MP09: How to make a bootable 6 HDD + SSD rig - lowcost with Highpoint 620

Thanks for the info. I went ahead and got the drive and like it very much, though its running in the Sata II bus in my Mac Pro now. I figure a new machine has to be coming in 3 months or so.

ppayne said:

I figure a new machine has to be coming in 3 months or so.

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This is extremely doubtful, as Apple will wait for new CPU's from Intel, and those aren't scheduled to release until Q4 2011.

Realistically, we're probably looking at March of 2012 before a system is actually shipped, and it could be later than that if there's any problems.

seisend said:

hello everybody. small update. I tested the vertex 3 with the Highpoint rocket 620 and it actually DOES boot into OSX with no problems ! There are no drivers available for this card anyway. my mac pro sees the device as "unknown AHCI standard controller" listed.. I will post some detailed information soon as I am setting up my system from ground new.

I think my new setup could be quite interesting for some people here... stay tuned.

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Couple of questions:

1. How old is yours, and did you use a firmware update off of their site?
2. Can you verify/check to see if it will also boot Windows?

Thanks.

seisend said:

I didn't update my card with a firmware. I didn't know there is any firmware available on their site either, also their overview of products and downloadable content is really confusing...

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I don't know if they've a firmware update for it or not either, particularly given the haphazard support/difficulty finding drivers and firmware for their products.

seisend said:

I ordered this card when I opened this thread. That would be the 12th of April.

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seisend said:

I will check if it is bootable into Windows.

I did some short speed tests with the Vertex 3 via Highpoint Rocket 620. ... The results were not SATA III like, like on my MBP where I get around 500MB's R/W. More infos and tests on that later, as well

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It will be appreciated. Thanks.

Here are the specs on the card. It's not raid.. Its states it's AHC several times. It's only $24.99 w/free shipping. It's worth a try.. It might work. They have a version for internal and external. Not mixed..


PCI-Express 2.0 x1 (Compatible with PCI-Express 1.0)

Serial ATA III (6.0Gbps) compliant, with speed negotiation Serial ATA II (3Gbps) and Serial ATA I (1.5Gbps)

600MB/s per SATA port

Industry Standard AHCI Compliant

Hot-plug capability

Supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ)

Out-of-the-Box Ready for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X 10.6 and above (Check AHCI detail OS support list)

Compatible with SATA (III, II, I) Hard Drives, SSD, etc

Support up to 2TB Hard Drives

Power Efficient – Going Green Saves Green

RoHS compliant

Cables Sold Separately

seisend said:

hello nanofrog,


I did some short speed tests with the Vertex 3 via Highpoint Rocket 620. ... The results were not SATA III like, like on my MBP where I get around 500MB's R/W. More infos and tests on that later, aswell

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I'm thinking maybe this card is booting in legacy mode with no drivers or on-chip drivers for Snow Leopard? It does mention sata 1.5 in the specs. maybe it is backwards compatible and runs slower without driver support? It would not make any sense that it could boot OSX without either drivers or on board firmware that enabled that.

I spoke to Highpoint and they insist that that card doesn't have mac support, nor does the non-bootable mac version of the 6G external card they sell. I reason that somehow the card you have is running in some sort of legacy or hybrid mode which is evidence from the screenshots.

It would be nice if a 6G internal card could deliver anywhere near normal 6G speeds and be bootable, but I'm afraid we will have to wait for the new MP for that unfortunately.
Even my tests with a "bootable" ATTO card weren't too good.

nano, what do you think is going on there?

xgman said:

I'm thinking maybe this card is booting in legacy mode with no drivers or on-chip drivers for Snow Leopard? It does mention sata 1.5 in the specs. maybe it is backwards compatible and runs slower without driver support? It would not make any sense that it could boot OSX without either drivers or on board firmware that enabled that.

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It uses the same Marvell controller as the Newertech 6.0Gb/s SATA card (non-RAID version = Port Multiplier support). They use OS X's SATA drivers, so they don't need their own (were designed to do this from the start). The Newertech RAID version has to use it's own drivers in order to add the Port Multiplier support.

But what's throwing me, is the Highpoint booting OS X. Windows or Linux can boot on a BIOS based card due to the BIOS Emulation layer in the system's firmware (part of the EFI/UEFI specification).

OS X OTOH, requires EFI or EBC (EBC = easier to do, and works in both EFI32 and EFI64 machines - this is how ATI's graphics cards work). So perhaps Highpoint's product is using this instead of BIOS (should see an increase in EBC as a means of providing Boot support, particularly for large disks <greater than 2.19TB = BIOS's limit, usually rounded to 2.2TB>, as more systems are moving to UEFI based firmware).

xgman said:

I spoke to Highpoint and they insist that that card doesn't have mac support, nor does the non-bootable mac version of the 6G external card they sell. I reason that somehow the card you have is running in some sort of legacy or hybrid mode which is evidence from the screenshots.

