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MP 7,1 SSD and spinning drives for Fusion Flex J3i?

choreo

choreo

macrumors 6502a
Jan 10, 2008
910
357
Midland, TX
flowrider said:
Anything else not on a USB port. So, any drive on a PCIe card or SATA port.

Lou
Click to expand...
If that is the case, I guess I need to adjust my strategy. I guess my best bet to get a bootable clone would be to remove the 1TB SSD from the J3i and put it into a PCI card? Any recommendations of a compatible PCI card that would accept that Samsung drive?
 
flowrider

flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
7,323
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^^^^Aren't you getting the Sonnet:

forums.macrumors.com

SSD OEM vs Aftermarket

My Mac Pro just came in Thursday and I am waiting on all my 3rd party pieces to arrive. One thing on the way is this Sonnet M.2 NVMe PCI board along with 4 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus drives. It claims 11,700 MB/s in RAID 0 (see a 1 minute into this video:) I will post my results when I get it up...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

PCIe cards for 2½" used to be plentiful before the days of NVME SSDs. Personally I wouldn't run one today. But, AFAIK, there are currently only two left in the marketplace:

eshop.macsales.com

OWC Accelsior S Storage Expansion With a Speed Boost

Accelsior S is the simple solution to add a high speed SATA 6G drive to silver Mac Pro towers otherwise restricted to 3G architecture.
eshop.macsales.com eshop.macsales.com

and


The Sonnet can run two SSDs.

Lou
 
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choreo

choreo

macrumors 6502a
Jan 10, 2008
910
357
Midland, TX
flowrider said:
^^^^Aren't you getting the Sonnet
Click to expand...

Yes, the Sonnet is here and the (4) 1TB NVMe Samsungs will be here tomorrow. My plan was to configure this PCI card as RAID 0 and use it for Client files, Lightroom/Capture One photos/catalogs and video editing.

I was thinking initially that I would just have a matching in size SSD (to my internal boot drive) in the J3i and use CCC to do daily clones between the two as an emergency boot back up - but does not look like that is a viable option in that USB connector. Somehow I missed that!
 
S

Sonnet Tech

macrumors newbie
Jul 10, 2020
1
0
demitri said:
I posted this in another J3i Forum thread, before I saw this one -

I received my Fusion Flex J3i on Tuesday, as well, and installed 2 SSD drives, and one HDD, with one of the SSDs connected to that internal USB port.

The problem is that the drive that's connected to the USB port randomly gets connected a couple of times a day, and I don't why it's doing that. I keep getting the "drive was ejected improperly" or something along those lines error message. Obviously, I need something more reliable than that, so I'm hoping it's a bad cable? Maybe the Mac Pro needs a firmware update? Not sure. There was ONE instance of all three drives disconnecting, but that was after waking it from sleep - again - not good. But if it's a matter of just not having it sleep, I can live with that for the time being.

I've had that drive for over two years. I swapped out that SSD for the other one, to test a different SSD connected to that same internal USB port, and the disconnects happened with that SSD, too.

I reset the SMC, but that hasn't helped.
Click to expand...


Hi Demitri,
We are so sorry for the inconvenience. You're right it is the cable! We have alerted our Cable Vendor to this problem and we are addressing the issue. If you have recently purchased a Sonnet Fusion Flex J3i and are having problems with your included cable, we would be happy to send you a free replacement!

Just Email Support@sonnettech.com for your cable replacement.

As always we appreciate your business,
Your Sonnet Team.
[automerge]1594411404[/automerge]
choreo said:
FYI - Just received a response from Sonnet - they are sending me a "known good" replacement cable.
Click to expand...

We are so sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused! We are sending you a replacement cable ASAP and we are working hard with our cable vendor on this issue.

As always we appreciate your business,
Your Sonnet Team
[automerge]1594411565[/automerge]
frankiee said:
choreo, I bet it is the same thing that happened to me. Replace the adapter and it should go away (Running for days now without any further problems). I also contacted Sonnet, and it is also likely that some SATA cables are defect as well, at least for me my HDDs never gave me this problem.
Click to expand...

Hi Frankie,

We are so sorry for any inconvenience. We have had some issues with our cables shipped our with the J3i. We have alerted our Cable Vendor to this problem and we are addressing this issue. If you have recently purchased a Sonnet Fusion Flex J3i and are having problems with your included cable, we would be happy to send you a free replacement!

Just Email Support@sonnettech.com for your cable replacement.

