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shortcut3d

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2011
1,112
15
I joined the club and ordered a Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt 2.5" adapter. I plan on using it as expansion for my HTPC. One of the LaCies is likely to go on eBay. Modded?
 

shortcut3d

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2011
1,112
15
I decided that I would jump in the queue on Friday and ordered directly from Seagate. It's good to see there is a demand. Maybe prices will drop quickly.
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,365
249
Howell, New Jersey
i am hoping to test a lot of drives with it;

1)patriot pyro

2)crucial m4

3) intel 320

4)samsung 830

5)samsung 810

6)samsung 800

are the ssds I have

Some Hitachi and toshiba hdds 2.5 inch type


and last but not least I am going to see if a 3.5 inch will work I have my doubts that it will.
 

shortcut3d

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2011
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Thanks Philipma...

I did more test on the LaCie and there is clearly a limitation of the hardware / firmware. Even though the controller is a SATA III part and with proper drivers it's limited to SATA II speeds. My results are detailed on the LaCie threads.

My expectation is the Seagate will suffer from the same driver issues. My hope is they did it properly with SATA III speeds. If so, both LaCies are going to get replaced in favor of large single SSDs. The IOPS on these new SSDs are good sub for RAID arrays.
 

fgullama

macrumors member
Jul 23, 2011
40
0
okay I have a shipping date with a tracking number it comes this thur. I will post results soon as poss.


I'm looking forward to your findings. I'm pretty curious as to whether you will be able to enable TRIM as well. I believe I will have to wait another couple of weeks for mine as it didn't make it out for the initial shipment :mad:

I have a Corsair GT 240gb that's getting lonely!

Frank
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,365
249
Howell, New Jersey
It is here!! real fast some photos

notice first problem is any 2.5 inch hdd will slide into the sata connector but these units are designed to use a portable goflex drive that has an exposed sata connection so the naked 2.5 inch drives leave a gap, easy fix a 6 dollar silicone case from ebay
 

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philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,365
249
Howell, New Jersey
note to mods I will have many photos and screen shots so I may break the double post rule. if you look at this screen shot you see a blackmagic disk speed test taken of mac HD2. mac hd2 is a partition on the seagate stae121. if you look to the left 3 yellow volumes ;

mac hd2 clone 2 2
mac hd2 clone 2
Mac hd2 clone this is the seagate stae121


next to them is lion osx on intel 600 this is the lacie lbd. the samsung ssd is an older 800 model so scores are 220 and 170 pretty good for the ssd. and this shows the seagate can be daisy chained. here is a photo of the setup.



I tried booting the seagate stae121. mac mini ---- lacie-------- seagate


is the setup and it does boot! through a lacie lbd daisy- chained to the seagate. so now my next test will be to remove the lacie and play with just the seagate121


okay it boots just mini to stae121. next will be a few virgin ssds.
 

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shortcut3d

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2011
1,112
15
Glad to see the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt Adapter finally arrived. Still no shipping information here.

I'm on the edge of my seat to see if you can break SATA II (3Gbps) speeds with a single SSD.

I'm also curious to know if the controller is recognized in System Profiler. It was theorized to be the problem with the LaCie, but I dismissed that by properly installing the drivers in Windows 7 x64 for the LaCie Marvell controller. I actually saw a reduction in performance from the generic Microsoft AHCI 1.0.
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,365
249
Howell, New Jersey
Glad to see the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt Adapter finally arrived. Still no shipping information here.

I'm on the edge of my seat to see if you can break SATA II (3Gbps) speeds with a single SSD.

I'm also curious to know if the controller is recognized in System Profiler. It was theorized to be the problem with the LaCie, but I dismissed that by properly installing the drivers in Windows 7 x64 for the LaCie Marvell controller. I actually saw a reduction in performance from the generic Microsoft AHCI 1.0.

well a new out of the box crucial just did 382 read and 200 write.

now the crucial 128gb m4 ssd is a very stable sata III type ssd. ie not the fastest but i got a reading of 382 and that breaks the sata II barrier with ease> specs are 415 max read and 175 max write


http://www.crucial.com/pdf/Tech_specs-letter_Crucial_m4_ssd_v3-11-11_online.pdf.



I will drop in a samsung 830 series tomorrow.


after an hour of tests this product looks good.

I am doing an internet download to the crucial 128gb ssd so I won't have any results on the machine until tomorrow. I will run the machine with a few more ssd's I want to see how stable it is. I also want to see what it can read and write.

I have one of these and it is fast 520 max read 400 max write
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-7PC512D/AM-specs


I also have this drive a patriot pyro 120gb it specs to 550 read and 515 write

http://patriotmemory.com/products/specs/Pyro.pdf


what interests me is will this piece of gear 'like' one ssd better then another. there is no question that the lacie little big disk runs best with a pair of samsung series 470/810 ssds either 128gb or 256gb better speeds lower power use then any thing I tested. far better then the intels inside of them that lacie sells.

If this seagate works well with a samsung 512gb you can build an add-on setup that will kill.
 

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shortcut3d

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2011
1,112
15
Great to hear the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt 2.5" adapter can exceed SATA II (3.0Gbps) speeds. Finally, a fast affordable Thunderbolt solution for SSDs.

