You can speed up the RAID when you put one of the Sonnet cards in slot 2 (3 and 4 share the same x4 uplink.
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Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro vs OWC Accelsior (benchmarks)
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You can speed up the RAID when you put one of the Sonnet cards in slot 2 (3 and 4 share the same x4 uplink.
My Tempo Pro RAID-0 OS X Boot Disk does show up as "removable" and "external", as does a Windows bootable SSD on a Solo x2 card.
Since all PCIe bus disks seem to be classified as "external", does that also imply that they will be classified as "removable"?
Reporting successful installtion in 5,1 -- Tempo Pro with 2 x 1 tb Crucial M550, but as individual disks, not as RAID.
I installed Mavericks on one of the drives via a FW800 enclosure -- this was before the Tempo Pro arrived. Then I put them both on, and set about organizing the machine.
Nope. After a couple of hours of moving stuff around, the second disk was corrupted, and system disk badly so. No boot. No nothing.
So I booted with the old system disk and used SuperDuper! to clone it to one of the Crucials.
After that, no problems at all.
Login screen about 10 seconds after the chime.
For the non-system drive, I get 419W 483R with BlackMagic, and with AJA (1 gb) it's 389W, 417R. With 4 gb, 382R, 414W. Actually with AJA, it doesn't change much with file size.
I also dropped in a MacVidCards 7970 today.
I'm fast and happy. This is going to hold me for a couple of years.
I installed Mavericks on one of the drives via a FW800 enclosure -- this was before the Tempo Pro arrived. Then I put them both on, and set about organizing the machine.
Nope. After a couple of hours of moving stuff around, the second disk was corrupted, and system disk badly so. No boot. No nothing.
So I booted with the old system disk and used SuperDuper! to clone it to one of the Crucials.
After that, no problems at all.
Login screen about 10 seconds after the chime.
For the non-system drive, I get 419W 483R with BlackMagic, and with AJA (1 gb) it's 389W, 417R. With 4 gb, 382R, 414W. Actually with AJA, it doesn't change much with file size.
I also dropped in a MacVidCards 7970 today.
I'm fast and happy. This is going to hold me for a couple of years.
Accelsior under 150MB writting
I Have a Mac Pro mid 2010 (5.1)
1 OWC Accelsior in PCI slot 3
2x OWC Mercury extreme 3G SSD (in software RAID 0 stripe)
If i move a movie file from Accelsior to Mercury Extreme SSD raid i cant go beyond 150MB/sec, if i try the same but from RAID to Accelsior i have the same problem.
How much fast can you copy a file from/to an Accelsior (or Tempo) to other Disk?
Can someone put System information to see "Pci Link speed negotiation" as I
Thanks!!
I Have a Mac Pro mid 2010 (5.1)
1 OWC Accelsior in PCI slot 3
2x OWC Mercury extreme 3G SSD (in software RAID 0 stripe)
If i move a movie file from Accelsior to Mercury Extreme SSD raid i cant go beyond 150MB/sec, if i try the same but from RAID to Accelsior i have the same problem.
How much fast can you copy a file from/to an Accelsior (or Tempo) to other Disk?
Can someone put System information to see "Pci Link speed negotiation" as I
Thanks!!
Sonnet Tempo Pro--and Trim
Hi all - new guy here in this forum. Thought you all should know after doing weeks of research, this thread was the most helpful! I'm in the process of rebuilding a 2009 Mac Pro 8 core 2.93 for MIDI/music production. Gonna stream a lot of audio samples and needed an upgrade in performance from my 2.26 8 core running standard drives. Almost went for the OWC Accelsior, but this thread turned me on to the Tempo Pro. Here's the main reason for the change of heart: Trim. What wasn't really discussed here (because almost everyone seems to be running RAIDs) is the issue of trim support. As I'm sure you all know, that goes away with a RAID. It also goes away with a non-Apple SSD, but Cindori has that covered. What turned me off about the Accelsior was it's claim of not needing trim. But I did some research and found a lot of criticism of their claim, as well as their motives. Ironically, some of the best questions are raised on their own forum: http://blog.macsales.com/21641-with-an-owc-ssd-theres-no-need-for-trim
as well as here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1754767/
The more I dug, the more stories I read about SSDs getting slower over time - not just a little slower, but radically slower. Trim (along with over provisioning) seem to be the best friends of SSDs. Since it is not recommended that audio samples be delivered from a RAID, trim support (especially on a busy boot drive) became a big concern for me. Although there were other considerations about the Tempo vs Accelsior, trim support was the big issue. Of course you can enable trim on the OWC products, but I became disenchanted with their treatment of the subject after reading the discussions.
