable to go from the front of the system to the back ~85usd
2. your 4 bays are no longer bootable so now you need to make a place for a drive that is(like the optical bay another 20usd).

I looked into this setup and I felt like there were a lot of "this will work but you loose this"..
It would be nice if these also made the bays bootable sadly no though
Click to expand...

Yep got eyes on cable for that

I don't use the sleds for booting anyways - both my boot disks are SSD, & mounted piggyback on the Velocity Solo x2.

I keep a bootable clone of the OSX disk in a sled, but its no big deal to hook it up to the velocity should the need arise.
 
costabunny said:
Yep got eyes on cable for that

I don't use the sleds for booting anyways - both my boot disks are SSD, & mounted piggyback on the Velocity Solo x2.

I keep a bootable clone of the OSX disk in a sled, but its no big deal to hook it up to the velocity should the need arise.
Click to expand...

I would say that's your best option then, hah I may do the exact same thing after I get my Velocity Solo X2. These forums make my wallet hurt...
 
costabunny said:
Yep lol

btw including UPS and the 8087 cable its £208 from OWC
Click to expand...

The only thing Im not sure of is if you can use that is PCI slots 3+4 (atleast for me 1 is my graphics and 2 is for my velocity card.. just ordered 2 min ago hah)
Also its not really going to benefit on non raid hdds because don't they max out on sata 2? Its great for SSD but i don't think it will do much with spinning drives.
 
UncleSchnitty said:
The only thing Im not sure of is if you can use that is PCI slots 3+4 (atleast for me 1 is my graphics and 2 is for my velocity card.. just ordered 2 min ago hah)
Also its not really going to benefit on non raid hdds because don't they max out on sata 2? Its great for SSD but i don't think it will do much with spinning drives.
Click to expand...

I plan to use slot 2 for mine as I have the velocity in slot 3 and the USB3 in slot 4 (the velocity is a x2, whereas the Max Power is a x8).

I guess it would work in 3 or 4 but at reduced performance (x4 instead of x8) or it may insist on being in slot 1 or 2, ? not sure
 
costabunny said:
I plan to use slot 2 for mine as I have the velocity in slot 3 and the USB3 in slot 4 (the velocity is a x2, whereas the Max Power is a x8).

I guess it would work in 3 or 4 but at reduced performance (x4 instead of x8) or it may insist on being in slot 1 or 2, ? not sure
Click to expand...
The velocity works fine in slot 3? Interesting I thought for some reason slot 3 would slow down the velocity. I could be wrong though. Ive been looking up so many things this week my brain is fried
 
UncleSchnitty said:
The velocity works fine in slot 3? Interesting I thought for some reason slot 3 would slow down the velocity. I could be wrong though. Ive been looking up so many things this week my brain is fried
Click to expand...

nah the Velocity is a PCIe X2 card so it can go in any of the slots. (well thats in a 2009+ MP) I can't remember the slot configurations for the older ones
 
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