Slash-2CPU
macrumors 6502
It’s an aluminum box with a few clips and screws plus 2 cables. $400? Why?
Wonder how long before a 3rd party kit comes out for $99?
Wonder how long before a 3rd party kit comes out for $99?
MP 7,1 $400 for a drive cage?!?
- Thread starter Slash-2CPU
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
deconstruct60
macrumors G5
Err there is a 8TB drive there too.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/...2i-8tb-internal-storage-enclosure-for-mac-pro
Promise is using the HDD to drive the price much higher price point. An "enterprise" NAS 8TB drive is going to run around $250-350 . Subtract that (especially at the upper end of that range ) from the $399 here and get a decent price for a bracket.
But yeah... not sure how that is going to hold up in sales to folks who already have HDDs and just need the bracket.
[automerge]1576005574[/automerge]
There is only one. 2 would actually be a bargain if certified NAS drives.
It can hold at max two, but it only ships with one. Shipping with two drives would be an even more ludicrous pricing gimmick.
P.S. it is a bit sad that Apple would indirectly endorse these kinds of games on bracket pricing at the launch of the product. But it is almost like they want folks to spew 'hate' at the system because it will generate more 'buzz'. $400 wheels will be up there too.
Last edited:
Slash-2CPU
macrumors 6502
Was planning to buy bracket and put my two 4TB Samsung’s in it. $250-350 for an 8TB platter? For the price range of this system, who’s going to run a platter???
DoofenshmirtzEI
macrumors 6502a
I don't ever expect to buy spinners for internal storage in the future. I think the market for HDD brackets other than for people to mount existing drives is going to be pretty thin. If it were just a bracket I might pop for it, as is I'll just leave those in the 5,1 and grab stuff off them on the rare occasion I need them.
CrysisDeu
macrumors 65816
Apple reserved the space and the ports to mount this exact third-party HDD cage, how convenient.
Why doesn't Apple sell it as an official add-on, or just include it in the case?
DoofenshmirtzEI
macrumors 6502a
Can you put a Superdrive in it? Because I'm sure most people still want a Superdrive.
th0masp
macrumors 6502a
I think since nothing about this system seems to make much sense anyway, they sat down and decided to handle it this way - for consistency's sake.
Be glad these don't require a mandatory purchase of a set of their wheels to go along with.
deconstruct60
macrumors G5
IMHO , because the ‘left over’ space they allocated isn’t a great place to put drives. However , some customers said that the world would end if there wasn’t and internal HDD so they have left it entirely as solely a user driven option . If drives die quicker ... Apple didn’t recommend it as a primary option .
APFS doesn’t work well ... didn’t recommend HDDs for that either .
The design of the Mac Pro does not suggest that this was a designed for space . It is downstream of the CPU thermal exhaust where the weren’t keen to put anything strategic there anyway . It looks like a “what else could we stick in there “ design result .
[automerge]1576027110[/automerge]
No. It is an internal only drive cage. it is not a sneaker net drive solution. ( go to post #3 above and look. There is an picture of one installed . )
Last edited:
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
I'd assume that Apple's engineers know what they are doing. Spinners are fine at up to 60°C - and the CPU exhaust will be far less than that.
DoofenshmirtzEI
macrumors 6502a
Sorry, the Superdrive comment was a joke about old technology (like spinners).
That's an assumption. When we ordered Dells and Lenovo workstations, they shipped low-end "Green" drives. And the Lenovo upgrade kit, which included the other drive sleds and 4-slot backplane (which also supports U.2), is $48, direct.
Slash-2CPU
macrumors 6502
There’s really not much at all in the way of effective bulk storage in it.
$400 to hold 2 drives or $2300 to hold 4. Again, you get 4x8TB drives, but even if it is enterprise stuff, that’s $1k of commodity drives. It also costs you PCIe slot(s).
$1k of drives, $300 RAID controller, other $1k?
The trash can was disliked because you couldn’t fit drives in it. Now you can physically do it, but it’ll cost total ($2300+$400) same as a decent 6-bay external TB3 enclosure and 48TB of “enterprise” storage($2700). You get 40TB I’d maybe enterprise drives and one of the drives isn’t addressable by the raid controller.
