Hi,
I'm trying to upgrade my Mac Pro with a bootable SATAIII SSD and could use some advice. Right now I've got 8 mechanical HDDs spinning inside. I've got 4 drives in the stock bays, and 4 drives in the upper area where the optical drive normally goes (Maxconnect adapter). 2 of the upper drives are connected directly to the motherboard and the other 2 are connected to a Sonnet Tempo E4i. So it's pretty full inside the case already.
BTW, my PCI slots are full with the Sonnet card, a USB 3.0 card, and an eSATA extender off the Sonnet.
I'd like to install a bootable SATAIII 6Gb/sec drive or two in there somehow. Two drives in RAID1 would be ideal.
From a physical perspective, I think I can use this DX4 sled which looks like it would work.
Then I figure I can get a bootable SATAIII PCIe controller to boot from the SSD. From reading the threads, I've found 3 options:
Option 1: The cheap way is to get an ASM1061 based controller off ebay (according to this thread) and boot off of a single drive (someone on that thread couldn't get his RAID configurations to boot). Honestly, I would be happy with this configuration for now. I do nightly backups, and with the supposed higher reliability of an SSD, I would be OK with a single drive boot disc.
Option 2: The other, more expensive, option would be to get the ATTO ExpressSAS H644 controller. I read the manual and it says it will boot to an Intel Mac Pro. Obviously more expensive, but I would get RAID1 to work (hopefully) and up to 4 internal and 4 external drives (also freeing up the slot used by my current eSATA port extender).
Option 3: A single SSD solution I've found that's not ideal is to use the Velocity Solo Mac Edition. This limits me to a single drive only and I also lose my eSATA port extender.
Anyway, my problem is I'm not sure how to run power to the SSDs in Options 1 or 2. If I go with the cheaper ASM1061 controller card, how can I get power for up to two SSDs inside the box?
Thanks a lot, I appreciate any help!
John
I'm trying to upgrade my Mac Pro with a bootable SATAIII SSD and could use some advice. Right now I've got 8 mechanical HDDs spinning inside. I've got 4 drives in the stock bays, and 4 drives in the upper area where the optical drive normally goes (Maxconnect adapter). 2 of the upper drives are connected directly to the motherboard and the other 2 are connected to a Sonnet Tempo E4i. So it's pretty full inside the case already.
BTW, my PCI slots are full with the Sonnet card, a USB 3.0 card, and an eSATA extender off the Sonnet.
I'd like to install a bootable SATAIII 6Gb/sec drive or two in there somehow. Two drives in RAID1 would be ideal.
From a physical perspective, I think I can use this DX4 sled which looks like it would work.
Then I figure I can get a bootable SATAIII PCIe controller to boot from the SSD. From reading the threads, I've found 3 options:
Option 1: The cheap way is to get an ASM1061 based controller off ebay (according to this thread) and boot off of a single drive (someone on that thread couldn't get his RAID configurations to boot). Honestly, I would be happy with this configuration for now. I do nightly backups, and with the supposed higher reliability of an SSD, I would be OK with a single drive boot disc.
Option 2: The other, more expensive, option would be to get the ATTO ExpressSAS H644 controller. I read the manual and it says it will boot to an Intel Mac Pro. Obviously more expensive, but I would get RAID1 to work (hopefully) and up to 4 internal and 4 external drives (also freeing up the slot used by my current eSATA port extender).
Option 3: A single SSD solution I've found that's not ideal is to use the Velocity Solo Mac Edition. This limits me to a single drive only and I also lose my eSATA port extender.
Anyway, my problem is I'm not sure how to run power to the SSDs in Options 1 or 2. If I go with the cheaper ASM1061 controller card, how can I get power for up to two SSDs inside the box?
Thanks a lot, I appreciate any help!
John