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It's the firmware that's throwing me (lack of drivers isn't the issue; see above).

I just don't know what it's using for firmware. Another thing to remember, is Highpoint doesn't design or manufacture anything they sell. It's all done by ODM's. So it's possible the particular ODM for this card may have shifted to EBC firmware.

xgman said:

It would be nice if a 6G internal card could deliver anywhere near normal 6G speeds and be bootable, but I'm afraid we will have to wait for the new MP for that unfortunately.
Even my tests with a "bootable" ATTO card weren't too good.

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If you take a closer look, the current crop of 6.0Gb/s SATA cards (i.e. Highpoint and Newertech) are PCIe 2.0 x1, so there's only 500MB/s bandwidth for the entire card.

This will throttle any 6.0Gb/s disk that can exceed 500MB/s. Mechanical is too slow to even saturate 3.0Gb/s (this includes the newer 6.0Gb/s compliant drives, as they're just under the 150MB/s mark right now for sustained throughputs).

I'm not sure where seisend got the mechanical figures from; is it a stripe set?
No single mechanical disk can do that, not even 15k rpm SAS disks.

As per the ATTO, I suspect it was a bit premature (may need updated firmware or drivers) or there's something with the disks you tested with (can't quite recall the exact details).

So why do you think he is only getting 207 on the write test with the card. What is throttling it down? Like I said, I noticed similar lower than sata 2 write speeds when I did the limited testing on the ATTO card using a non vertex3 sata 3 drive which used something other than sandforce. I just wish I understood why these various cards can't even do writes as fast as the native sata 2. Als least the read speeds are higher than sata 2 specs although nowhere near the rated sata 3 speeds.

xgman said:

So why do you think he is only getting 207 on the write test with the card. What is throttling it down? Like I said, I noticed similar lower than SATA 2 write speeds when I did the limited testing on the ATTO card using a non vertex3 SATA 3 drive which used something other than sandforce. I just wish I understood why these various cards can't even do writes as fast as the native SATA 2. At least the read speeds are higher than SATA 2 specs although nowhere near the rated SATA 3 speeds.

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When I look at seisend's SSD figures, both are off, going by reviews (Anand and Legitreviews).

Anand for example, has sequential throughputs (same Vertex 3 120GB model) at the following:

• Read = 323.3MB/s
• Write = 370MB/s

Legitreviews has 512K sequential figures at the following (also Vertex 2 120GB):

• Read = 370.24MB/s
• Write 516.12MB/s

Now I expect part of it (legitreviews for example), is due to the differences in the benchmark (512K vs. larger on the AJA test). But that doesn't explain all of it IMO, as the differences are rather large for the write figures on both benchmarks from the reviews linked (~100MB/s too low for Anand's, and more than that for legitreviews data).

But I'm not sure as to the specifics, particularly what card is in what slot both you and siesend used for the tests, and if anything else was running simultaneously (i.e. Slots 3 & 4 share the same 4x PCIe lanes). Each card is different, which could easily cause differences in performance (Highpoint is using Apple's drivers, ATTO's using their own = not the same drivers, so I don't see parity there <can't conclude that common drivers are the cause>). Even the firmware revisions on both the drives and card matter.

Just too many unknowns ATM.

Further information certainly wouldn't hurt (slots used, what else was running, disk models, and firmware revisions for both the card and drives). It would mean a lot of research, but it could turn up a solid answer in the end.

When I tried it I used the 16x slot 2nd from bottom, just above the vid card. Tried all other slots as well. Didn't try it with my vertex 2 or 3 though. vertex 3 on sata 2 if fast enough while I await new Mac Pros for early next year.

I think there are great differences between plugging in a 6G card in a mac and a comparable card in a PC probably for a variety of reasons. I am getting a bit envious of PC users having native usb3 and native sata 3 for what seems like years. I'm not giving up my MP, but it always seems to be a step or two behind in general technology. Mostly a factor of what Intel dishes (or doesn't dish) up on the workstation/server side of things. Well, that and Apple's arrogance and stubbornness in matters such as usb3 etc. Oh well...

xgman said:

When I tried it I used the 16x slot 2nd from bottom, just above the vid card. Tried all other slots as well. Didn't try it with my vertex 2 or 3 though. vertex 3 on sata 2 if fast enough while I await new Mac Pros for early next year.

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I understand.

It's just that there's not enough information to really go on ATM to try and figure out what's going on in the MP. Need more data.

xgman said:

I think there are great differences between plugging in a 6G card in a mac and a comparable card in a PC probably for a variety of reasons. I am getting a bit envious of PC users having native usb3 and native sata 3 for what seems like years. I'm not giving up my MP, but it always seems to be a step or two behind in general technology. Mostly a factor of what Intel dishes (or doesn't dish) up on the workstation/server side of things. Well, that and Apple's arrogance and stubbornness in matters such as usb3 etc. Oh well...

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It could even be the MP's firmware (not like this hasn't happened before).