Yep. Definitely waiting for aftermarket options. Hopefully Sonnet will have one for $100. I mean, why wouldn’t they? $10 of aluminum and $15 of maybe custom cables, sell it for $100.
$400 to hold 2 drives or $2300 to hold 4. Again, you get 4x8TB drives, but even if it is enterprise stuff, that’s $1k of commodity drives. It also costs you PCIe slot(s).
$1k of drives, $300 RAID controller, other $1k?
The trash can was disliked because you couldn’t fit drives in it. Now you can physically do it, but it’ll cost total ($2300+$400) same as a decent 6-bay external TB3 enclosure and 48TB of “enterprise” storage($2700). You get 40TB I’d maybe enterprise drives and one of the drives isn’t addressable by the raid controller.
Yep. Definitely waiting for aftermarket options. Hopefully Sonnet will have one for $100. I mean, why wouldn’t they? $10 of aluminum and $15 of maybe custom cables, sell it for $100.
deconstruct60
macrumors G5
Drive list from Promise a couple years back (2017) for R4/R6 products.
https://www.promise.com/DownloadFile.aspx?DownloadFileUID=4705
There are no 'green' drives there. A Barracuda, but even that at 8TB is still around $150+ which shaves about half the price off the bracket. Promise doesn't really have a track record of sending out cheap green drives for storage subsystems.
There is a product page finally at Promise.
https://www.promise.com/Products/Pegasus/R4i-J2i
What they are shipping are pre-formatted HFS+ drives. Most generic disk drives come blank ( and usually untested. )
The R4i compatibility list (off of downloads for the product page ) includes a video disk (Toshiba MD06ACA800V )
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/us/product/storage-products/specialty/md06acaxxxv.html
and an Enterprise Disk ( Toshiba MG06ACA800E )
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com...roducts/enterprise-hdd/mg06acaxxxx.html?sug=1
So Promise has limited compatibility list for the R4i but won't ship any product with what is on their own list. Who is making the leap of assumptions here is pretty clear.
deconstruct60
macrumors G5
Yeah sure. No thermal problems at all with the MBP 15" last year.
"... For (device internal) temperatures below 50C, errors tend to grow linearly with temperature, rather than exponentially, as existing models suggest. ..."
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/assets/tr_sigmetrics12.pdf
I'm not saying they will instantly fry but it is higher odds of failure. You don't get the same lifecycle if you operate the devices at 40c as you would at 60c. ( actually in study above can see some drives start to drop in performance before even get to the rated limits. ) . Fantastically better? No. But better. Is it going to be low enough increase to be 'acceptable losses'.... it is not Apple's data. They probably have a higher risk tolerance than you do if your data is valuable.
A flat failure rate over the whole entire manufacturer specified temperature range, that's hooey. The extremes on both ends are typically higher.
[automerge]1576044076[/automerge]
There are 2.5" to 3.5" adapters out there. The SATA power cables don't really care. The bracket doesn't care about an adapter.
Yes, it should be SATA III. The PCH chipset in the new Mac Pro isn't entirely antiquated as the one in the Mac Pro 5,1 models. The T2 is on the same chipset. So are probably the 10GbE. if run all concurrently may get some incrementally lower throughput, but when things are quiet elsewhere yes.
Last edited:
Slash-2CPU
macrumors 6502
You are probably correct. Fast forward 24-36 months, and likely we’ll have 8TB m.2 drives available while 4TB m.2 will be under $300, maybe even close to $200.
If it supports lane bifurcation, then we can use the crazy cheap x16 to 4 m.2 x4 adapters.
Currently, I have 16TB of SATA SSD’s as storage and 1TB of NVMe as working with another 45TB of NAS that’s basically cold storage. Not too far off from 16TB of NVMe being affordable.
Was hoping to have a clean, not insanely expensive way to move my SATA SSD’s over. I do have two of the Sonnet SATA Pro cards, and will use them. I’ll never use the platters that come in the Promise boxes. They are worthless to me.
Last edited: