USB 3.x PCIe Cards for Classic Mac Pro

[crjackson2134]

Guys, no offence, but this thread reads like one on a hackintosh forum .

All things considered, is there any Mac or OSX version that runs all common USB 3.0 devices without possible issues ?

This thread was started by ActionableMango to find a good working solution.

USB 3.0, the final frontier; A 5 year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no Mac Pro has gone before.

That said, don't read the whole thread then. Just read the first post which summarizes the whole thread. Then if you NEED specific information about a particular card, read and or ask.

I have 2 grand working USB 3.0 cards installed in my Mac Pro (6 ports) all without extra power requirements, and they work great for me. Read the 1st post and chose your card. There are several cards that work well.

 

[ActionableMango]

Guys, no offence, but this thread reads like one on a hackintosh forum .

All things considered, is there any Mac or OSX version that runs all common USB 3.0 devices without possible issues ?

Nobody can promise that there will be no possible issues. Even official Apple hardware and software has issues. The best we can do is share our experiences, which is summarized in the first post of the thread. I've just now updated the first post with improved formatting so it is easier to read and understand.

There are a few decent, workable solutions.

 

[Rorqual]

ActionableMango, there's another option missing to your list in page 1, Etron chipset based cards:
+ cheap
+ no external power required
- not natively supported by OS X, needs a driver (I think that's no big deal, and I prefer to have to install a driver, rather than mess with Molex connectors and power cables, but to each his own!)

I've got this one, and as far as I know it works fine (I don't have any USB 3 device yet to test with, actually, but no trouble with USB 2 ).
There's a 4 port version too.

This seller doesn't ship outside the EU, but there must be other supply sources for the rest of the world.

 

[ActionableMango]

ActionableMango, there's another option missing to your list in page 1, Etron chipset based cards:
+ cheap
+ no external power required
- not natively supported by OS X, needs a driver (I think that's no big deal, and I prefer to have to install a driver, rather than mess with Molex connectors and power cables, but to each his own!)

I've got this one, and as far as I know it works fine (I don't have any USB 3 device yet to test with, actually, but no trouble with USB 2 ).
There's a 4 port version too.

This seller doesn't ship outside the EU, but there must be other supply sources for the rest of the world.

There are actually a lot of options missing in the list, but it's a list of recommended cards only. I mean no disrespect, but since you haven't truly tried it out, I'm not comfortable calling that a recommendation.

There are a lot of unanswered questions. Someone needs to know if it works with all USB 3.0 devices or just storage devices. Someone needs to test the speed to ensure it's working at a reasonable speed, preferably on two ports at the same time so we know if there are dedicated controllers.

These Ebay listings don't even identify the specific manufacturer and model name, so what exactly is being recommended? I can't just say "Eton". People sometimes just say "get the Orico" but there are substantial differences in Orico USB 3.0 card models. Knowing the model number is absolutely critical.

 

[crjackson2134]

HighPoint
RocketU 1144CM. 4-port model. Does not require supplemental power to be hooked up. About $140.

Notes:
It has a dedicated controller for each port, meaning full speed for simultaneous devices.
It supports USB RAID.
It does not use native drivers, so you have to install and use Rocket's drivers, and wait for updated drivers when there is a new version of OS X.
It only works with storage-based USB devices. Non-storage based devices do not work, including USB hubs.
Reportedly won't work with Nikon D800.
Slightly faster than the FL-based cards when one device. Substantially faster when using multiple devices simultaneously.mber is absolutely critical.

Mango, can you edit post #1 to say may have to install new drivers if an OSX version obsoletes the current version (or words to that effect)?

The current driver has worked OOTB since 10.8. I spoke directly to one of the guys that writes the drivers. He said that they currently (the people) work together with Apple, and in the event that OSX breaks the driver, the new driver will allegedly be released before the new version of OSX.

 

[ActionableMango]

Mango, can you edit post #1 to say may have to install new drivers if an OSX version obsoletes the current version (or words to that effect)?

The current driver has worked OOTB since 10.8. I spoke directly to one of the guys that writes the drivers. He said that they currently (the people) work together with Apple, and in the event that OSX breaks the driver, the new driver will allegedly be released before the new version of OSX.

Yes, done. Thanks.

 

[OSXphoto]

Preliminary report

Received the PFU3-2P today. installed it in my 2010 MP.

First observations:
The instructions said it should receive additional power, but it works fine with a powered Seagate 3TB drive (that was to be expected) and also with a bus powered OWC USB3 enclosure (holding a Samsung 830 series 128GB SSD).