Just wanted to mention trim for those of you kicking around the idea of SSDs and PCIe cards, and plan on doing JBODs. BTW, I just installed an 840 Pro 512 on a Tempo Pro for the boot drive, and 2x 840 EVO 1TB on a 2nd Tempo Pro for samples. 4X 2TB Barracudas are sitting in their bays ready to provide backup and large file storage. Happy to report no problems booting Mavericks from the 840, Trim support is "on". So far, so good. Loading apps and samples next week.
Hi all - new guy here in this forum. Thought you all should know after doing weeks of research, this thread was the most helpful! I'm in the process of rebuilding a 2009 Mac Pro 8 core 2.93 for MIDI/music production. Gonna stream a lot of audio samples and needed an upgrade in performance from my 2.26 8 core running standard drives. Almost went for the OWC Accelsior, but this thread turned me on to the Tempo Pro. Here's the main reason for the change of heart: Trim. What wasn't really discussed here (because almost everyone seems to be running RAIDs) is the issue of trim support. As I'm sure you all know, that goes away with a RAID. It also goes away with a non-Apple SSD, but Cindori has that covered. What turned me off about the Accelsior was it's claim of not needing trim. But I did some research and found a lot of criticism of their claim, as well as their motives. Ironically, some of the best questions are raised on their own forum: http://blog.macsales.com/21641-with-an-owc-ssd-theres-no-need-for-trim
as well as here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1754767/
The more I dug, the more stories I read about SSDs getting slower over time - not just a little slower, but radically slower. Trim (along with over provisioning) seem to be the best friends of SSDs. Since it is not recommended that audio samples be delivered from a RAID, trim support (especially on a busy boot drive) became a big concern for me. Although there were other considerations about the Tempo vs Accelsior, trim support was the big issue. Of course you can enable trim on the OWC products, but I became disenchanted with their treatment of the subject after reading the discussions.
Just wanted to mention trim for those of you kicking around the idea of SSDs and PCIe cards, and plan on doing JBODs. BTW, I just installed an 840 Pro 512 on a Tempo Pro for the boot drive, and 2x 840 EVO 1TB on a 2nd Tempo Pro for samples. 4X 2TB Barracudas are sitting in their bays ready to provide backup and large file storage. Happy to report no problems booting Mavericks from the 840, Trim support is "on". So far, so good. Loading apps and samples next week.
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i use the cindori software on 10.9. Trim support is listed in the system report as "yes" (for each drive separately) for my two 840 EVO drives which are set up as a RAID0 configuration.
is TRIM, in fact, not working on the drives?
i was under the impression it did work.
thank you!
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found the answer from cindori:
i'm using software RAID, which is fine. didn't have my head in the hardware/software distinction when i read audio brad's latest post.
Interesting. I missed the hardware/software distinction relating to RAID support and trim. This opens the possibility of adding RAID1 to my boot drive since I have an open slot on that Tempo Pro card. Is there any way to check if trim is working properly? Should this be monitored in any way?
I'm just upgrading a 2009 4,1 8 core Mac Pro to a 5,1 12 core. The proc upgrade has gone well. I'm now onto the drives. I've opted for an OWC Accelsior E2 120gb PCIe as my boot drive. Its super quick. As a Cinema 4D user and more relevant to this post, an After Effects user, I now need two more 6gb/s SSDs, one for media and another as an AE cache drive. I want to mount these drives on PCIe cards as this gives me the best I/O speeds. So, my question are:
1) Would I be better buying two separate single Tempo SSD cards, each with their own PCIe slots, or buy the Tempo PRO Plus and run two drives separately from the same card?
2) If Im running 2 drives separately on the same card, will the Tempo Pro even be an advantage anymore over other cards like the Velocity?
3) If Im running two Tempo cards/drives would the Velocity card get me the same speeds?
Ive done a fair bit of research but I cant work out whether running them as separate drives would be slower on one PCIe slot or two. Any insight appreciated.
1) Would I be better buying two separate single Tempo SSD cards, each with their own PCIe slots, or buy the Tempo PRO Plus and run two drives separately from the same card?
2) If Im running 2 drives separately on the same card, will the Tempo Pro even be an advantage anymore over other cards like the Velocity?
3) If Im running two Tempo cards/drives would the Velocity card get me the same speeds?
Ive done a fair bit of research but I cant work out whether running them as separate drives would be slower on one PCIe slot or two. Any insight appreciated.
The fastest SSDs you can get now are the Apple branded ones or the Samsung in my signature. If you need an SSD for After Effects cache they are your best choice.
Thanks but Im really asking more about the correct PCIe card/drive config and which would secure the max speed on that bus. That said, do you have a link to the speed stats for your drives vs others?
Cheers.
Thanks. But I still need to mount whatever drive I get onto a PCIe card and my questions are more to do with card/PCIe slot configuration to get the most out of the drives. I dont want to be paying much more than about £110 per drive plus a PCIe card.
How you configure the cards is ultimately to do with what suits your workflow. Barefeats used Bplus and Lycom adapters in this test
http://www.barefeats.com/hard183.html
Cool, re what suits my workflow, I need a fast 240gb SSD as a media drive for files and folders and another 240gb SSD with a high IOPS rating as a cache drive.
Just trying to ascertain whether mounting both on a single PCIe card and running them separately is faster than running two separate PCIe cards and drives over two slots.
Really impressed by the speed on the Samsung XP941s.
Right now fastest way is to run a RAID 0 set spread across slots 2 and 3 like Barefeats did. That's how to hit 2Gb/s for the time being. Maybe in a years time a single SSD in any slot will hit that speed (which also happens to be the bandwidth limit of a 4X slot).
If you are using an SSD for caching in After Effects, it should ideally support TRIM otherwise it's performance will decrease with that kind of use. Enabling TRIM can be problematic in Yosemite so your best choice is an Apple SSD - the only one that officially support TRIM.
Amazing to think that a single slot will hit those speeds. I think Im going to be annoyed in a years time after my imminent purchases.
With my set up though I dont need to stripe them in a RAID 0. My two drives need to be separate as both serve different purposes. The cache drive (preferably with a high IOPS rating) is constantly reading/writing frames to disk and the media drive is constantly reading linked files and sometimes writing big movies to disk at render time. Hence my quest to discover the fastest way of running two separate SSDs via PCIe. I cant afford to buy 4 disks and make two RAID 0 sets. Would be amazing but also too expensive.
Cheers.
It you are not going to RAID then it doesn't matter if you go for a one card or two card solution, whichever is more affordable. Performance will be the same regardless.
Buy the Apple SSD for your AE cache with TRIM support and then buy any decent cheap SSD for your media drive.
I think apphotography may be right. If you're not raiding them, then the choke point is the SSD, not the PCIe config. But I would contact Sonnet about the dual vs two single cards. I emailed them a question and got a quick response.
Once I get my rig up, I can tell you more since I have two Tempo Pro + cards. One has a single drive, the other has two attached--all independent. When testing I'll try to determine if the two drives are slower than the single.
Once I get my rig up, I can tell you more since I have two Tempo Pro + cards. One has a single drive, the other has two attached--all independent. When testing I'll try to determine if the two drives are slower than the single.
Thanks both.
Good to hear Sonnett were quick to respond. Will email them shortly.
Also, is there anything stopping me using the Bplus M.2 PCIe adapters with the Samsung blades as per the Barefeats shootout? Not as RAID but with single blades.
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That would be an interesting insight, thanks. Why did you go for the Pro plus to run two drives separately on the same card? Would the cheaper Tempo card not have done the job just as well if you're not going the RAID route?
Cheers.
Good to hear Sonnett were quick to respond. Will email them shortly.
Also, is there anything stopping me using the Bplus M.2 PCIe adapters with the Samsung blades as per the Barefeats shootout? Not as RAID but with single blades.
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That would be an interesting insight, thanks. Why did you go for the Pro plus to run two drives separately on the same card? Would the cheaper Tempo card not have done the job just as well if you're not going the RAID route?
Cheers.
I only have two open PCIe slots. I knew I needed at least 3 drives, and will probably add a 4th. I also wanted at least one card to have the external eSATA port. Finally, I recall reading somewhere that the Pro Plus is faster or better than the single drive unit in some way. You might want to do a search on that or include it in your email to Sonnet.
Yeah I read that too earlier on Barefeats, something about the onboard chipset but I thought that only kicked in when striping the drives. Will have another look and ask them about that.
Cheers. So by the Apple SSD you mean the XP941 mounted on one of these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bplus-M2P4S-NGFF-PCIe-Adapter/dp/B00MOXDGYI ?
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Message Synchro3 about the Apple SSD. If it is out of your budget then the XP941 is good value and comes in three capacities.
The Bplus is a good M2 adapter card for a single blade on a single slot, but if you want two blade running independently on one slot then the Sonnet is a better choice. The dual blade Bplus card uses two slots via an extension cable.
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