I've opened several GoFlex Pro enclosures without any problem. I may just swap out a 500GB 7200RPM Seagate HDD in a GoFlex Pro enclosure for a 512GB Samsung 830. Now I just need to find a buyer for one of two modified LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk (2 x 256GB Samsung 830 or 2 x 240GB OCZ Vertex 3). Unfortunately, the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt 2.5" adapter does not have a second Thunderbolt port to daisy chain a 2011 Mac mini server to 2010 27" iMac's mini Displayport, so I have to keep one LaCie.
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,365
249
Howell, New Jersey
Great to hear the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt 2.5" adapter can exceed SATA II (3.0Gbps) speeds. Finally, a fast affordable Thunderbolt solution for SSDs.

I've opened several GoFlex Pro enclosures without any problem. I may just swap out a 500GB 7200RPM Seagate HDD in a GoFlex Pro enclosure for a 512GB Samsung 830. Now I just need to find a buyer for one of two modified LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk (2 x 256GB Samsung 830 or 2 x 240GB OCZ Vertex 3). Unfortunately, the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt 2.5" adapter does not have a second Thunderbolt port to daisy chain a 2011 Mac mini server to 2010 27" iMac's mini Displayport, so I have to keep one LaCie.

It finished the download and now has a clean lion install on it. I will run with it tonight I will put the samsung on tomorrow . so far so good.
 

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Riverrun

macrumors regular
Jul 11, 2007
145
1
~
Thanks for these Philip, for taking the time and the trouble. Much appreciated. The results look promising.
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,365
249
Howell, New Jersey
you are welcome here is the black magic for the samsung 512gb series 830.


this test is with ( mac mini ) > ( Lacie )> daisychained to > ( seagate 512gb samsung ).

very good scores but it is passing through the lacie LBD. 357 read 296 write. I will test with a direct connection later today.



I have a problem testing with a direct connection may be due to different lions 10.7.2 on the mini's hdd does not allow the samsung to test. but 10.7.3 with the lacie as the boot drive allowed a test. it will take a while to do an update.

the 10.7.3 was used to format the samsung. and the 10.7.3 was used to test the samsung and that test works. so if I pull the lacie (which has the intel 10.7.3 osx) and use the internal hdd which has the oem 10.7.2 osx the seagate does not see the samsung. In fact the samsung drops its connection.

I am going to clone the lacie LBD with the intel (10.7.3) to the internal in the mini.

Then pull the lacie out boot with the updated internal and I hope it works. this will be late tonight at best most likely early on fri.

I know some people have had a few issues with the 10.7.3 not working with everything. it could be the formatting is not backwards compatible to 10.7.2 I hope!
 

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shortcut3d

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2011
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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

Great results with the Samsung 830. It's better than the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk without RAID 0. It's almost as fast as two Samsung 830s in RAID 0 in the LaCie. In fact, the write performance is better.
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
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Howell, New Jersey
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

Great results with the Samsung 830. It's better than the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk without RAID 0. It's almost as fast as two Samsung 830s in RAID 0 in the LaCie. In fact, the write performance is better.

yeah but it ran through he lacie first then the seagate. I am not sure what is wrong with the direct hookup yet.

I won't have the internal hdd set to 10.7.3 until another 20 or 30 minutes. I will be annoyed if there is a real problem.


Still having some kind of a problem with the 512gb samsung series 830.

So I am not sure if the problem is the ssd the format done on the ssd the seagate or the firmware for t-bolt. if you look at the t-bolt tree the lacie has the same cable firmware as the seagate but the port firmware is 0.1.4 on the Lacie and 0.2.4 on the seagate.

what has happened is the samsung is dropping off when I try to do a black magic speed test. and just have the seagate in the chain. Sooo for now don't run out and grab the seagate.

I think this is all from a bad format done by the disk utility I did a second format and things seem better.

I was able to run an xbench of the 512 samsung(on sea gate) and the 600 intel(on lacie) seagate/samsung win easy.

it took me a long time to figure out the problem but I did. here are black magic tests for the

samsung


mac mini> seagate direct all bus power. 360/ 320 really nice scores.
 

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philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,365
249
Howell, New Jersey

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shortcut3d

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2011
1,112
15
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

What about flipping the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter over so the drive is on the bottom? Will that improve stability of the connection?
 

fgullama

macrumors member
Jul 23, 2011
40
0
Seagate Bootable On It's Own?

yeah but it ran through he lacie first then the seagate. I am not sure what is wrong with the direct hookup yet.

I won't have the internal hdd set to 10.7.3 until another 20 or 30 minutes. I will be annoyed if there is a real problem.


Still having some kind of a problem with the 512gb samsung series 830.

So I am not sure if the problem is the ssd the format done on the ssd the seagate or the firmware for t-bolt. if you look at the t-bolt tree the lacie has the same cable firmware as the seagate but the port firmware is 0.1.4 on the Lacie and 0.2.4 on the seagate.

what has happened is the samsung is dropping off when I try to do a black magic speed test. and just have the seagate in the chain. Sooo for now don't run out and grab the seagate.

I think this is all from a bad format done by the disk utility I did a second format and things seem better.

I was able to run an xbench of the 512 samsung(on sea gate) and the 600 intel(on lacie) seagate/samsung win easy.

it took me a long time to figure out the problem but I did. here are black magic tests for the

samsung


mac mini> seagate direct all bus power. 360/ 320 really nice scores.


Thanks For your very informative posts here philipma1957. Very much appreciated! I hope you find the Seagate bootable as a standalone unit with an SSD. I'm currently using my Corsair GT 240gb in a firewire enclosure as my main boot drive for my 2011 iMac until the Seagate arrives (it is noticibly faster in day to day operations then the 1tb internal HDD, even using firewire). Hopefully it will show up in a week or so (supposedly the next 300+ batch of adapters is supposed to ship out February 23-24th).

Please keep us posted!

Frank
 
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