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Velocity Solo X2 Now Available

Hmmmm....

Wonder if they fixed the flaws

I bought one for my 1,1 (Now sold)

Mounting the drive flexes the PCB

The SATA connector/header sits too far off the PCB - farther than the drive does when mounted.... so, they should have shortened it a little, or provided washers for between the drive and PCB to avoid the flex

I'm concerned that the flex will cause premature failure of the card due to connections/solder joints of the surface mount components on the rear failing

Also, the rear of the card was laid out for SATA headers that are not installed.... wondering why they are not making this with another sata header on the rear for a 3rd drive... maybe some day???

Not sure the speed difference really justified the price differential ??? (Costs more than double)
 
I guess I'm not really sure what the attraction to this product is. Does it increase speed vs. just attaching to a mac pro drive bay? Can you attach 2 ssd to it and raid them?

Says limited to 500mb/sec, so doesn't seem as robust as excellsior from OWC.

However, at least in my mac pro (3.1) due to having graphics card and adapcted raid card I'm out of 16 lane slots anyway so the excellsior can't help me.

I would very much like to get a reliable ~1TB SSD partition/drive going however for my photo editing catalog.
 
pprior said:
I guess I'm not really sure what the attraction to this product is. Does it increase speed vs. just attaching to a mac pro drive bay? Can you attach 2 ssd to it and raid them?
.
Click to expand...

Maybe because no Mac Pros have a SATAIII port and this one basically gives you two (550MBps is basically maxing out SATAIII) and allows you to use all of your hard drive bays for 3.5" drives. It's a bit of a glorified SATAIII card really, but with the added feature that it doesn't take up a bay in your Mac Pro.
 
Einz said:
Too bad it doesn't support 2008 model.
Click to expand...

It does. Supports ALL Mac Pro's - but will only be BOOTABLE in the 4,1 and 5,1

Still an attractive product for data drives for those who need the performance.

But the price jump is making it less attractive - go buy a 256 SSD and the VSX2, and you may as well have just bought a Revodrive or similar

The one that bums me out is this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mac-Array-S...ltDomain_0&hash=item1e6f421bf9#ht_1803wt_1399
Would be perfect if it was bootable, and if it was 64 bit kernel compliant. Fail.
I hope someone updates a version of this. Would be a heck of a way to go
 
Last edited:
TableSyrup said:
The one that bums me out is this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mac-Array-S...ltDomain_0&hash=item1e6f421bf9#ht_1803wt_1399
Would be perfect if it was bootable, and if it was 64 bit kernel compliant. Fail.
I hope someone updates a version of this. Would be a heck of a way to go
Click to expand...

I actually contacted Apricorn about that 4 array and asked in 2011 when the Sata III would be available and they said around the Fall of 2012? We will see - - Would be a good route as long as the chip is stable??
4x SSD RAID 0 = sweet
if
Bootable:p
 
Yeah, I just asked them if it's coming back. It's not on their site, but they show the photo of it in a Mac Pro right on the page the velocities are listed on....

I really really want to run one of them jokers in my 5,1 for data. For me, seems like my best option

(They're doing an RMA for me, they said my situation with the pcb flexing when the drive is mounted is an isolated incident)
 
Last edited:
Reply from Apricorn today:

We previously sold the PCIe Drive Array which was a 4 drive card but the market was very small for it and we ended up discontinuing the line. This product was replaced in essence by the Velocity Solo card. Unfortunately because of the lack of demand we will probably not release another 4 card array in the future.

Sincerely,

(Name Anonymized)
Apricorn Support
 
TableSyrup said:
Reply from Apricorn today:

We previously sold the PCIe Drive Array which was a 4 drive card but the market was very small for it and we ended up discontinuing the line. This product was replaced in essence by the Velocity Solo card. Unfortunately because of the lack of demand we will probably not release another 4 card array in the future.

Sincerely,

(Name Anonymized)
Apricorn Support
Click to expand...
Dash it!
 
TableSyrup said:
Hmmmm....

Wonder if they fixed the flaws

I bought one for my 1,1 (Now sold)

Mounting the drive flexes the PCB

The SATA connector/header sits too far off the PCB - farther than the drive does when mounted.... so, they should have shortened it a little, or provided washers for between the drive and PCB to avoid the flex

I'm concerned that the flex will cause premature failure of the card due to connections/solder joints of the surface mount components on the rear failing

Also, the rear of the card was laid out for SATA headers that are not installed.... wondering why they are not making this with another sata header on the rear for a 3rd drive... maybe some day???

Not sure the speed difference really justified the price differential ??? (Costs more than double)
Click to expand...

Ok I have my new X2 model now and its in the machine so I thought I'd comment on how it's working:

- I have 2 Crucial M4 256GB SSDs on it (in RAID0) with 10.8 installed and its working and booting just fine

- I don't notice and flex on the PCB at all with the one drive installed on it - don't know it thats a difference in design or just you had a bad one.

- I still have more benchmarks to run but preliminary ones I've done definitely show some good speeds with the two in RAID0 - I personally don't think it would really be worth it for performance alone if you are only planning on using one drive with it.
 
matthewtoney said:
Ok I have my new X2 model now and its in the machine so I thought I'd comment on how it's working:

- I have 2 Crucial M4 256GB SSDs on it (in RAID0) with 10.8 installed and its working and booting just fine

- I don't notice and flex on the PCB at all with the one drive installed on it - don't know it thats a difference in design or just you had a bad one.

