Power for 2nd SSD Velocity Solo X2 Mac Pro 5.1

You will have to get power from either the optical bays or one of the hard drive bays.

Since the Mac Pro 5,1 does have any of the old 4 pin molex power connectors, the cable that you linked to won't be of any use to you.

My pleasure.

With the proper cables you can put 6 SSDs and 4 HD in your macPro, there is enough power. I did it with 2 velocity solo which handle 2 ssd on them + 2 SSD that I put in the optical bay (needs 2 sata cables long enough to go there and plugged on the 2 velocity solo). Then 2 other SSDs are put also in the optocal bay (sata cables plugged on the mother board) and I used 2 split power cables to feed the 4 SSDs. 4 SSds are sata3, the other 2 are SATA2. It works fluently since october 2012, with a powermax esata PCI card and a gtx 670.

Bumping this thread to get some advice for my new 5,1 Mac Pro:

Just picked up a used 5,1 12-Core and I'm looking to increase the speed of my boot drive.

CURRENT SETUP: Samsung EVO 250 GB Boot Drive connected to the second optical bay power/SATA cable. Running at SATA II speed. :-(

PROPOSED SETUP: Velocity Solo X2 with second EVO 250 GB Drive in PCIe slot. Long SATA III cable running from PCIe card up to optical bay to connect existing EVO via RAID 0. Power to original SSD supplied via original cable, using this adapter: http://amzn.com/B002P6W9UG

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY?: Same scenario as above, but throw in a THIRD separate SSD (SATA II speed) to the second optical cable, splitting the power via this cable: http://amzn.com/B002N2EHVQ. Only question with this is would the adapter pose any problems? Would it be able to power both SSDs? Or would it be better to split the power between the (often-unused) Superdrive and the third SATA II SSD, giving my second EVO a full and un-tainted power source?

I realize there's a lot to digest here. Any advice or help would be GREATLY appreciated. Let me know if I need to clarify anything. Thanks in advance!

I don't think it will matter how you split up the power in the optical bay ... it all comes from the same source and is simply "daisy chained" from drive to drive.

This cable might be more efficient if you mount more than 2 SSDs in the optical bay for splitting the power. I have also seen a 4-drive mount which will fit in the optical bay.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086OGN9E/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.com/Norco-B-Q2T5-Adapter-Bracket-drives/dp/B00ATZIWJM/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t

There are some other PCIe cards which hold multiple SSDs available now or soon. For my OS X boot drive I use the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro with 2 SSDs in RAID-0, and there is a discussion thread here showing a new dual-drive Solo and a 4-drive card soon to be available.

-howard

hfg said:

There are some other PCIe cards which hold multiple SSDs available now or soon. For my OS X boot drive I use the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro with 2 SSDs in RAID-0, and there is a discussion thread here showing a new dual-drive Solo and a 4-drive card soon to be available.

-howard

Click to expand...

Great. Many thanks for the insight.

Do you think it's worth waiting for these new cards? I just got the Mac Pro and I'm itching to get it running fast...

Harry322 said:

Great. Many thanks for the insight.

Do you think it's worth waiting for these new cards? I just got the Mac Pro and I'm itching to get it running fast...

Click to expand...

I am quite happy with my Tempo Pro which is available now. I have a pair of SSDs in a 1TB RAID-0 array as boot OS X. I also have a Velocity Solo x2 with a 512GB SSD as a bootable Windows 8 and it all works great.

You also might like to add the Inateck KT-4004 4-port USB 3.0 PCIe card to your new Mac Pro.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I027GPC/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1



This is in a upgraded 2012 MacPro 5,1 12-core @3.33GHz


-howard

The new dual-slot Velocity Solo looks interesting as a user beta-testing it posted that it will accommodate both a bootable OS X SSD and a bootable Windows SSD on the same card. That is a new achievement for hosting both operating systems on one card.

hfg said:

I am quite happy with my Tempo Pro which is available now. I have a pair of SSDs in a 1TB RAID-0 array as boot OS X. I also have a Velocity Solo x2 with a 512GB SSD as a bootable Windows 8 and it all works great.

Click to expand...

I've seen some reviews state that the Mac Pro can't boot into bootcamp with the Tempo card installed.

I know the bootcamp partition won't work if that Windows SSD was mount on the Tempo card. However, I don't know that bootcamp will work or not if that partition is not on the Tempo card (e.g. via any native SATA 2 slot.)

So, your Mac Pro now have both card. OSX boot via Tempo, and Windows via Velocity. Is that correct?

Since Tempo Pro breaks the boot manager on 5,1. So, you have to select the boot disk in preferences and restart your computer into bootcamp, right?

h9826790 said:

I've seen some reviews state that the Mac Pro can't boot into bootcamp with the Tempo card installed.

