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SATA 6Gbs Boot 5.1

costabunny

costabunny

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 15, 2008
2,466
71
Weymouth, UK
Simple enough question. I am looking for a PCIe 4x card with SATAIII internal ports that can support booting off my Intel 520 series SSD.

I've read a lot of threads here but most are not clear which card will do just this. Most threads seem to be concerned with running multiple drives and or RAID.

I want a card that simply gives 2 internal SATA 6Gbs ports and is supported by the 5.1 Mac Pro for booting OSX 10.8.4.

Can someone clear this up for me as I don't want to get a Rocket RAID 640L when I don't need much of its capability.

Price is my driving factor. Cabling it in is no issue for me.
 
Looks good - i shall have a foogle tomorrow and see if i can find the Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 Extreme in the UK at a reasonable price.
 
The Aoricorn Velocity Solo x2 is the one your looking for, IMHO. I have one and luv it!

Lou
 
flowrider said:
The Aoricorn Velocity Solo x2 is the one your looking for, IMHO. I have one and luv it!

Lou
Click to expand...

Would such a card get the same performance no matter where it was seated (any of the PCI slots)?

Would I get 2x the performance compared to my boot SSD, which is seated in a conventional MacPro drive bay? More than 2x?
 
^^^^Yes. The 2009 Mac Pro has two 4 Lane PCIE slots and two 16 lane PCIe slots. The Solo x2 requires a 2 lane slot, and all four of the slots in the 2009 and later Mac Pro qualify. I have mine mounted in slot three, a 4 Lane slot.

Lou
 
Why don't you get an SSD card, just attach the SSD to the card and plug it in to the PCIe slot.
 
^^^^For me there are two reasons.

1. Cost

2. I rather have a modular design. That way if one (the Card or the SSD) breaks, I can replace the offending piece without replacing the whole assembly.

Lou
 
I am interesting in buying Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 too.

I already have Samsung 256GB 840 Pro Series SSD with 10.8.4 and all my applications sitting in bay 1 of my MP 5.1.

My question is: if I just take my Samsung SSD from bay 1 and put it in Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 in to one of PCIe slots and reboot, will mac recognize it as a boot drive and will see the OSX and all apps?

In another words: after moving my SSD from bay 1 (SATA II) to PCIe slot will it be working at 6 Gb/s? My understanding is that now it only works at 3 Gb/s.
 
Last edited:
flowrider said:
^^^^Yes. The 2009 Mac Pro has two 4 Lane PCIE slots and two 16 lane PCIe slots. The Solo x2 requires a 2 lane slot, and all four of the slots in the 2009 and later Mac Pro qualify. I have mine mounted in slot three, a 4 Lane slot.

Lou
Click to expand...

thnx for info, flow rider
 
The Highpoint Rocket 640L and RocketRaid 640L are both bootable--if you want 4 ports of SATA III :)
 
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Well I think I shall aim for the Apricon one. For now I will see how it performs in the std sataII port.

I may even find I dont need the extra speed.

:)
 
AlexanderM said:
I am interesting in buying Aoricorn Velocity Solo x2 too.

I already have Samsung 256GB 840 Pro Series SSD with 10.8.4 and all my applications sitting in bay 1 of my MP 5.1.

My question is: if I just take my Samsung SSD from bay 1 and put it in Aoricorn Velocity Solo x2 in to one of PCIe slots and reboot, will mac recognize it as a boot drive and will see the OSX and all apps?

In another words: after moving my SSD from bay 1 (SATA II) to PCIe slot will it be working at 6 Gb/s? My understanding is that now it only works at 3 Gb/s.
Click to expand...


An a word - YES.

Lou
 
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For boot drives, SATA2 v SATA3 may make no difference, since the writes and reads are so small. Just a thought.

666sheep said:
For booting and appd only purpose you don't need PCIe card. All small files reads/writes and IOPS are within SATA II specs, for most of SSDs. ICH10 in MP tops out about 110k IOPS. You'd have more benefits from PCIe card using SSD for storage of bigger files.
Click to expand...
 
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