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Sonnet Tempo or two OWC Accelsior S?

E

echelon4

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 3, 2014
15
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Hey guys, finally "upgrading" to a cMP 2012. I have two 2.5" EVOs, 1TB (boot) and a 256GB, that I would like to have in there.

Slot 1 has a R9280X, slot 2 & 3 are free, Slot 4 has a Inateck USB card.

I don't plan on adding else besides the SSDs, so would I be better off with both my SSDs on a Tempo or have each on an Accelsior? The price comes out similarly. What are similar alternatives? Do I take a big leap (cost-wise) into NVMe instead?

Thanks for any opinions and suggestions!
 
AFAIK, if you put two drives on a Tempo they are in Raid format (so need to be the same size).
I think you need two separate cards to run them separately.
From what I have read here on the forums, there is no benefit having the boot drive on the Tempo/Accelsior.

I have my boot SSD on an OWC drive sled, and a scratch SSD on a Tempo.

Edit: are you looking at the sonnet pro version (which is expensive), this may support two independant drives, but not sure :)
 
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Oh, thats a big clarification for me. Thanks Mark! I was just looking at the basic version of the Tempo.

So I'll probably do the Accelsior. Have you had any issues booting off of it?
 
My boot drive is on the standard sata port.
But I believe you can boot from the pcie.

Not sure if APFS formatted drives have any issues on a pcie card.
 
I have a Samsung EVO 1TB as m boot drive plugged into a Sonnet Tempo PCIE card. It's formatted as APFS and I have no problems using it as a boot drive.

I do not know if you can plug a 2nd drive into the card and use it as a separate drive or if it must be in a RAID configuration.

The only "problem" is that the OS thinks it's an external drive, so the icon for the drive in Finder is different than the other internal hard drives. It's purely cosmetic.
 
minifridge1138 said:
I have a Samsung EVO 1TB as m boot drive plugged into a Sonnet Tempo PCIE card. It's formatted as APFS and I have no problems using it as a boot drive.

I do not know if you can plug a 2nd drive into the card and use it as a separate drive or if it must be in a RAID configuration.

The only "problem" is that the OS thinks it's an external drive, so the icon for the drive in Finder is different than the other internal hard drives. It's purely cosmetic.
Click to expand...

You can install the 2nd SSD (in fact, any 2.5" hard driver can do, even a HDD) and use it as a separate drive. Boot drive, data drive, doesn't matter. The two drives are totally independent.

That hard drive icon can be change, you can change to whatever you want.
Screen Shot 2018-04-02 at 02.07.31.jpg


And that's not the only problem. The Tempo SSD card will break the 5,1 Boot Manager whenever there is a bootable drive installed on the card (4,1 is OK, data only drive also OK. This issue only affect 5,1).

Also, if there is any firmware update for the SSD. You must plug the SSD back into one of the native SATA port. You can't update the SSD firmware when it's installed on the Tempo card.
 
h9826790 said:
...
And that's not the only problem. The Tempo SSD card will break the 5,1 Boot Manager whenever there is a bootable drive installed on the card (4,1 is OK, data only drive also OK. This issue only affect 5,1)
...
Click to expand...

I hadn't heard that Tempo + SSD = Boot problems on the 5,1. Good to know.
 
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h9826790 said:
Sonnet know about this. They told me that they are going to fix it at least 2 years ago, but still nothing happen so far.
screen-shot-2018-04-02-at-08-41-34-jpg.756610
Click to expand...

I need to understand this...

Are you saying that one can't get the "option" key to work to choose from bootable discs if 1 or 2 SSD's are installed on the Sonnet card or?
 
I have three of the Accelsior S cards, two with Samsung 850Evo, and one with 850Pro.

The two 850Evo are raided in a flashed 2009 4,1 MacPro running Sierra, HFS+, and work great as boot drive.
EFI option boot works normally, the cards are in slot 3 and 4.
Speeds I get are 940-950 MB/s using the Disk Utility raid, and with SoftRAID Lite 5, I get 750 MB/s.

The other one with the 850Pro is in my 2012 5,1 MacPro running APFS.
EFI option boot also works normally, and is in slot 2.

Other than the drives showing up as external, I have no complaints.
I just change the drive icon anyway with a custom set I found, so its a non issue.
 
MikkelAD said:
I need to understand this...

Are you saying that one can't get the "option" key to work to choose from bootable discs if 1 or 2 SSD's are installed on the Sonnet card or?
Click to expand...
That is correct, it is the same as if you have a non 'mac' gpu, you will not get the boot option.
It is of little benefit though to install the boot drive on the sonnet, unless this is your only drive?
 
