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flyproductions

macrumors 65816
Jan 17, 2014
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Only MacPro1,1 and 2,1 are PCIe v1.0. MacPro7,1 is PCIe v3.0
Yes, sure! I was referring to joevt's results:

"The Sabrent (gen 4) can do 3300 MB/s in my MacPro3,1 in the x16 slot running at gen 1 speed instead of gen 2 speed."

I'd guess, the 980 Pro on my 8747-based-card would do somehow better in a 7,1 as in my current 5,1, but still not reach the gen 4 SSD's theoretical limit.
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
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Yes, sure! I was referring to joevt's results:

"The Sabrent (gen 4) can do 3300 MB/s in my MacPro3,1 in the x16 slot running at gen 1 speed instead of gen 2 speed."

I'd guess, the 980 Pro on my 8747-based-card would do somehow better in a 7,1 as in my current 5,1, but still not reach the gen 4 SSD's theoretical limit.

Nope, with a MacPro7,1 x16 PCIe v3.0 you have enough bandwidth to saturate two PCIe v4.0 x4.

Btw, it's once in a moon that you ever saturate the connection, most of the time you are making lots of small 4K transfers.
 

flyproductions

macrumors 65816
Jan 17, 2014
1,049
445
Would really like to test this and compare to the Raid-results.
So here are the results:

The Raid-volume of two 1 TB 970 EVO plus...

Raid.png

...and the multi-disk-test with two 2 TB 980 PRO...
Multi-Disk.png

...which should add up to 6.14 GB/s read and 5.98 GB/s write.

So right: multiple disks seem to be able to reach a higher total throughput as a Raid-configuration
 

flyproductions

macrumors 65816
Jan 17, 2014
1,049
445
Nope, with a MacPro7,1 x16 PCIe v3.0 you have enough bandwidth to saturate two PCIe v4.0 x4.
Yes, but my card only has 4-lane PCIe gen 3 M.2 sockets. So, at least for a single SSD, shouldn't this be the limit?

Btw, it's once in a moon that you ever saturate the connection, most of the time you are making lots of small 4K transfers.
Yes, that's why i wouldn't use a raid as a boot-drive even if it was possible.
 

joevt

Contributor
Jun 21, 2012
6,689
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So in case of my question, 7,1 with PCIe 3.0, PLX8747 gen 3 card, single SAMSUNG 980 PRO (gen 4), the limiting factor is the 4 lane gen 3 socket on the card, while in case of the HighPoint 7505 (gen 4 ), gen4 SSD, machine with gen 1 board, it will be the board's gen 1 x16 slot?
Correct, a motherboard's gen 1 PCIe slot will be limited to gen 1 x16 because it is < gen 4 x4.

I didn't even know ATTO Disk Benchmark offering a multi-disk test. Just checked my version, which is 1.01.0 (2), and still can not find such an option. Is this a feature of a later version? Would really like to test this and compare to the Raid-results.

Edit: Just found out! "show results for all disks" has to be selected in the Graphs-window. Right?
Just click the "Add Disk" button to add more disks to test simultaneously.

Only MacPro1,1 and 2,1 are PCIe v1.0. MacPro7,1 is PCIe v3.0
Any PCIe slot can be set to any speed that is ≤ the minimum of the max of the slot and the max of the downstream device.
For my MacPro3,1 I set the gen 2 slot 2 to gen 1 speed using pciutils to test gen 1 speed.
You can do the same for MacPro7,1 - you can test gen 1, gen 2, and gen 3 speed.
MacPro3,1 slot 3 and 4 are gen 1. Also those two slots don't support 2x lanes. They support 4x and 1x.

...which should add up to 6.14 GB/s read and 5.98 GB/s write.
The Bar Graph will add up all the disks for you. I wish it would show the bargraph info in a table like the Windows version does so you don't have to mouse over each graph to see which is the greatest.

The Windows version doesn't seem to have the multiple disks option though.
 
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flyproductions

macrumors 65816
Jan 17, 2014
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Any PCIe slot can be set to any speed that is ≤ the minimum of the max of the slot and the max of the downstream device.
For my MacPro3,1 I set the gen 2 slot 2 to gen 1 speed using pciutils to test gen 1 speed.
Again i did not know, such tool exists! Is this set by commandline or is this even an app with a gui?