The Seagate 3TB drive would not eject upon request. It does eject smoothly when connected trhough USB2.
OWC w/ Samsung 830 ejects fine.

Seagate 3TB tested at 137 Read and 124 write.
OWC w/ Samsung 830 tested at 240 read and comparable write ( don't remember exactly, i'm on my iPad on the road)

Remarkable: with this card, no matter which drive is attached, I don't get the wonky BT magic Mouse issue.

Anyone got a clue as to why the Seagate won't eject? Unplugging is all that's left but of course I get the red OSX warning I should eject first and then unplug.

 

[crjackson2134]

Received the PFU3-2P today. installed it in my 2010 MP.

First observations:
The instructions said it should receive additional power, but it works fine with a powered Seagate 3TB drive (that was to be expected) and also with a bus powered OWC USB3 enclosure (holding a Samsung 830 series 128GB SSD).

The Seagate 3TB drive would not eject upon request. It does eject smoothly when connected trhough USB2.
OWC w/ Samsung 830 ejects fine.

Seagate 3TB tested at 137 Read and 124 write.
OWC w/ Samsung 830 tested at 240 read and comparable write ( don't remember exactly, i'm on my iPad on the road)

Remarkable: with this card, no matter which drive is attached, I don't get the wonky BT magic Mouse issue.

Anyone got a clue as to why the Seagate won't eject? Unplugging is all that's left but of course I get the red OSX warning I should eject first and then unplug.

I suspect it's the drive enclosure electronics. I have that card, and it has no trouble ejecting my seagate desktop drives.

 

[LeicaM8]

Hi ActionableMango,
I am wondering if you have an opinion on whether my getting a max of 80 MB per second of data thru put with my USB 3.0 card is something that shoukd concern me? eg: might I have an OS or Hardware problem?
The card installed easy breezy, power hooked up easy with Lindy breakout cable from drive bay, and instantly recognized and working once I booted up.
My speed rate is measured via Activity Monitor App & I am observing the rate when copying from USB 3.0 SSD Flash Drive to my internal SSD. On usb 2.0 built in port I get 30mb/s, so it is 50mb/s faster using the USB 3 card, but reviews of the Iomega SSD say they were seeing 115-120mb/s.

If 80mb/s is a reasonable limit to expect on a MacPro and a USB 3.0 card I'm fine with that, just want to confirm.

Thank you for putting this thread together and curating it. Much appreciated.
Richard in Michigan

 

[OSXphoto]

I suspect it's the drive enclosure electronics. I have that card, and it has no trouble ejecting my seagate desktop drives.

There is more going on than just an eject issue. When I tried to mount the drive tonight it would search endlessly for the entire contents. Sizes were greyed out but the contents of those folders were not displayed. Then I got the "Eject before unplug" message out of the blue, even without unplugging it.

At my second attempt, the drive would mount faster than the first time and it displayed all contents. I then tried to copy 34GB of data from that USB3 drive to an internal SSD. It was cruising at 200 MB/s until 31GB, then it stopped copying. When I stopped the copying popup with the "x", nothing happened. Ejecting of course would not work as the volume is "in use".

It's a pity because this is a backup drive that I was keen on connecting to this card, to allow for faster backup times. I also wanted to use it for swapping temporary large amounts of data when repartitioning disks. Apparently this drive won't work with the orico PFU3-2P controller.

Would this (or any of the G Technology single or dual drives) run well on the Orico PFU3-2P?

Any cheaper single 3TB USB3 hard drives that are confirmed to work with this card?

 

[ActionableMango]

Hi ActionableMango,
I am wondering if you have an opinion on whether my getting a max of 80 MB per second of data thru put with my USB 3.0 card is something that shoukd concern me? eg: might I have an OS or Hardware problem?
The card installed easy breezy, power hooked up easy with Lindy breakout cable from drive bay, and instantly recognized and working once I booted up.
My speed rate is measured via Activity Monitor App & I am observing the rate when copying from USB 3.0 SSD Flash Drive to my internal SSD. On usb 2.0 built in port I get 30mb/s, so it is 50mb/s faster using the USB 3 card, but reviews of the Iomega SSD say they were seeing 115-120mb/s.

If 80mb/s is a reasonable limit to expect on a MacPro and a USB 3.0 card I'm fine with that, just want to confirm.

Thank you for putting this thread together and curating it. Much appreciated.
Richard in Michigan

That seems really slow, but it is hard to say without knowing which flash drive you have. Most USB 3.0 flash drives, even from big names, are cheap crap and 80-85MB/s is actually quite normal. A USB 3.0 Sandisk Extreme flash drive on the other hand can do about 200MB/s or more. Without further information, I suspect your flash drive is the problem simply because it's right in the expected speed range of mediocre USB 3.0 flash drives.

