MP 7,1 owc accelsior 8m2 vs sonnet m.2 8x4

[jcxstar13]

looking to add a nvme raid card curious if anyone has tried either and if there is a reason to go with the more expensive owc card. Is softraid the main reason and if so is it needed vs using apples raid assistant?

 

[tvv]

Apple RAID doesn't support TRIM commands on NVMe SSDs (in a RAID configuration) whereas softRAID does. You'll see better longevity out of your SSDs and higher overall speeds with softRAID. Softraid supports other raid levels whereas AppleRAID is limited to RAID0 and RAID1, but this doesn't matter as much if you only plan to use these two. Softraid can better predict drive failure, whereas AppleRAID does not.

These all are what you have to weigh when deciding on SSDs. The OWC one has a small fan, but it is pretty much silent/ can't be heard at all. The added cooling is helpful as these cards get hot. Excess heat can lead to early failure in electronics.

 

[AstonCTRL]

looking to add a nvme raid card curious if anyone has tried either and if there is a reason to go with the more expensive owc card. Is softraid the main reason and if so is it needed vs using apples raid assistant?

I recently installed the Sonnet M.2 8x4 Silent Gen4 PCIe card into my Mac Pro M2. The card is inserted into the x16 PCI slot and contains eight 4TB SABRENT Rocket 4 Plus-G M.2 drives, along with the provided auxiliary power cable. I configured these eight drives into a RAID 0 setup with a 32K block size, resulting in a combined total capacity of 32TB. Apart from the provided Thunderbolt accessories PCIe card, no other components are installed. Curiously, the allocation pool shows A at 100% and B at 88%.

However, I'm facing an issue. Whenever I reboot or shut down and then restart, the Sonnet card's RAID array vanishes as if it's not installed at all. I've had to reboot multiple times before the PCIe card and array are recognized again.

I've tried using both Apple RAID and OWC's SoftRAID, but the issue persists. If I put the computer into a complete sleep state, upon waking it, the Mac Pro indicates that the drive array was improperly ejected. I also own the previous Sonnet M.2 4X4 Silent Gen3 PCIe card, and when I reinstall this older card in the Mac Pro 2023, I encounter no issues. It works flawlessly, just as it did in my previous Mac Pro 2019.

I am considering returning the card. I've already contacted Sonnet's tech support, but their assistance was less than helpful. They posed basic troubleshooting questions and suggested the standard RMA process.

 

[jcxstar13]

Apple RAID doesn't support TRIM commands on NVMe SSDs (in a RAID configuration) whereas softRAID does. You'll see better longevity out of your SSDs and higher overall speeds with softRAID. Softraid supports other raid levels whereas AppleRAID is limited to RAID0 and RAID1, but this doesn't matter as much if you only plan to use these two. Softraid can better predict drive failure, whereas AppleRAID does not.

These all are what you have to weigh when deciding on SSDs. The OWC one has a small fan, but it is pretty much silent/ can't be heard at all. The added cooling is helpful as these cards get hot. Excess heat can lead to early failure in electronics.

Good to know and exactly why I asked this question.

Do you have the OWC card? Do you have any issues with it like the Aston mentions?

 

[jcxstar13]

I recently installed the Sonnet M.2 8x4 Silent Gen4 PCIe card into my Mac Pro M2. The card is inserted into the x16 PCI slot and contains eight 4TB SABRENT Rocket 4 Plus-G M.2 drives, along with the provided auxiliary power cable. I configured these eight drives into a RAID 0 setup with a 32K block size, resulting in a combined total capacity of 32TB. Apart from the provided Thunderbolt accessories PCIe card, no other components are installed. Curiously, the allocation pool shows A at 100% and B at 88%.

However, I'm facing an issue. Whenever I reboot or shut down and then restart, the Sonnet card's RAID array vanishes as if it's not installed at all. I've had to reboot multiple times before the PCIe card and array are recognized again.

I've tried using both Apple RAID and OWC's SoftRAID, but the issue persists. If I put the computer into a complete sleep state, upon waking it, the Mac Pro indicates that the drive array was improperly ejected. I also own the previous Sonnet M.2 4X4 Silent Gen3 PCIe card, and when I reinstall this older card in the Mac Pro 2023, I encounter no issues. It works flawlessly, just as it did in my previous Mac Pro 2019.

I am considering returning the card. I've already contacted Sonnet's tech support, but their assistance was less than helpful. They posed basic troubleshooting questions and suggested the standard RMA process.

This is also good to know. I will hold off on ordering anyhting till I know if this issue has been resolved or not. Or if the OWC card is the way to go.

 

[cobra521]

Aston,

Interesting problem.

I have a 2019 Mac Pro with two of the Sonnet 4x4 cards. Each has four 2TB M.2 SSDs which are used as JBOD - not RAID.

Every now and then one or the other of the cards will disappear after turning it on in the morning. Seems random. They didn't do this early in their lives so possibly an Apple "upgrade" caused this?

Sonnet asked for and received my system dump file after one of the cards disappeared and also after both cards appeared.

The only differences noted was that the most recent card to disappear had HPS+ formatted SSDs, where the other had APFS, so they asked if I would back up, reformat the HPS+ to APFS and recopy the data, which I did. So far, both cards have booted OK each time I started the computer in the morning. It has been less than a week so nothing is definitive yet.

One observation: the reformatted SSDs seem to be slower - 4K video played from one of the SSDs stutters where it didn't before.

Fun,

Tom