- I still have more benchmarks to run but preliminary ones I've done definitely show some good speeds with the two in RAID0 - I personally don't think it would really be worth it for performance alone if you are only planning on using one drive with it.
Click to expand...

So what speeds are you seeing? (Just download the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test from the App store for free and post a screen)
 
matthewtoney said:
Ok I have my new X2 model now and its in the machine so I thought I'd comment on how it's working:

- I have 2 Crucial M4 256GB SSDs on it (in RAID0) with 10.8 installed and its working and booting just fine

- I don't notice and flex on the PCB at all with the one drive installed on it - don't know it thats a difference in design or just you had a bad one.

- I still have more benchmarks to run but preliminary ones I've done definitely show some good speeds with the two in RAID0 - I personally don't think it would really be worth it for performance alone if you are only planning on using one drive with it.
Click to expand...

Did you get two x2 cards? Or did you use the sata 3 connection and power source from optibay to power the second raid 0 m4 drive?

I definitely want to get this, great price point as well. Right my crucial m4 boot drive is connect to my second optibay connection.
 
letscopro said:
I just ordered the new Velocity Solo X2. I'll be using it with an Adata SX900 SSD as my boot drive.

Hopefully I'll get it this week. Performance results to follow.

http://www.apricorn.com/products/desktop-ssd-hdd-upgrade-kits/vel-solox2.html
Click to expand...

I installed the Velocity x2 yesterday and I have to say I'm not that impressed with what I'm seeing. There is a definite increase in the read time, but the write time is almost the same as the internal sata as you can see from the image. The ADATA SX900 maximum sequential read and write speeds are 550/530 MB per second.

I was expecting closer to 500 MB per second on both read and write speeds.

I'm waiting to hear back from Apricorn about this.
 

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letscopro said:
I installed the Velocity x2 yesterday and I have to say I'm not that impressed with what I'm seeing. There is a definite increase in the read time, but the write time is almost the same as the internal sata as you can see from the image. The ADATA SX900 maximum sequential read and write speeds are 550/530 MB per second.

I was expecting closer to 500 MB per second on both read and write speeds.

I'm waiting to hear back from Apricorn about this.
Click to expand...

That's disappointing for sure... let us know what Apricorn has to say for themselves.

It will be interesting to see what matthewtoney has to report with his dual M4s.
 
letscopro said:
I installed the Velocity x2 yesterday and I have to say I'm not that impressed with what I'm seeing. There is a definite increase in the read time, but the write time is almost the same as the internal sata as you can see from the image. The ADATA SX900 maximum sequential read and write speeds are 550/530 MB per second.

I was expecting closer to 500 MB per second on both read and write speeds.

I'm waiting to hear back from Apricorn about this.
Click to expand...
Did you noticed that the boot of your Mac was much slower with this card as native SATA II to your computer?
 
VirtualRain said:
That's disappointing for sure... let us know what Apricorn has to say for themselves.

It will be interesting to see what matthewtoney has to report with his dual M4s.
Click to expand...

For some reason the Black Magic Test is refusing to run on my RAID0 stripe on the X2. (tells me that drive is read-only, although it plainly is not - anyone with any idea on that?)

I've just run a bunch of tests on all my disks though in Xbench and I'm getting read/writes on it with the X2 very similar to what the other person was seeing. In my case - 566MB/s read and 579MB/s write. :(

----------
chiefroastbeef said:
Did you get two x2 cards? Or did you use the sata 3 connection and power source from optibay to power the second raid 0 m4 drive?

I definitely want to get this, great price point as well. Right my crucial m4 boot drive is connect to my second optibay connection.
Click to expand...


No this is just on 1 X2 card and yes I'm using the power from the optical bay to power the second drive connected to it.
 
TableSyrup said:
It does. Supports ALL Mac Pro's - but will only be BOOTABLE in the 4,1 and 5,1

Still an attractive product for data drives for those who need the performance.

But the price jump is making it less attractive - go buy a 256 SSD and the VSX2, and you may as well have just bought a Revodrive or similar

The one that bums me out is this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mac-Array-S...ltDomain_0&hash=item1e6f421bf9#ht_1803wt_1399
Would be perfect if it was bootable, and if it was 64 bit kernel compliant. Fail.
I hope someone updates a version of this. Would be a heck of a way to go
Click to expand...

No point of getting one, if you can't boot it.
 
Einz said:
No point of getting one, if you can't boot it.
Click to expand...

Of course there is a point.... The disk speed of up to 4 drive raid? For DATA access?? Of course..... if you need more storage, this is a killer way to add 4 drives, at pretty awesome speed, for DATA - think Audio/Video

But..... no 64 bit. To me, that's the killer. I'd go $200 for one of them jokers in 64 bit - even if it wasn't bootable..... I don't need it bootable.
 
letscopro said:
I installed the Velocity x2 yesterday and I have to say I'm not that impressed with what I'm seeing. There is a definite increase in the read time, but the write time is almost the same as the internal sata as you can see from the image. The ADATA SX900 maximum sequential read and write speeds are 550/530 MB per second.

I was expecting closer to 500 MB per second on both read and write speeds.

I'm waiting to hear back from Apricorn about this.
Click to expand...

All sand force drives perform poorly in black magic. Sand force drives (unless using toggle NAND) do poorly in incompressible data writes which I believe is what black magic uses. Check these benchmarks out from Anandtech.,,,

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5710/the-adata-xpg-sx900-128gb-review-maximizing-sandforce-capacity/3
 
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