Also, transfer speeds can vary wildly based on what you are doing, so I don't know what to think of your testing method. If you copy a single 1GB file it is many, many times faster than copying 4000 250KB files that add up to 1GB.

Can you test with Black Magic please? That will provide a more normalized figure for comparison with everyone's reported numbers. Black Magic reports that I get about 160MB/s with a Seagate 3TB USB 3.0 desktop backup drive. For comparison, the same drive gets about 170MB/s on my 2012 Mac Mini USB 3 port, so I know the card is performing about the same as a native Apple solution. If you can test your flash drive on a different USB 3.0 computer, it would tell you whether the flash is just slow or if you might have a problem with the card.

Any cheaper single 3TB USB3 hard drives that are confirmed to work with this card?

I actually use two Seagate 3TB drive on my PFU3-2P and they both work fine, so I don't think this is a brand compatibility issue.

There are a few troubleshooting steps you can do:

• Maybe the card is bad. Try other drives on the card and see if they have the same problem.
• Maybe the drive is going bad and it only shows symptoms at USB 3.0 speeds. Check the "SMART" status of the drive. Disk Utility will only report SMART on internal drives, so you need this. Try other USB 3.0 computers if you can.
• If you can put the data elsewhere temporarily, do so and try formatting the drive fresh while connected over USB 3.0.

 

[crjackson2134]

There is more going on than just an eject issue. When I tried to mount the drive tonight it would search endlessly for the entire contents. Sizes were greyed out but the contents of those folders were not displayed. Then I got the "Eject before unplug" message out of the blue, even without unplugging it.

At my second attempt, the drive would mount faster than the first time and it displayed all contents. I then tried to copy 34GB of data from that USB3 drive to an internal SSD. It was cruising at 200 MB/s until 31GB, then it stopped copying. When I stopped the copying popup with the "x", nothing happened. Ejecting of course would not work as the volume is "in use".

It's a pity because this is a backup drive that I was keen on connecting to this card, to allow for faster backup times. I also wanted to use it for swapping temporary large amounts of data when repartitioning disks. Apparently this drive won't work with the orico PFU3-2P controller.

Would this (or any of the G Technology single or dual drives) run well on the Orico PFU3-2P?

Any cheaper single 3TB USB3 hard drives that are confirmed to work with this card?

I honestly don't know, but I've not heard of any problems personally with that particular unit.

For VERY LARGE file transfers (Mostly scheduled backups) I plug those drives into my RocketU 1144CM USB 3.0 Raid card. I've never had any problems with ANY storage devices no matter how hard I bang on that thing. It's a tank! but meant for storage devices only (and a few card readers and storage docks).

For misc. stuff, I use the ORICO PFU3-2P without additional power. I haven't done any prolonged file transfer testing. I've heard of other cards dropping off as well with really large file transfers. I don't know what causes this but I suspect the chipset is overheating (just an uneducated guess). When I get a chance, I try a multi-Terabyte transfer on the ORICO PFU3-2P and let you know what happens. Honestly this is a $15 card, if you need to hit it that hard on a regular basis, I'd get one of the others. How about providing the additional power and see if that helps. Perhaps file transfers this large are the achilles heel that forces more power input on some cards. Remember, even among the same make/model quality varies. It might need power, it might need to be replaced.

 

[OSXphoto]

I actually use two Seagate 3TB drive on my PFU3-2P and they both work fine, so I don't think this is a brand compatibility issue.

There are a few troubleshooting steps you can do:

• Maybe the card is bad. Try other drives on the card and see if they have the same problem.
• Maybe the drive is going bad and it only shows symptoms at USB 3.0 speeds. Check the "SMART" status of the drive. Disk Utility will only report SMART on internal drives, so you need this. Try other USB 3.0 computers if you can.
• If you can put the data elsewhere temporarily, do so and try formatting the drive fresh while connected over USB 3.0.

Thank you for your info! The SAT SMART driver for Mountain Lion needs to be compiled and I'm not very tech savvy so I'm not sure if I'll manage to get that to work.

My Samsung 830 (in a OWC enclosure) has two partitions. I reformatted the second partition and wrote 18GB worth of RAW files to the drive. It performed the task in 86 seconds, or 223MB per second. Writing that folder back to an internal SSD took 77 seconds, or 250MB per second.

I also have a Sonnet USB3 card reader that gave me significant problems with the CalDigit 2 port USB3 controller, but it worked well on the ORICO PFU3-2P.