MikkelAD said:
I need to understand this...

Are you saying that one can't get the "option" key to work to choose from bootable discs if 1 or 2 SSD's are installed on the Sonnet card or?
Click to expand...

Correct. As long as there is ANY bootable volume installed on the Sonnet card. The “Option boot” will fail (Hang at write screen, ONLY affect 5,1)

If only data drive installed onto the card. Then no problem.

On 3,1 or 4,1, no problem.

If perform SMC and PRAM reset with NO drive installed on the Sonnet card. It may able to temporarily solve this issue on 5,1. (May require multiple attempts, not necessary work. But I can confirm that this can occasionally fix this issue. Usually until any other reset, or install / remove / swap hard drivers, etc.)
 
owbp said:
Just one question, by 5,1 you mean just 2010-2012 cMP or flashed 4,1 also?
In other words is it SMC or Boot ROM bug?
Click to expand...

100% boot ROM firmware version, I tested myself. Nothing to do with 2009 or 2010-2012. Any machine reported itself as a 5,1 (including flashed 2009 Mac Pro) will affected by this bug.
 
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h9826790 said:
Correct. As long as there is ANY bootable volume installed on the Sonnet card. The “Option boot” will fail (Hang at write screen, ONLY affect 5,1)

If only data drive installed onto the card. Then no problem.

On 3,1 or 4,1, no problem.

If perform SMC and PRAM reset with NO drive installed on the Sonnet card. It may able to temporarily solve this issue on 5,1. (May require multiple attempts, not necessary work. But I can confirm that this can occasionally fix this issue. Usually until any other reset, or install / remove / swap hard drivers, etc.)
Click to expand...

I really don't get that because...

My two 850 EVO's were connected trough the Sonnet card with one of them carrying OS X until just recently (I pulled the Sonnet card out and plugged them into the regularly SATA ports - currently experimenting with BOOTCAMP, WINDOWS, INTERN/EXTERN drives so have to do that for now.

I had no problems what so ever in getting "option" function to work while booting up - It seems strange to me that you guys report something else :S
 
MikkelAD said:
I really don't get that because...

My two 850 EVO's were connected trough the Sonnet card with one of them carrying OS X until just recently (I pulled the Sonnet card out and plugged them into the regularly SATA ports - currently experimenting with BOOTCAMP, WINDOWS, INTERN/EXTERN drives so have to do that for now.

I had no problems what so ever in getting "option" function to work while booting up - It seems strange to me that you guys report something else :S
Click to expand...

This bug's hit rate is not 100% (but about 80% from my own observation). As I said, it can be occasionally cleared by PRAM / SMC reset, etc. And some system can work without issue at the very beginning.

In fact, I have a period of time has no issue to have option boot (with 5,1 firmware, and my primary boot drive mounted on the Tempo SSD card). However, this bug exist. I've seen it. Other members also seen it. Even Sonnet know about this issue. They just do nothing.
 
h9826790 said:
This bug's hit rate is not 100% (but about 80% from my own observation). As I said, it can be occasionally cleared by PRAM / SMC reset, etc. And some system can work without issue at the very beginning.

In fact, I have a period of time has no issue to have option boot (with 5,1 firmware, and my primary boot drive mounted on the Tempo SSD card). However, this bug exist. I've seen it. Other members also seen it. Even Sonnet know about this issue. They just do nothing.
Click to expand...

Yeah okay I see...

Just an example of me being very new to the game :)
 
echelon4 said:
I don't plan on adding else besides the SSDs, so would I be better off with both my SSDs on a Tempo or have each on an Accelsior? The price comes out similarly. What are similar alternatives? Do I take a big leap (cost-wise) into NVMe instead?
Click to expand...

Are there any advantages to using a bootable SSD RAID (or non-RAID) via PCIe card compared to a SSD RAID via the built-in SATA? Probably not. Save your PCIe slot for something else. I use the built-in SATA for a bootable EVO SSD RAID and it works pretty fast.

NVMe drives are not bootable without a hack.
 
It depends on what your doing...
IO/s would be the same for the sata3 card, or the built in sata2.
Sata3 card will give double the MB/s though.

Obviously, starting very large apps, or anything that loads large size files, would be faster on the sata3 card.
For small apps, and probably boot times, my guess is there is almost no difference.
At the moment I dont have anything else to put in the card slots, and it does have cool factor. :)
 
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