The Bar Graph will add up all the disks for you. I wish it would show the bargraph info in a table like the Windows version does so you don't have to mouse over each graph to see which is the greatest.
Yes, i have seen this. But the difference is so marginal that, without at least horizontal helper lines, it is just not noticeable. I did not know about the mouse over option (and did not find out "by accient" 😉 ).
 

joevt

Contributor
Jun 21, 2012
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Again i did not know, such tool exists! Is this set by commandline or is this even an app with a gui?
No app. No gui. Just find out which PCI device is the slot, and use some setpci commands from pciutils to change the link rate.

This is my fast.sh script:
Code:
#!/bin/bash
# No arguments sanity checking done

speed=$1
rootport=$2
linkstatus=$(sudo setpci -s $rootport CAP_EXP+12.w); echo '# Before: PCIe' $(( 0x$linkstatus & 15)).0 x$(( 0x$linkstatus >> 4 & 31))
sudo setpci -s $rootport CAP_EXP+30.w=$speed:F # Set Link Speed
sudo setpci -s $rootport CAP_EXP+10.w=20:20 # Start Retrain
linkstatus=$(sudo setpci -s $rootport CAP_EXP+12.w); echo '#  After: PCIe' $(( 0x$linkstatus & 15)).0 x$(( 0x$linkstatus >> 4 & 31))

Use the script like this:
./fast.sh 1 00:01.0 # set MacPro3,1 slot 2 to gen 1 speed

Use my pcitree.sh script to find the slot. You want to change the PCI downstream bridge that represents the slot. It connects to a PCIe device or an upstream bridge in the case of a PCIe card that has a PCIe switch.
 
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MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
2,882
2,363
Portland, Ore.
I no longer recommend the SK hynix Gold P31 NVMe SSD. Mine died. They sent me a new one though. Premature failure is not acceptable IMO. I suggest Samsung or go with an OEM/Enterprise class SSD such as KIOXIA. Consumer grade SSDs are not very great.
 

w1z

macrumors 6502a
Aug 20, 2013
692
480
I no longer recommend the SK hynix Gold P31 NVMe SSD. Mine died. They sent me a new one though. Premature failure is not acceptable IMO. I suggest Samsung or go with an OEM/Enterprise class SSD such as KIOXIA. Consumer grade SSDs are not very great.

There are numerous reports of "premature" failures of Samsung drives too! My P41, together with my other 970 Pro/Evo Plus blades, are going strong. I personally think it's more to do with luck, operating temps and write loads than being brand-specific especially with Hynix and Samsung. There are of course other brands one should simply avoid.

As for enterprise drives, they prematurely fail too! You want a guarantee, stick with SLC flash and maybe some MLCs (combination of MLC + firmware/controller). It's a roll of the dice with TLC/QLC.
 
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giorgiocasanova

macrumors newbie
Jan 9, 2024
4
0
Hey @tsialex I've got a stock original Macbook Air mid 2012 (MacbookAir5,2) which I've tried to upgrade from Lion to Sierra, and when I upgraded to Catalina the SSD simply disappeared. The folder with question mark blinking appeared. After installing sierra in an external USB to boot up (with help of internet recovery, as no drive was available to restore an install), the original ssd doesn't show on diskutil, neither on recovery, nowhere.
I refuse to believe the software has caused a hardware malfunction. I've been reading since last week every day about this, and have a hunch that the problem is in the boot rom version (mine is 264.0.0.0) - after I applied the 2019-002 security update it becase 264.0.0.0.0
I checked other MBA2012 for sale with Catalina installed and they have 429.0.0.0.0, which also is the latest firmware for this device.

I recognize you've been quite deep in this area, do you have any idea of what I could do to make the original apple ssd appear? The data in it is not important, I've backed up a day before.
 
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tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,062
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Hey @tsialex I've got a stock original Macbook Air mid 2012 (MacbookAir5,2) which I've tried to upgrade from Lion to Sierra, and when I upgraded to Catalina the SSD simply disappeared. The folder with question mark blinking appeared. After installing sierra in an external USB to boot up (with help of internet recovery, as no drive was available to restore an install), the original ssd doesn't show on diskutil, neither on recovery, nowhere.
I refuse to believe the software has caused a hardware malfunction. I've been reading since last week every day about this, and have a hunch that the problem is in the boot rom version (mine is 264.0.0.0) - after I applied the 2019-002 security update it becase 264.0.0.0.0
I checked other MBA2012 for sale with Catalina installed and they have 429.0.0.0.0, which also is the latest firmware for this device.