The ORICO PFU3-2P seems to do well with 2 other devices so it's probably OK.

I have no other USB3 computers, but I'll take the drive to a friend's house and test it on his 2013 rMBP. Unless anyone thinks that could mess up his computer.

 

[OSXphoto]

I honestly don't know, but I've not heard of any problems personally with that particular unit. […] Honestly this is a $15 card, if you need to hit it that hard on a regular basis, I'd get one of the others.

Well yes I would like to be able to do large file transfers to ext drives. But I am not limited to USB3 devices. So my question is whether I could also get a eSATA card for that. I read the entire topic so I know about the CalDigit Fasta6 not being the fastest.

Is there a simple but solid eSATA-only card for the Mac Pro that offers sustained and fast transfer speeds? Or is eSATA really something from the past?

 

[LeicaM8]

Thanks for the input!
Your info has been quite helpful.
I downloaded the Blackmagic App and discovered my External SSD IS quite variable in speed ranging from 40-125mb/s. It took some more googling, but discovered that this drive is only fast depending on what test is used and how crowded the drive is. I also discovered my external drive housings are of uneven throughput as well, but acceptable to me considering how full they are at the moment.
All in All, I am satisfied with the performance of the Orico card your thread helped me successfully (and easily) install in my MacPro.
Kudos.
Richard in Michigan

That seems really slow, but it is hard to say without knowing which flash drive you have. Most USB 3.0 flash drives, even from big names, are cheap crap and 80-85MB/s is actually quite normal. A USB 3.0 Sandisk Extreme flash drive on the other hand can do about 200MB/s or more. Without further information, I suspect your flash drive is the problem simply because it's right in the expected speed range of mediocre USB 3.0 flash drives.


[/LIST]

 

[ActionableMango]

Thank you for your info! The SAT SMART driver for Mountain Lion needs to be compiled and I'm not very tech savvy so I'm not sure if I'll manage to get that to work.

Actually for ML there is a ZIP file with a disk image installer. Scroll down a bit to the README section. It's near the top of that section.

Honestly I have not used it myself though, so I cannot speak to how well it works or not. I notice in the notes that not all USB enclosures work.

 

[OSXphoto]

Actually for ML there is a ZIP file with a disk image installer. Scroll down a bit to the README section. It's near the top of that section.

Honestly I have not used it myself though, so I cannot speak to how well it works or not. I notice in the notes that not all USB enclosures work.

It took a day to copy the contents to another drive (USB2 - slow). I installed version 0.7 from the source you directed me to. When connected to USB2, the SMART status in DU now says "Gecontroleerd" (which is dutch for "all is OK" I guess because it says the same for my other drives' SMART status) so the SMART driver works.

When connected to USB3 Orico card, SMART status is also OK. So there must be another problem.

I partitioned the drive (while connected to the Orico) in 3 partitions using DU. Now I'll do some testing with file transfers.
Test #1: A folder containing 9,331 small JPEGs (17,84GB) simple copy using Finder - OK
Test #2: A folder containing 5,845 images (mixed: RAWs and JPEGs) (44,82GB): fails at 15,21GB
Test #3: Same folder, now copy using CCC: fails at 10,91GB. The drive is ejected by the system (not by me) and CCC reports that the "activation point of the volume has been changed".

So the reformat didn't work as desired. My next step is to try the drive at another USB3 computer.

 

[ActionableMango]

It took a day to copy the contents to another drive (USB2 - slow). I installed version 0.7 from the source you directed me to. When connected to USB2, the SMART status in DU now says "Gecontroleerd" (which is dutch for "all is OK" I guess because it says the same for my other drives' SMART status) so the SMART driver works.

When connected to USB3 Orico card, SMART status is also OK. So there must be another problem.

I partitioned the drive (while connected to the Orico) in 3 partitions using DU. Now I'll do some testing with file transfers.
Test #1: A folder containing 9,331 small JPEGs (17,84GB) simple copy using Finder - OK
Test #2: A folder containing 5,845 images (mixed: RAWs and JPEGs) (44,82GB): fails at 15,21GB
Test #3: Same folder, now copy using CCC: fails at 10,91GB. The drive is ejected by the system (not by me) and CCC reports that the "activation point of the volume has been changed".

So the reformat didn't work as desired. My next step is to try the drive at another USB3 computer.

I'm starting to guess that you have a bum card and your drive is fine.

 

[OSXphoto]

I'm starting to guess that you have a bum card and your drive is fine.

You may be right. The drive I tested on a 2013 15" rMBP full spec and it performed OK. it could copy 60GB of images in 8 minutes no problem.

I could try to power the card (as was written in the instructions). Do you think that this could work?

