SAS drives in mac pro 5,1

[850cc]

I have optained a number of HPE SAS 4TB drives MB4000FCWK. Removed the HPE cage and installed one in a free drive sled of my mac pro. It fits perfectly. If i start the mac the drive not spin up and is not seen in disk utility.
Any ideas why ?

 

[crjackson2134]

I don’t know much about this but a quick google search says this ;

SATA 3 Gbit/s drives may be connected to SAS backplanes, but SAS drives may not be connected to SATA backplanes. The SAS protocol supports tunneling SATA commands over it. Thus, a SAS controller can communicate with SATA drives or SAS drives. However, it doesn't go the other way.

 

[850cc]

Mac pro 5,1 does support SAS drives but you need the Apple RAID controller to use SAS drives without extra cabling
Is that correct ?

 

[AlexMaximus]

Mac pro 5,1 does support SAS drives but you need the Apple RAID controller to use SAS drives without extra cabling
Is that correct ?

Yep, that is the official version in the media. I once had the same ambition. However, after numerous hours of search regarding this topic, the general narrative is, - the apple card works barely but is not really supported. SAS is a rats nest that can turn into big trouble anytime.
Those view souls that have in-depth knowledge with hardware raid always told me, the rare third-party solutions are better supported.

http://www.transintl.com/controllers-raid-cards/raid-cards.html

I would not go that route in the age of advanced SSD Nvme solutions on the 5.1, but if you have to the above link might help you out if you can't dodge that bullet. My 0.02 cent..

 

[850cc]

So no more apple raid card for me
My boot drive is an nvme ssd in slot4, very vast. SO i need a volime for my data
decided to do some testing with sata 3tb drives. I made a raid5 with openzfsonosx, very easy but redumentary and all is via command line. speed was very good. reed speed 2000MB/s. write speed hard to mesure as zfs uses computer ram as cache. completely free software
Then i tested softraid 5 ($180). Very good software lots of nice features, alerting etc..much better dan openzfs but not free
I would go for zfs if it had a GUI around it

 

[w1z]

If you are really keen on having a hardware raid setup (battery or flash backup) with SAS or SATA drives, then have a look at MaxUpgrades SAS raid + cabling options.

I considered it at one point but then decided to switch over to using NVMe storage.

 

[AlexMaximus]

So no more apple raid card for me
My boot drive is an nvme ssd in slot4, very vast. SO i need a volime for my data
decided to do some testing with sata 3tb drives. I made a raid5 with openzfsonosx, very easy but redumentary and all is via command line. speed was very good. reed speed 2000MB/s. write speed hard to mesure as zfs uses computer ram as cache. completely free software
Then i tested softraid 5 ($180). Very good software lots of nice features, alerting etc..much better dan openzfs but not free
I would go for zfs if it had a GUI around it

If it doesn’t have to be about an internal RAID Solution, you could easily go with sonnet‘s USB-C card and hook this babe on it:

https://www.lacie.com/products/big/2big/

I have heard many good things about the lacie raid solution. It’s at least supported. USB-C is not really Thunderbolt-3 but it’s good enough and works well with lacie.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/allegro-usbc-4port-pcie.html

Since I run out of internal upgrade possibilities, the combo above is basically my next step. I also want the media interface card slots on the lacie. And since the sonnet card can do real 10GBit USB 3.1, it actually can be seen as the only equivalent Thunderbolt 1 speed upgrade for the 5.1.

 

[850cc]

nice to see usb c on such old machines. For the lacie, i hope there is some mac software to manage that hardware raid
Otherwise you have no visibility wats happening with the box

 

[AlexMaximus]

nice to see usb c on such old machines. For the lacie, i hope there is some mac software to manage that hardware raid
Otherwise you have no visibility wats happening with the box

https://www.lacie.com/support/software/lacie-raid-manager/