I know the bootcamp partition won't work if that Windows SSD was mount on the Tempo card. However, I don't know that bootcamp will work or not if that partition is not on the Tempo card (e.g. via any native SATA 2 slot.)

So, your Mac Pro now have both card. OSX boot via Tempo, and Windows via Velocity. Is that correct?

Since Tempo Pro breaks the boot manager on 5,1. So, you have to select the boot disk in preferences and restart your computer into bootcamp, right?

Click to expand...

The Tempo Pro will not boot Windows in a Mac according to various users, me, and technical support when the Windows disk is mounted on that card. That is unfortunate if you want both OS X and Windows on a single card, thus the comment about the new Velocity Solo Duo x2 card being able to do that.

My system does have both the Tempo Pro card booting OS X with a RAID-0 SSD array on it, and the Velocity Solo x2 card booting Windows 8 with a single SSD on it. My 3rd open card slot now has the Inateck 4-port USB 3.0 card installed. Prior to the Inateck, I had several variations of eSATA and the CalDigit eSATA/USB3 cards which seemed to prevent having the Solo x2 card installed at the same time. I think there were too many SATA controllers in the bus and at least 2 of them didn't play well together. Just for completeness, the 4th slot (video) has a MacVidCards NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 4096 MB.

Although at one time I encountered the issue with the broken Boot Manager, it went away on its own as I switched cards around. The Option key Boot Manager works fine on my 5,1 with the above cards installed.

I am having absolutely NO PROBLEMS with my current Mac Pro 5,1 with the above cards installed other than the OS X issue with "sleep" posting a message about USB 3.0 "unmounted drives". The drives seemed to re-mount automatically without issues (backup RAID-5 USB 3 box), but just to be sure I use "Jettison" from the App Store until Apple fixes the issue in OS X.


-howard

BTW: My BootCamp Windows installation also works fine as a Virtual Machine under VMware "Fusion" allowing the single install to function as a speedy bootable Windows as well as a convenient Virtual Windows under OS X.

hfg said:

The Tempo Pro will not boot Windows in a Mac according to various users...

Click to expand...

Good info, thank you very much!

Even though I don't really need the Inateck USB 3 card at this moment (but still good to have it). I should seriously consider to get one if that can fix the boot manager.

hfg said:

You also might like to add the Inateck KT-4004 4-port USB 3.0 PCIe card to your new Mac Pro.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I027GPC/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Click to expand...

Good timing! Just installed one this morning - great addition to the machine.

For price and convenience, I'm going with the Solo X2. If a newer, better one comes out, I can always upgrade.

Thanks again for the advice.

h9826790 said:

Good info, thank you very much!

Even though I don't really need the Inateck USB 3 card at this moment (but still good to have it). I should seriously consider to get one if that can fix the boot manager.

Click to expand...

You might try several cycles of "PRAM Reset" on your machine to see if that will straighten out the boot manager issue. You might even try it with no cards installed, then if working again, then replace one card at a time.

I was probably the first one having that issue with the boot manager and the 5,1, which I reported to Sonnet technical support. They were eventually able to duplicate the problem and thus posted the note in their spec sheet. My boot manager problem mysteriously went away during a sequence of board swaps, configuration changes, PRAM and SMC resets, and banging my head on the wall. The problem was gone prior to my getting the Inateck card, so I doubt adding that card will resolve your problem.

Good luck ... and post your solution if you get it fixed.

-howard

Apricorn Velocity DUO X2

Harry322 said:

Good timing! Just installed one this morning - great addition to the machine.

For price and convenience, I'm going with the Solo X2. If a newer, better one comes out, I can always upgrade.

Thanks again for the advice.

Click to expand...

As Howard mentioned, I was the one that beta tested the Apricorn Velocity DUO X2! For more info's see Dual boot CONFIRMED for new Apricorn Velocity DUO X2. Since installing a dual boot system with this card, no issues at all in my 2012 Mac Pro 5.1. Enjoy yours!

hfg said:

You might try several cycles of "PRAM Reset" on your machine to see if that will straighten out the boot manager issue. You might even try it with no cards installed, then if working again, then replace one card at a time.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your suggestion. Just try PRAM / SMC reset. Nil help.

Boot only with the HD7950 and Tempo SSD. Nil help.

Boot with HD7950 + HD4870 and Tempo SSD. Nil help.

I have no other card to play around. So, it seems no solution for me at this moment.

h9826790 said:

Thanks for your suggestion. Just try PRAM / SMC reset. Nil help.

Boot only with the HD7950 and Tempo SSD. Nil help.

Boot with HD7950 + HD4870 and Tempo SSD. Nil help.

I have no other card to play around. So, it seems no solution for me at this moment.

Click to expand...

Hi ...

Hmmm ... that's too bad!

I just remembered another odd thing (which may have no bearing, but might trigger an idea with you) ... the BootManager issue only happens when a "bootable" disk is on the Tempo Pro card. BootManager worked normally with just the bare card installed, and with data-only SSDs installed on the card. Perhaps a PRAM Reset with the bare card should be tried.

