Sonnet's Fusion Flex J3i Mount Lets You Add Up to Three Internal Drives to Your Mac Pro

[theluggage]

Are you saying it’s strange to require an adapter to add storage to a computer? Because that’s been the case ever since computers have existed.

On what planet? It's not even true on planet Apple - the original Mac Pro tower was a particular breeze to add up to 3 extra HDs to with no extras required - 3 empty almost tool-free HD sleds included and didn't even need any cables. Pretty sure all the preceding "Pro" towers going back to the blue & white G3 had bays for internal drives.

...and then there's just about every PC desktop/tower in the universe that isn't a laptop or small-form-factor - which typically have empty drive bays that need at worst a (bog standard) SATA cable and a few (standard) screws to add a drive. Then, a lot of modern motherboards have spare M.2. slots for (bog standard) PCIe SSD modules that you can install yourself.

So, yes, the Mac Pro is very, very strange for a pro tower workstation in not having any fittings for non-proprietary internal storage expansion. The area where the j2O (or whatever) goes is clearly designed for that, but Apple decided to leave out a few bucks worth of aluminium needed to actually use it...

 

[zorinlynx]

the Mac Pro comes with NO support for installing SATA drives AT ALL. So in order to bump up storage you go PCIE->NVME or a 3rd party bracket->SATA drives.

This is so absurd for a machine that STARTS at over $5K. I don't get it, why has Apple gone in such a ridiculous direction with the Mac Pro? I bought a Mac Pro back in 2006. It was $2500. It had a beautiful SATA backplane which could take four internal hard drives.

The new Mac Pro costs over twice as much and you need to buy overpriced third party accessories just to put extra storage in it. WTF, Apple? I mean, at least it's better than the trash can, which was COMPLETE rather than partial stupidity, but they could have done better, especially at this price.

 

[cupcakes2000]

On what planet? It's not even true on planet Apple - the original Mac Pro tower was a particular breeze to add up to 3 extra HDs to with no extras required - 3 empty almost tool-free HD sleds included and didn't even need any cables. Pretty sure all the preceding "Pro" towers going back to the blue & white G3 had bays for internal drives.

...and then there's just about every PC desktop/tower in the universe that isn't a laptop or small-form-factor - which typically have empty drive bays that need at worst a (bog standard) SATA cable and a few (standard) screws to add a drive. Then, a lot of modern motherboards have spare M.2. slots for (bog standard) PCIe SSD modules that you can install yourself.

So, yes, the Mac Pro is very, very strange for a pro tower workstation in not having any fittings for non-proprietary internal storage expansion. The area where the j2O (or whatever) goes is clearly designed for that, but Apple decided to leave out a few bucks worth of aluminium needed to actually use it...

Ahh. So you’re pretending you don’t know what I meant. Cool.

 

[ssgbryan]

The 7,1 is a descendant of the 6,1, not the 5,1.

It is designed to do 1 thing really well, just like the 6,1.

It has very little in the way of internal storage, just like the 6,1.

Wanna add more storage? That is going to cost extra (in addition to the drives), just like the 6,1.

It ships with obsolete video cards, just like the 6.1.

It ships with a dead end CPU, just like the 6,1.

 

[zorinlynx]

The 7,1 is a descendant of the 6,1, not the 5,1.

It is designed to do 1 thing really well, just like the 6,1.

It has very little in the way of internal storage, just like the 6,1.

Wanna add more storage? That is going to cost extra (in addition to the drives), just like the 6,1.

It ships with obsolete video cards, just like the 6.1.

It ships with a dead end CPU, just like the 6,1.

Maybe this is true, but we certainly don't have to be happy about it.

We ALL know Apple can do better. Why are we defending their not trying harder? Especially when they're charging over five grand for the thing?

I like a lot of the things Apple does, but I'm also willing to call them out when they're lacking, and this is one situation where they're really lacking.

 

[paulsydaus]

It is so disappointing and lame of Apple not to include a proper first party drive mounting solution in the Mac Pro like the 2010... The two third party solutions to date look stupid and out of place. High capacity magnetic drives still have a useful purpose in many workloads. I’m sorry but not everyone has a fiber channel to a rack of ups backed raid storage in their home office. Not everyone is a YouTube content creator. Given the size of the machine you want to try to fit as much inside as possible. The concept of external everything is one of the reasons the trash can failed.
It’s so weird that they provide SATA ports on the main board but no proper mounting solution for hot swapping drives. That’s lame. As others have said, having to manage cables in an otherwise cable free interior looks dumb. Who is making these decisions?
Can someone tell me what else is supposed to go in that space?

