Another post on the continuing saga of replacing a well sorted Mac Pro 2010 with a Mac Pro 2019 without changing the basic workflow.
The Mac Pro 2019 has two working Mac OSX boot drives, Catalina (NVMe on PCIe card) and Sequoia (Apple SSDs), and I needed some more SATA ports and a couple of eSATA ports. I have collected quite a number of external spinning drives over the years with both USB and eSATA ports. The eSATA connection generally has SMART pass-through while the USB ports do not, useful for checking the drive heath and overall usage. While I have made a PCIe tray with 2x 3.5inch spinning hard disk (rubber mounted) and up to 4 SSDs all to be powered from a 12v PCIe power socket (including the 5V needed for SATA power), there were a few issues to resolve:
• Cheap and not so cheap PCIe SATA cards needing drivers generally stopped working after Mojave. Some worked with Catalina, but not with Big Sur or later. Some driverless PCIe SATA cards worked with Big Sur and later, but not with Sequoia or Tahoe.
• Most of the internal PCIe SATA cards that would work with Catalina and Sequoia do not support hot plugging so are useless with an eSATA PCIe backplate.
• Many of the internal PCIe SATA cards are only PCIe V1 or V2 so do not make full use of the Mac Pro PCIe V3.
I came across a “PC only” NVMe M2 slot to 6 port SATA adapter on ebay which featured a Mac supported ASMEDIA controller chip, so I thought it worth risking a small bid and I subsequently won the Auction for a fraction of the RRP. I already had a spare KyroM.2 evo PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter which has removable heatsinks and also has the M2 slot parallel to the PCIe slot cover giving more space on the hard disk tray.
Happy to report that the 6 port NVME M2 SATA adapter works fine with both Catalina and Sequoia and supports hot swopping on all the ports, so ideal for eSATA backplates.
Added bonus is that the KyroM.2 evo has an array of amber LEDs around the edge which can be set to “Off”, “SATA” or “ON”. Leaving them on at the moments as the Mac Pro 2019 is so quiet (partially thanks to the rubber mounted 3.5” spinners) that a couple of times I have reached around the back to pull the cables out in order to take the case off and noticed the Amber glow indicating that it was still powered on.
Have connected 2 of the SATA ports to 2 eSATA ports on a PCIe backplate, and in the process discovered that eSATA 2 plugs and sockets are different to eSATA 3 plugs and sockets so I have one of each. It appears that the eSATA 3 plugs have extra tangs for shielding earth connection which stop them fitting in the eSATA 2 ports. Who knew ?
Few photos attached. The eSATA backplate is in the slot above where the KyroM.2 evo resides with the bare aluminium tray rail below and the Sonnet 4x4 silent below that. Not sure if anyone makes 90 degree side connection SATA cables which would make the cables easier to tidy up.
The Mac Pro 2019 has two working Mac OSX boot drives, Catalina (NVMe on PCIe card) and Sequoia (Apple SSDs), and I needed some more SATA ports and a couple of eSATA ports. I have collected quite a number of external spinning drives over the years with both USB and eSATA ports. The eSATA connection generally has SMART pass-through while the USB ports do not, useful for checking the drive heath and overall usage. While I have made a PCIe tray with 2x 3.5inch spinning hard disk (rubber mounted) and up to 4 SSDs all to be powered from a 12v PCIe power socket (including the 5V needed for SATA power), there were a few issues to resolve:
• Cheap and not so cheap PCIe SATA cards needing drivers generally stopped working after Mojave. Some worked with Catalina, but not with Big Sur or later. Some driverless PCIe SATA cards worked with Big Sur and later, but not with Sequoia or Tahoe.
• Most of the internal PCIe SATA cards that would work with Catalina and Sequoia do not support hot plugging so are useless with an eSATA PCIe backplate.
• Many of the internal PCIe SATA cards are only PCIe V1 or V2 so do not make full use of the Mac Pro PCIe V3.
I came across a “PC only” NVMe M2 slot to 6 port SATA adapter on ebay which featured a Mac supported ASMEDIA controller chip, so I thought it worth risking a small bid and I subsequently won the Auction for a fraction of the RRP. I already had a spare KyroM.2 evo PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter which has removable heatsinks and also has the M2 slot parallel to the PCIe slot cover giving more space on the hard disk tray.
Happy to report that the 6 port NVME M2 SATA adapter works fine with both Catalina and Sequoia and supports hot swopping on all the ports, so ideal for eSATA backplates.
Added bonus is that the KyroM.2 evo has an array of amber LEDs around the edge which can be set to “Off”, “SATA” or “ON”. Leaving them on at the moments as the Mac Pro 2019 is so quiet (partially thanks to the rubber mounted 3.5” spinners) that a couple of times I have reached around the back to pull the cables out in order to take the case off and noticed the Amber glow indicating that it was still powered on.
Have connected 2 of the SATA ports to 2 eSATA ports on a PCIe backplate, and in the process discovered that eSATA 2 plugs and sockets are different to eSATA 3 plugs and sockets so I have one of each. It appears that the eSATA 3 plugs have extra tangs for shielding earth connection which stop them fitting in the eSATA 2 ports. Who knew ?
Few photos attached. The eSATA backplate is in the slot above where the KyroM.2 evo resides with the bare aluminium tray rail below and the Sonnet 4x4 silent below that. Not sure if anyone makes 90 degree side connection SATA cables which would make the cables easier to tidy up.