As per why Apple doesn't add the additional controllers, I suspect money is the real motivating factor more than pure stubbornness (they want every bit of margin they can get, and additional parts past Intel's Reference Design will reduce this as parts cost money), as they only use Intel's solutions and add a Firewire chip (2006 - current). So you're SATA ports, Ethernet, USB, ... are all in the I/O Controller Hub (ICH). Firewire is the only exception, and it's only there due to Apple's commitment to FW in the past (expect it to be abandoned in the near future due to Thunderbolt).

There's even more USB ports on the chip than Apple makes available (could be money <fewer ports = fewer parts> or "if it's pretty from the back"; and even both).

seisend said:

Looks like it detects it twice, once as no driver installed IDE Controller and once as a AHCI Controller device with drivers installed. I think this is why it boots into OSX? As mentioned, the OSX based Bootdrive is a Vertex 3 120GB standard edition. Nothing else was running while testing. Also tests were done with a clean new installation. No apps installed but system UP TO DATE!

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Maybe, but I'd expect that (no IDE drivers for OS X for that particular system <no legacy support in the SATA drivers = IDE mode>, but AHCI is present in the SATA driver for OS X). Keep in mind, SATA is built off of IDE's protocols (used IDE/PATA's commands; physical layers are totally different, and incompatible without a bridge chip to do the translating).

I wish it were possible to replicate this with others, and see if we couldn't nail down what's going on.

Can you try that card in another MP, and do you know of anyone with a different 6.0Gb/s eSATA card?

I also bought the HighP620 card and connected a boot disk to it but to no avail, it doesn't work to boot from for me (using an OCZ agility 2, just for testing, and MP 2008).

I wonder if it's something to do with your MP2009??

edit: ooh, it might be because I only fitted the card to the PCIe-slots and not to the PCI-e 2.0 one. Might do the trick! Must try it

Bah.. It didn't work! Still no booting from the 620 on a 2008 mp

Looks like new mac pros will be out by August if we are lucky. Hope they get sata 3 working on non Apple drives properly. I have no hope for usb 3 though. Apple is just too stubborn. It will be interesting to see what cpu options Intel delivers for this upgrade.

Boomhowler said:

Bah.. It didn't work! Still no booting from the 620 on a 2008 mp

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Go try the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Preview 4. It may support your card bootable. My Areca ARC-1880LP (BIOS) RAID Controller is also not bootable in Snow Leopard environment but now becomes bootable in Lion environment even without an EFI on the card. Just give it a try. And backup your data first priors to try anything on the 10.7 Developer Build.

seisend said:

@ nano,

i don't know anybody with a MP, as well I don't have any other SATA/eSATA card around.

I made a video to give you guys maybe more detail about everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPDReYS5JR0

edit. it's kind of annoying to me, that it is still not running at full SATA III speed.... well just for booting apps and stuff I think this is enough anyway. I think the whole setup with this PCI-E card is very nice if you want to have your storage all internally without spending too much money ! This is why I made the video. Sorry for saying 1000x "so" in the video Let's see if others get it working,too.

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Theres still not enough information to get a real idea as to what's going on, but I'll mention something (I know I've mentioned it before, but not sure if I did in this thread).

The card is only 1x PCIe 2.0 lanes, which means the card is only good for a max of 500MB/s (and a single drive at that, as if you're trying to run a second drive simultaneously, the bandwidth will be reduced in order to provide bandwidth to both disks).

This still doesn't explain the discrepancies you're seeing with the SSD on it's own (hardware side). But I am wondering if it's something to do with Apple's SATA driver (i.e. might be continually polling the 2nd disk attached to the card often enough to consume the bandwidth, or more likely IMO, indexing <Spotlight> could be accessing the disk often enough you're seeing a reduction in bandwidth). Can't recall if you've turned off Spotlight or not (simple software setting may also fix this, but disconnecting the drive = absolute way spotlight cannot index it to carry out the test). Best I can think of with what information is available anyway....

Fortunately, there's a simple way to test this; pull the data cable from the Green disk from the RocketRAID 620 (even pull the HDD trays on the ICH - shouldn't matter in this case, as they're on separate controllers, but pulling them will rule them out entirely = no second guessing whether or not the results are flawed). Then you'll be able to see if that increases your throughput figures (writes in particular, as the screen shot you've posted are off by quite a bit; ~170MB/s according to review sites' data).

BTW, I'm assuming the OCZ is your boot disk, and the mechanicals are only used for data and backups, so the system will still operate with the OCZ only (as you've indicated it will boot in your system).

seisend said:

yes.

I didn't had the time this morning but I restarted my MP and then ejected all the drives via finder except my Macintosh HD which is the SSD Bootdrive. Exact same results. You think there is a difference when I eject them physically?

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It's possible.

That's why pulling the data connection from all the disks other than the SSD is the one way to rule this out for certain (particularly the mechanical Green disk that's also attached to the 620).