I don't think that the Tempo Pro has any nonvolatile storage on the card, so I am inclined to assume that whatever is blocking the Option/BootManager is contained in the NVRam of the Mac Pro itself. If there is some way to "zero out" and restore that to factory settings it might solve the problem. Obviously, something I did in my fooling around must have overwrote the bad settings in my MacPro ... and restored the Option/BootManager to full operation again as it remains today.


-howard

hfg said:

Perhaps a PRAM Reset with the bare card should be tried.

Click to expand...

Good suggestion, will try it later.

Anyway, the boot manager works well in 4,1 firmware with this card. Just stop working after upgrade to 5,1. Very strange, but at least we know that this card itself should have no conflict with the boot manager.


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Update 1

Your suggestion is correct. Do a PRAM reset with a bare card recover the boot manager.

However, I face another problem now. I tried to install bootcamp on my old HDD this afternoon. End up it doesn't wok well (Win 7 install OK, but then crash to blue screen during installing the bootcamp driver). So, I simply remove the bootcamp partition via bootcamp assistance.

And now, the boot manager works. But it only shows my old HDD (with 10.9.4 on it), and "Windows", but no SSD OSX and the recovery partition. When I choose Windows, it seems my Mac really want to go to the previous Windows partition, tell me "insert disk and press any key to continue" (the DOS boot fail screen).

When I remove the SSD, the boot manager doesn't shows the "Windows" option, but the recovery partition appear.

So, I am now confused. The Windows partition never install on my SSD, why it is now SSD related? Is it because I run bootcamp assistance when I boot with my SSD?

Anyway, a half working boot manager is better than no boot manager. May be do a clean install to the SSD can fix the problem.

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Update 2

After repair all disk in recovery partition. The boot manager die again. And can't be recovered by reset PRAM with bare card.

Back to the origin now. May be I should simply use rEFInd as a temporary solution.

Here's an update on my quest:

Just set up my new Solo x2 with a pair of Samsung EVO SSD drives. One is mounted on the PCIe card, the other is in the Mac Pro's optical bay. They're linked by a SATA III Cable.

Both drives are software-raided in RAID 0 mode. I ran a speed test on the RAID, but was only able to achieve 550 write / 650 read. This is much closer to the advertised single-drive speed, not the 800 that two drives should get.

Any ideas how to fix this or am I never going to get the advertised speed?

Harry322 said:

Here's an update on my quest:

Just set up my new Solo x2 with a pair of Samsung EVO SSD drives. One is mounted on the PCIe card, the other is in the Mac Pro's optical bay. They're linked by a SATA III Cable.

Both drives are software-raided in RAID 0 mode. I ran a speed test on the RAID, but was only able to achieve 550 write / 650 read. This is much closer to the advertised single-drive speed, not the 800 that two drives should get.

Any ideas how to fix this or am I never going to get the advertised speed?

Click to expand...

I guess I don't think that sounds all that bad for EVO series SSDs in RAID-0 on a single Solo x2 card. As I recall, the Solo x2 only has one SATA controller, so although it is capable of running 2 drives, you can't get maximum speed when both are being accessed simultaneously. That is where the Sonnet Tempo Pro, a pair of Solo x2 cards, or the new Solo Duo x2 card has an advantage. Each SSD has its own controller channel. Also, the EVO SSDs aren't as fast as some of the older technology drives such as the Samsung 840 Pro, so that will also affect your testing speeds.

However, DiskTest aside, I doubt you will notice the slight speed loss in normal OS X use unless you are constantly accessing very large sequential files. I would just put the DiskTest away, and enjoy your speedy system as it is.



RE: PRAM reset

I received a recommendation some time ago from another poster here to hold down the PRAM reset keys continuously for up to 3 chime-cycles before releasing it. It seemed like a strange request, however it did seem to fix my problems on a couple of occasions where a single PRAM reset cycle did not. YMMV

Harry322 said:

I ran a speed test on the RAID, but was only able to achieve 550 write / 650 read.

Click to expand...

550/650 is the limit of a single controller card.

May be you can try to connect one SSD via the native SATA 2 cable in the optical bay to achieve a higher speed in RAID 0.

Thanks for the replies, guys. Illuminating.

So am I to assume that there are no significant speed advantages from connecting a second SSD to the Solo X2's onboard SATA port?

If that's the case, I should start looking forward to the forthcoming Duo X2?

Power from SATA

silvercircle said:

I installed the Velocity Solo x2 card (http://www.apricorn.com/vel-solox2.html) and it works fine.

If I want to connect a second SSD to the card, where can I get the power in my Mac Pro 5,1?
I have this connector http://tinyurl.com/llt4cav but nothing to connect it to in my Mac Pro.
Any ideas?

Click to expand...

Look here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=18855446#post18855446