The CF card reader works very well on this Orico card. If for nothing else, the 25 Euros are worth it already. My theory is that a CF card reader doesn't need much power but a hard drive does. So that could indeed point towards a need for a power cable.

I'm looking forward to your opinion in this case.

If this card cannot be used with hard drives, maybe I should get a RocketU 1144CM. The CalDigit product I had wasn't that good, so I'm inclined to try something else.

 

[ActionableMango]

I could try to power the card (as was written in the instructions). Do you think that this could work?

I don't know, but I honestly don't think so. I assume the external Seagate you are using is self-powered with it's own power supply?

Tell you what, I'll do a big copy to a bus-powered drive this Sunday and see what happens. That should stress the power on the card over a prolonged time.

If mine fails too, I'd assume a design problem with the card. If mine passes, I'll assume yours is defective and in that case I'd suggest you ask for a replacement/exchange.

 

[Gav Mack]

Guys, no offence, but this thread reads like one on a hackintosh forum .

All things considered, is there any Mac or OSX version that runs all common USB 3.0 devices without possible issues ?

Only 'hacking' power solutions for the card in reality, no kexts, dsdt or anything like hackintosh which is software but that's a problem common to the all the Mac Pro towers if you need more juice for the PCIe cards. A one off job and unless you are running something which needs more than 10a 5/12v in total because you use splitters off the power extension for every add card that needs power bar GPU's.

The fresco cards like the Inateck and Orico share the same usb drivers as OSX. If you don't want to run the cable buy a 2 port Orico and get a pair of usb 3.0 hubs for both ports. Job done.

 

[OSXphoto]

What about these:
RocketU 1022AM: http://www.hptmac.com/product.php?_index=78
RocketU 1144E: http://www.hptmac.com/product.php?_index=110

 

[crjackson2134]

What about these:
RocketU 1022AM: http://www.hptmac.com/product.php?_index=78
RocketU 1144E: http://www.hptmac.com/product.php?_index=110

The RocketU 1022AM is kind of old and only "Supports OS X 10.5 - 10.7.4"

The 1144E is probably decent,
Operating Systems: MacOS X 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9
Driver version: v1.1.0

It does require PCIE 2.0 x4

 

[monokakata]

What about these:
RocketU 1022AM: http://www.hptmac.com/product.php?_index=78
RocketU 1144E: http://www.hptmac.com/product.php?_index=110

I have the Rocket 1144CM you mentioned earlier, and reason I got it was that the CalDigit 2 port card never worked right for me - kernel panics, for example. I do see that CalDigit has a new driver package for it, so I might reinstall and see what happens.

The 1144CM works well. Most of the time my Lexar USB3 card reader won't mount when I insert a card. But if I unplug it (at the reader end) and replug, it comes up. I can live with that. My USB3 drives in enclosures all work as expected, with only the rare failure to mount. I use one of them with SuperDuper! to backup a 3 TB drive. That works properly. Occasionally I zero out the backup drive and it takes 4-5 hours to make another copy. But it keeps chugging along and has never ejected during copy. The 1144CM is expensive, though. It does work with 10.9.

 

[OSXphoto]

I have the Rocket 1144CM you mentioned [...]

Hi, thank you for sharing your experience

The 1144CM works well. My USB3 drives in enclosures all work as expected, with only the rare failure to mount. I use one of them with SuperDuper! to backup a 3 TB drive. That works properly.

That would be good enough for me, but...

Occasionally I zero out the backup drive and it takes 4-5 hours to make another copy. But it keeps chugging along and has never ejected during copy. The 1144CM is expensive, though. It does work with 10.9.

This would be a serious No-Go for me as I have one backup drive that holds files that I have nowhere else on any other drive so they would be lost forever. For a card this expensive (190 Euros here in the Netherlands, so about 230 USD) I would expect flawless operation. Maybe I expect too much...

Most of the time my Lexar USB3 card reader won't mount when I insert a card. But if I unplug it (at the reader end) and replug, it comes up. I can live with that.

I just ordered a fast CF card to see how the Orico performs with that. I have a Sonnet USB3 card reader that ate some cards when used with the CalDigit USB3 card I once had a year ago. I sent that CalDigit card back but the card reader I kept.

I am seriously considering getting a eSATA card instead of USB3. I know eSATA is not as fast as USB3 can be, but I prefer to be 100% stable and accept 100-150 MB/s. In that scenario I'll keep the Orico USB3 just for the Sonnet card reader.

Can anyone tell me if there are eSATA cards that work 100% reliably with the Mac Pro 5,1?

Thanks a lot!