mSATA PCIe SSD controller

I haven't used this particular card but I know Addonics pretty well and they do decent by their products.

Is there any reason to get mSATA as opposed to a card that holds a couple of 2.5" SSD/laptop drives?

phrehdd said:

Is there any reason to get mSATA as opposed to a card that holds a couple of 2.5" SSD/laptop drives?

Click to expand...

Price of mSATA adapter. Sonnet Tempo Pro is $300 and offers +/- the same speed as Addonics one. Addonics 2x mSATA SSD adapter is also known as Lycom PE-126.

Interesting thread! Quad mSATA PCIe SSD But, can it boot OS X and Windows 8 on both 2 SSD's in RAID0?

BDM STUDIOS NL said:

Interesting thread! Quad mSATA PCIe SSD But, can it boot OS X and Windows 8 on both 2 SSD's in RAID0?

Click to expand...

very interesting as I am looking to add to my mac Pro a PCIE SSD solution.
I was leaning towards the usual Apricorn Velocity X2 with regular size SSD, but this Quad mSATA solution seems a better deal as mSATA drives are not that much expensive than the regular 2.5" SSD and possible future expansion (4 sockets).

today's price comparison from Amazon:

• 
  Velocity X2: $89 + 2.5" EVO 500GB: $249 = $338

• 
  Addonics AD4MSPX2: $60 + mSata EVO 500GB: $289 = $349

so the price is similar but the addonics has 3 extra easy space for extra mSATA with RAID0 in the future. I also read in other threads that both cards boot OSX with no issues.

I am leaning towards the addonics solution unless it is slower than the velocity ..
Does anybody know if that card is slower than the Velocity X2 in a 1 disk situation ?

Thanks !

Looks like Lycom is sending more goodies our way via Addonics.

what about this
2x SATA 6Gb/s, PCIe, with RAID and 2-SSD HDD Caddy

anyone tried it yet? Only 30€

sonicbrute said:

what about this
2x SATA 6Gb/s, PCIe, with RAID and 2-SSD HDD Caddy

anyone tried it yet? Only 30€

Click to expand...

this one only have 1x PCIe lane, which mean only running half of the PCIe width, you should get this one with 2x PCIe lane , which is running at full speed up to 10Gb at the PCIe 2.0 slot
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-2-Bay-S...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item3ce10fb284

What about the PCIe solution?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1685821/

paul-n said:

What about the PCIe solution?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1685821/

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It is fast and works great in my MacPro 5,1.

LyCom mSATA controllers seem to be a good alternative for Sonnet and other cards. You can built 2TB RAID 0 array capable up to 1.6GB/s under $1600, where with 2 Sonnet Tempo Pros it's about $2200.

warimono said:

Been looking for a PCIe + SATA setup for my 3,1 and found these:

http://www.addonics.com/category/msata_adapter.php

Anyone ever use 'em?
Price is right and this:

"
Supported OS: any OS with built-in AHCI driver, Windows XP (driver required)
All modern OSs such as Windows 7, 8, Mac OS 10.6 and later and the latest Linux kernel comes with AHCI support
"

Joe O

Click to expand...

I bought the Quad mSata adapter from Addonics. Happy to report you can both BOTH OSX and bootcamp (I have Windows 7 and 8) drives without any issues. Posted earlier in another thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1721573/

I am currently using 2 mSatas in JBOD mode - 1 running Windows 8 boot drive and another one as a video scratch disk for Final Cut. Planning to get another mSata and run the pair in RAID0. From what I have been told, the max speed you can get is close to 700MBs due the card being only a PCI-E 2X.

ShawnF said:

I bought the Quad mSata adapter from Addonics. Happy to report you can both BOTH OSX and bootcamp (I have Windows 7 and 8) drives without any issues. Posted earlier in another thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1721573/

I am currently using 2 mSatas in JBOD mode - 1 running Windows 8 boot drive and another one as a video scratch disk for Final Cut. Planning to get another mSata and run the pair in RAID0. From what I have been told, the max speed you can get is close to 700MBs due the card being only a PCI-E 2X.

Click to expand...

Congrats! Thanks for your feedback and yet another PCIe add-on for my list. Please report back as soon as you have the additional 2 mSATA's. Wonder what the results are for 2 RAID's 0 for both OS X and Windows and if they're both bootable.

~ Cheers

Today my mSATA EVO SSD finally arrived and I'm impressed with Lycom mSATA Quad SSD card. TRIM supported OOTB (I had it enabled for Plextor), speed is pretty decent. I put 2x 128GB ones in RAID 0 and here is what I got.
I'll update later with scores from MP 2,1.

666sheep said:

Today my mSATA EVO SSD finally arrived and I'm impressed with Lycom mSATA Quad SSD card. TRIM supported OOTB (I had it enabled for Plextor), speed is pretty decent. I put 2x 128GB ones in RAID 0 and here is what I got.
I'll update later with scores from MP 2,1.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing and looking forward to your scores!

~ Cheers

How much faster would you say mSata is compared to traditional SSD?

same interface = same speed

mSATA is just a different connector for traditional SATA interface.

supercooled said:

How much faster would you say mSATA is compared to SATA?

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I edited your question to what you were really asking.

As mikeboss already pointed out, those interfaces are technically the same just with a different physical design.

SATA 3 mSATA port = SATA 3 SATA port

666sheep said:

Today my mSATA EVO SSD finally arrived and I'm impressed with Lycom mSATA Quad SSD card. TRIM supported OOTB (I had it enabled for Plextor), speed is pretty decent. I put 2x 128GB ones in RAID 0 and here is what I got.
I'll update later with scores from MP 2,1.

Click to expand...

Did you use software or hardware RAID 0 when running the scores?

Software. HW requires Win AFAIK.

666sheep said:

Software. HW requires Win AFAIK.

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Thanks. The reason I asked is because I used the HW RAID option via Windows. And then formatted it as HFS+ in OSX. My scores are showing to be a good 100MBs slower for read and writes compared to yours. Not sure if it is because of my Msata speed (I use Crucial M550 256GB pair in RAID 0) or if it is because I am using the HW RAID mode. I am running the card is slot 3 of my Mac Pro 4.1 (flashed to 5.1). My Mac Pro is a 2.93GHz hexacore with 24GB RAM.

TzunamiOSX said:

It is fast and works great in my MacPro 5,1.

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Works fine until you try and boot to your bootcamp partition.
[doublepost=1470407761][/doublepost]

666sheep said:

LyCom mSATA controllers seem to be a good alternative for Sonnet and other cards. You can built 2TB RAID 0 array capable up to 1.6GB/s under $1600, where with 2 Sonnet Tempo Pros it's about $2200.

Click to expand...

The lycom (addonics) msata raid cards are pci-e x2 electrically (as are all the others I have seen), they are limited to about 800MB/s after taking overhead into account.