I recognize you've been quite deep in this area, do you have any idea of what I could do to make the original apple ssd appear? The data in it is not important, I've backed up a day before.

macOS upgrades are very demanding operations in a short time, can be deadly to a flaky/worn out disk. My bet is that the blade itself failed and not that the BootROM is corrupted, since if the BootROM was someway damaged while being upgraded, you probably wouldn't still power on.

It's a 12 years old SATA SSD blade and not a bullet proof design, btw. Run Apple Diagnostics and confirm if it is really dead.
 
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giorgiocasanova

macrumors newbie
Jan 9, 2024
4
0
I don't mean that the firmware/bootrom is corrupt, otherwise it wouldn't start at all. But it wasn't upgraded, and I've read a new firmware is required from sierra to any later OS because of APFS. And somebody said the drive wouldn't even be recognized. I thought this could be the case.
There's no drive listed even at system information SATA section, how would apple diagnostics be able to do anything?

also... how unlucky would I be to have it fail during the upgrade? :/
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,062
13,273
I don't mean that the firmware/bootrom is corrupt, otherwise it wouldn't start at all. But it wasn't upgraded, and I've read a new firmware is required from sierra to any later OS because of APFS. And somebody said the drive wouldn't even be recognized. I thought this could be the case.

264.0.0.0.0 fully supports booting from APFS formatted disks, it's a BootROM that Apple released along Catalina 10.15.6.

BootROMs are upgraded in steps, 429.0.0.0.0 will be installed later with Software Updates.

There's no drive listed even at system information SATA section, how would apple diagnostics be able to do anything?

Dead blade, probably failed while installing the software updates.
 
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giorgiocasanova

macrumors newbie
Jan 9, 2024
4
0
I'm trying to find somebody who has another Macbook Air mid2012 to test mine, as they're specific for this model/year.
I let you know. All logic points to what you've said, but it's so hard to believe in this coincidence.
I've even read that the drive itself could have become corrupt and not recognized by the system, so I'd try to dd and write zeros on the beginning to erase the mapping and so.... but I don't even get the drive listed
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,062
13,273
I'm trying to find somebody who has another Macbook Air mid2012 to test mine, as they're specific for this model/year.
I let you know. All logic points to what you've said, but it's so hard to believe in this coincidence.

It's a cheap enough blade on eBay to buy for a test. Sometimes you can buy an used 128GB AppleOEM one for $30+shipping.

There is a 512GB normal mSATA blade plus the 7+17 Apple connector adapter for less than $52+shipping.


I've even read that the drive itself could have become corrupt and not recognized by the system, so I'd try to dd and write zeros on the beginning to erase the mapping and so.... but I don't even get the drive listed

You can't do nothing if it's not recognised. A dead blade is dead.
 

BraveEmpathy

macrumors newbie
Jan 14, 2024
1
0
Can anyone offer some advice or insights?

Recently, I've been using an sn850x 4TB SSD with a JZLL JHL7440 Thunderbolt 4 external enclosure, connected to my Mac mini M1. I've installed the Sonoma 14.2.1 system on the external drive for use.

However, I'm facing an issue every time the system restarts after an extended period of sleep. It seems that Disk Ejected Errors occur during sleep, leading to a system report: "panic(cpu 6 caller 0xfffffe002c97155c): initproc exited -- exit reason," and an automatic reboot.

I've attempted to disable hard drive sleep, but it hasn't proven effective. The same combination used as an external drive also experiences Disk Ejected Errors during sleep.

I'm at a loss on how to address this problem. Has anyone else encountered a similar issue? Is it a problem with the external enclosure or the SSD? How should I go about resolving it?

I appreciate any assistance or insights. Thank you!
 

VIMAGE G3

macrumors newbie
Jul 23, 2008
20
16
Florida
Yeah just updated to the latest monterey... also can you go back to an older version say mojave even with the most recent bootrom?
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,062
13,273
Yeah just updated to the latest monterey... also can you go back to an older version say mojave even with the most recent bootrom?

Tricky question. With the factory SSD you can go back even to Mavericks with the current BootROM, but with the SSPOLARIS installed you can only go back to El Capitan.

Earlier macOS releases are not installable to or work with the NVMe blade, see the first post for more info.
 

poundman

macrumors member
Jul 22, 2011
33
0
Is RIITOP adapter still the best low cost option? What the recommended nvme 1Gb drives that will work? Is the list at top of this thread still valid?
 
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