As always we appreciate your business,
Your Sonnet Team
[automerge]1594411621[/automerge]
machenryr said:
I had this happen before the sonnet. I had had this happen with the OWC external enclosures.
Click to expand...

Hi,
Thank you for your recent purchase of the Fusion Flex J3i.
We have had some issues with our cables shipped our with the J3i. We have alerted our Cable Vendor to this problem and we are addressing this issue. If you are experiencing any problems with your included cable, we would be happy to send you a free replacement!

Just Email Support@sonnettech.com for your cable replacement.

As always we appreciate your business,
Your Sonnet Team
 
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Theophilos

Theophilos

macrumors regular
Jul 29, 2015
171
178
California
Spinning drives are great for massive storage. I was thinking of getting a Synology NAS for more than $1k plus drives to store my completed FCP projects and other things to which I don’t need quick access, but then I thought, “Why not an internal spinner?”

I got the Sonnet J3i, which supports two 3.5 drives or three 2.5 drives over SATA. I was able to install two older WD Black 6 TB drives that I wasn’t using. I’m very happy with the Sonnet, because I can barely hear the hard drives.

Now, I have two Sonnet m2 4x4 sleds that house 8 total NVME drives with an aggregate capacity of 10 TB ultrafast storage in RAID 0. I also have these two 6 TB drives running as RAID 1 for redundancy. Not to mention the 2 TB internal drive. Altogether, 18 TB of storage using different connections and for different applications.

*Additional Info*

Also, in case this might be helpful to someone else, I use my spinner also as a cloud backup. My alma mater gives me a lifetime Google Drive with unlimited storage, so I installed Google File Stream and used a terminal command to put the cache on my spinner. Now, when I want to archive files, I move them to Google Drive. The file is locally cached on my spinner with ample space and a copy is saved in the cloud. A great solution for things you don't want to lose in case the hard drive fails. I also have the hard drives in RAID 1 for additional peace of mind.
 
Last edited:
typecase

typecase

macrumors 6502
Feb 2, 2005
394
400
I have this issue too. I contacted Sonnet and they said they will be "in touch" about a cable replacement.
 
flowrider

flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
7,323
3,003
Late last week I started having the issue, five times in one day. Twice today. I sent an eMail to the address above on 7/18. Have not heard back.

Lou
 
flowrider

flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
7,323
3,003
flowrider said:
Late last week I started having the issue, five times in one day. Twice today. I sent an eMail to the address above on 7/18. Have not heard back.
Click to expand...

Just received this eMail ?

TinyGrab Screen Shot 7-24-20, 3.33.55 PM.jpg


Lou
 
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machenryr

machenryr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 25, 2016
748
101
Today, or last night a SSD in the J3i went offline and didn’t come back until after a reboot today. This was bad because it seemed to have happened at the end of a CCC scheduled cloning.

I haven’t received the cable replacement yet or had news of it’s shipping. But they did take my address and tell me they’d send me one. This was about two weeks ago.
 
typecase

typecase

macrumors 6502
Feb 2, 2005
394
400
Sonnet shipped me the replacement cable overnight. I've installed it and haven't had any disconnects since. Initially had some misgivings since this was my first experience with Sonnet but their excellent customer service regarding this problem was exemplary.
 
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flowrider

flowrider

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Nov 23, 2012
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^^^^Mine aligned fine with my Samsung 840 EVO. Did you have the drive mounted in something else before the J3i?

Lou
 
Graham King

Graham King

macrumors regular
Mar 27, 2011
159
110
Oakland, CA
Yes, I'd been using it in a blue OWC drive sled in my 2012 Mac Pro. I was able to bend and move the J3i to force it to align. Pretty lousy for a $200 piece of sheet metal.
 
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O

OkiRun

macrumors 65816
Oct 25, 2019
1,005
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Japan
Graham King said:
Yes, I'd been using it in a blue OWC drive sled in my 2012 Mac Pro. I was able to bend and move the J3i to force it to align. Pretty lousy for a $200 piece of sheet metal.
Click to expand...
I gave you a thumbs up for the 8tb SSD. You're glad you got it, correct?
 
Graham King

Graham King

macrumors regular
Mar 27, 2011
159
110
Oakland, CA
OkiRun said:
I gave you a thumbs up for the 8tb SSD. You're glad you got it, correct?
Click to expand...
Absolutely! No regrets. I am able to use it as it my primary scratch disc for editing and can keep several projects worth of 4K raw footage at a time. I also like that I can keep a local copy of my photo library and my entire Dropbox. And I set aside 1TB for gaming in boot camp. Goodbye load times! And still have room to spare.
 
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