Macbook Pro RAID 0 Benchmarks & Discussion (SSD/HDD)

[Rumboogy]

Reliability issues?!?

I just bought a pair of 240GB SSDs on a black Friday sale. It occurred to me that I could put them in my MBP in RAID 0 so I Googled this and found this superb discussion. This confirms my thought that it would make my machine scream. But I am wondering if anyone has quantified the reliability impact of doing this?

Have any of you who have setup SSD RAID 0 in your MBPs experience a data loss issue of any sort?

 

[simon48]

Wow, this really proves how good the SSDs in the new rMBPs are. The 1TB is faster then almost all of these.

 

[nateo200]

Okay here's one for ya..


I have 16 gigs of RAM in my machine, and I used tmpdisk to create an 8GB RAM disk. I believe it's actually faster than this, black magic was being really erratic. I was able to duplicate a 3.2GB file within the RAM disk virtually instantly (under a second)

My need for speed has just been met. That is ********** insane. I haven't used a RAM disk in forever and I never tested its speed. It looks BM Speed test isn't even coded to show what transfer speeds would equate in video performance judging by the negative signs in front of the frame rates.

Wow, this really proves how good the SSDs in the new rMBPs are. The 1TB is faster then almost all of these.

Seriously...I was just thinking this!

Man I gotta get me a Thunderbolt RAID set up....I'm dreaming of setting up a RAID 0/5 array with both Thunderbolt ports on my rMBP with 6 PCIe SSD's in the RAID array....no more SATAIII bottleneck! Random but somewhat related...would it be possible to put RAM modules in an external array and hook them up via PCIe as sort of a RAM disk? I'm guessing not without a special controller since you can't do RAM over PCIe but curious...

 

[spo002]

I tried to install 2 crucial M500 240GB ssd's to my macbook pro late 2011 and the one on the optical bay doesn't work at all. It will not make the raid 0 setup. It will not even write anything on it. It will not boot the machine when I put the bootable SSD I previously had on the MBP. I tried using another caddy and the only differance is that on the system report I saw a negotiating link speed of 6Gigabit instead of 3 that it showed with the first caddy.

Does anyone know a fix?

 

[Mike Boreham]

I tried to install 2 crucial M500 240GB ssd's to my macbook pro late 2011 and the one on the optical bay doesn't work at all. It will not make the raid 0 setup. It will not even write anything on it. It will not boot the machine when I put the bootable SSD I previously had on the MBP. I tried using another caddy and the only differance is that on the system report I saw a negotiating link speed of 6Gigabit instead of 3 that it showed with the first caddy.

Does anyone know a fix?

A very well known problem for which there is no good fix. Google "6g optical bay macbook pro".

This OWC article pretty much says it all. Scroll down to the red text in the Special Compatibility Notes section.

The nearest thing to a mod which I haven't tried is HERE.

EDIT The "solution" is to put 3G devices only in the optical bay. Trouble is that most modern SSD and HDD are 6G. However OCZ and HGST offer tools to convert a 6G device to 3G so that it will work in the optical bay. I have done this for a 1.5Tb HGST HDD successfully.

 

[simonsi]

Hmmm, my early 2011 has a Crucial as a boot SSD (running at 6G), in the optical caddy without issues, not sure how different the late 2011 is but here are some thoughts:

RAID 0 is there for speed, however best case your Crucials will run at that SATA interface speed limit, so a) I'm not sure if there is any advantage at all in trying to run RAID 0. b) you have in one setup, 1 SSD at 6G in the drive bay and the other at 3G in the caddy, that can't be good for RAID 0 speed at all (it might effectively limit the RAID write to 3G, or it may prevent the formation of the RAID drive altogether.

First test is to put the MBP back as it was, orogina boot drive in the drive bay, optical drive in the caddy - did the optical drive work beforehand? Does everything work now?

If all good put the second SSD in the caddy, is it recognized by drive utilities?

 

[Mike Boreham]

Hmmm, my early 2011 has a Crucial as a boot SSD in the optical caddy without issues, not sure how different the late 2011 is but here are some thoughts:

As the OWC article I linked explains, some early 2011 MBPs are only spec'd with 3G in the optical bay so you can happily put any 6G device in it and it will work fine, at 3G speeds. Most 2011 MBPs are spec'd with 6G in the optical bay but it doesn't work reliably. A few 6G MBPs do work but most don't.

Sounds like you have a MBP with 3G in the optical bay in which case you are very lucky. Or if you have one of the few working 6G devices.

What does your system report say?

Here is my optical bay showing that it is spec'd as 6G but negotiated speed is 3G with the HGST HDD I have converted to 3G.

