4 m.2 cards on one PCIe card for cMP 5,1

[LapplandsCohan]

I'm thinking of making a cMP 5,1 quad boot (different versions of OS X) and for this was thinking in the lines of having a PCIe card that takes 4 m.2 cards and use one card for each OS and use the drive bays for data storage.

The one card talked about is the Amfeltec x16 PCIe, but they seem hard to come by: I have only found one dealer on the net that has one in storage, and they ask $1000 for it.

Are there any alternatives?

My requirements:

• Support for 4 drives
• Shows up as 4 drives on the computer - no forced RAID
• Bootable from each of the drives on cMP 5,1
• Easily purchasable. (Used are OK, if used are easy to come by)
• Preferably not too expensive. Otherwise I might as well buy a huge Angel Wings drive and split it in four partitions.

Another alternative is something like this
https://www.webconnexxion.com/addonics-ad4sa354m2-quad-m2-3-5-sata-drive.html
combined with a PCIe SATA-card, but that would eat a PCIe slot as well as the second optical drive bay.

 

[Dr. Stealth]

I'm running the Amfeltec PCI Express Gen 2 Carrier Board for up to (4) M.2 SSD modules. I'm running (4) SM951 512GB AHCI SSD's. This card is a dream and works super fast but, it's expensive. And so are the SM951 blades as they are discontinued (around $300.00 each, I was able to find new ones on eBay ). And there are not many/any other options. I believe you can only purchase them from Amfeltec and they are not cheap. Once you get over the sticker shock and actually use them the pain of the purchase will fade. Contact Amfeltec directly for the purchase. I think for the card and the 4 blades it cost me around $1,600.00 USD. You will get balls-out speed but it's going to cost you. I run Win 10 on one card, Sierra on one card and High Sierra on another with a spare for expansion. Without raiding I get about 1,500 MB/s read and write.

It's a tough nut to chew but if you go for it you will be very happy you did.

 

[h9826790]

4x msata PCIe card should be a much easier and cheaper choice. For OS operation purpose, that won't make much difference anyway.

The card mentioned in this post may work for you.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/whats-occupying-your-pci-e-slots.1614365/page-8#post-24826637

A quick search shows this card only cost ~$70, and can work with any OSX after 10.6.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Addonics-A...222619671560?_trksid=p2385738.m4383.l4275.c10