 

[simonsi]

System Report shows both drive bay and caddy negotiated at 6G:

Drive bay:

"Vendor: Intel
Product: 6 Series Chipset
Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Physical Interconnect: SATA
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

HGST HTS721010A9E630:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)
Model: HGST HTS721010A9E630"

and in the caddy:

"Vendor: Intel
Product: 6 Series Chipset
Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Physical Interconnect: SATA
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

Crucial_CT120M500SSD1:

Capacity: 120.03 GB (120,034,123,776 bytes)
Model: Crucial_CT120M500SSD1"

My Crucial is on Rev2 firmware but I get 480Mb/s and it all works so I am not upgrading to Rev3 firmware...

 

[yjchua95]

Okay here's one for ya..


I have 16 gigs of RAM in my machine, and I used tmpdisk to create an 8GB RAM disk. I believe it's actually faster than this, black magic was being really erratic. I was able to duplicate a 3.2GB file within the RAM disk virtually instantly (under a second)

Will stressing out a RAM disk using Blackmagic damage my RAM?

 

[Mike Boreham]

You are indeed one of the lucky ones.

As most sources (including the OWC link) show, and spo002 found, and both my 2011 MBPs confirm, 6G in the optical bay of 2011 MBPs is unreliable.

 

[simonsi]

Will stressing out a RAM disk using Blackmagic damage my RAM?

No

----------

You are indeed one of the lucky ones.

As most sources (including the OWC link) show, and spo002 found, and both my 2011 MBPs confirm, 6G in the optical bay of 2011 MBPs is unreliable.

At the time I had a 9.5mm deep Seagate 1TB so it would not fit in the caddy and allow the SSD in the drive bay, I have since swapped it for the 7mm 1TB Hitachi HDD so no issues if I ever needed to swap it around but as you say I am lucky enough to have a stable setup (the SSD has been in the caddy for approx 2mths now), so I will keep it stable as far as possible...

 

[Mike Boreham]

No

At the time I had a 9.5mm deep Seagate 1TB so it would not fit in the caddy and allow the SSD in the drive bay, I have since swapped it for the 7mm 1TB Hitachi HDD so no issues if I ever needed to swap it around but as you say I am lucky enough to have a stable setup (the SSD has been in the caddy for approx 2mths now), so I will keep it stable as far as possible...

9.5 mm drives fit in the Data Doubler OK and I thought the Optibay was the same. 9.5 mm is the standard for HDD but some older ones were 12.5 and a few 15mm. The HGST 1.5 Tb I have in at the moment is 9.5mm.

 

[simonsi]

9.5 mm drives fit in the Data Doubler OK and I thought the Optibay was the same. 9.5 mm is the standard for HDD...

Might have been 12.5mm then, it certainly wouldn't let the caddy seat properly, in fact it wouldn't let the lower cover fit flush when in the drive bay (although the screws did up "ok") - I was quite glad of the 7200rpm upgrade excuse to swap it for the 7mm Hitachi. If I find it I'll measure it

 

[spo002]

Thanx guys. I think I am just going to get a 500GB SSD and forget the raid 0 setup.

 

[rtpb5642]

Sorry to bump...

I just installed RAID 0 SSD from samsung (840 EVO 250GB) and my read a write speed is only 100MBps any ideas?

 

[Lolito]

MacBook Pro Classic, 13", mid 2012, 16gb of ram, i5.

Before the raid, with a single samsung 850 evo 250gb ssd:



Raid 0 (stripped), 2x samsung 850 evo 250gb ssd:



for the raid, both drives are brand new, with same latest firmware for june 2015.

The results shown by speed disk are a bit variable, specially on the raid, as the ntsc write speed on second tests was faster, they vary a lot in speed disc app, so this is what the screenshot showed.

IMPORTANT QUESTION: SHOULD I USE TRIM ENABLER??? I HAD PROBLEMS IN THE PAST AGAIN. I HAVE A PERMANET TIME MACHINE DRIVE BACKING UP EVERY HOURS, BUT I DON'T WANT TO HAVE PROBLEMS ANYWAY. I THINK I WILL WAIT TO EL CAPITAN.

 

[caincha]

Has anyone ever done a RAID array with 2 HDDs on a white MacBook Unibody A1342?
I had a couple 500gb HDDs here just gathering dust and decided to buy a caddy to try and see if this laptop would be usable - by that I mean not too slow - running it in RAID and I don't know if I did anything wrong but it is painfully slow much slower than a single HDD would be…

I already know for a fact that this laptop gets pretty decent usability with a SSD but the point here is to 'resurrect' this old laptop using spare parts only.
I'm running Mavericks 10.9.5 by the way.