 

[zorinlynx]

The concept of external everything is one of the reasons the trash can failed.
It’s so weird that they provide SATA ports on the main board with no mounting solution for hot swapping drives. That’s lame. Who is making these decisions?
Can someone tell me what else is supposed to go in that space?

Yup. Personally I don't care for external storage. It's another thing with a power brick and more cable clutter on my desk. I like as much storage to be internal as possible.

I have an external 4TB hard drive connected to my iMac for an additional Time Machine backup, and look what I have to do to reduce clutter. I'd so love to be able to just have it inside the machine, but Apple makes it needlessly difficult.

Apple has been particularly stubborn about this sort of thing for some reason. You'd think with their obsession of getting rid of cables and wireless everything that having more upgradable internal storage would be a thing, especially on their flagship machine. But noooo.




(BTW excuse the cat hair, they're always walking back and forth behind the machine and, ya know, velcro. That won't stay clean for more than a day.)

 

[paulsydaus]

Really? No.
It looks completely ridiculous and makes swapping drives harder than it should have been.
Why on earth didn’t Apple include a proper first party hot swappable drive mounting solution in their high end workstation should be the question being asked here...

 

[CJ Dorschel]

When the new Mac Pro was announced with the form factor, I cheered. Sold my 2010 8-Core Mac Pro I upgraded with genuine Apple parts: Broadcom WiFi ac+BTLE4.X card, Sapphire Radeon PULSE 8GB GPU, PCIe USB-C 3.1 card, USB-A 3.1 Card, 4x 8TB WD Red's (yes, those models took them), a PCIe SATA III PCIe SSD boot, LG BDXL Internal drive. It had everything but Thunderbolt which, as it turns out, is possible to install by booting into Windows first then restarting the system. I sold it on eBay and got screwed as eBay f'ed my listing by NOT applying my reserve price and sold it for $700. I kept the drives.

Then I saw the internals.

Then I saw Promise's Pegasus MPX module for $2299.

Then I cried when I realized even with my 25% discount and trade-in on my 2014 12-Core Mac Pro this would set me back $7000.

This is insane.

This is not the Apple most of us knew since the late 90's/early 2000's.

 

[yurc]

$200 for a piece of plastic and 3 sata cables? Yikes.

Same as yikes as Belkin auxiliary power cable, the gouging price on Mac Pro related peripheral like this is beyond me, some even create DIY cable to alleviate problem of most overpriced small components.

This is just simply SATA/data connection cable which is generally not different with standard PC cable, still hard to justify price for high price for cable set.

 

[Tech198]

looks interesting... just looks rather bulky... attached to the 'side' in an otherwise elegant case.

 

[sowa]

I would print one:

2019 Mac Pro Drive Cage by bwinter88

This is an alternative drive cage to the Promise Pegasus J2i accessory meant to be mounted in the 2019 Mac Pro. There are two cage designs; one to hold 2 spinners, and one to hold 4 SSDs (in the event you have a PCI card to connect additional drives)The power connector for internal drives in the...

www.thingiverse.com

 

[0924487]

I see some really ugly cables.

 

[HackMacDaddy]

Guys, the solution really is a hackintosh. Throw stones at me for mentioning it if you want to, but for everyone who wants the perfect solution, I suggest investing 2 days of work and researching/building it yourself.

Pros: Runs stable, same as a real Mac. Not forced to use Crapalina 10.15. HDD Trays galore depending on your case. In my case up to 5x 3,5" or 10x2,5" + two additional 2,5" SATA mounts in the back. I run 13TB of SSD storage. Two seperate drives for MacOS/Win10. You can swap out NVME drives on the MOBO at any time. Not tied to a T2 chip. Just go and buy a bigger and faster drive than what Mac Pro offers. The list goes on...

Cons: no Apple Logo on the case. Not plug and play.

Don't get me wrong: I could buy a couple of 2019 Mac Pros if I wanted, money is absolutely not my motivation. It's just absolutely not the solution that I wanted and was expecting like so many others. I am still interested in it and looking forward to how it will evolve. In case you want me to go leave this thread ;-) If this thing works for you, great! But we all know there is a huge gap between the Pro and the Mini.
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Yup. Personally I don't care for external storage. It's another thing with a power brick and more cable clutter on my desk. I like as much storage to be internal as possible.

I have an external 4TB hard drive connected to my iMac for an additional Time Machine backup, and look what I have to do to reduce clutter. I'd so love to be able to just have it inside the machine, but Apple makes it needlessly difficult.

Apple has been particularly stubborn about this sort of thing for some reason. You'd think with their obsession of getting rid of cables and wireless everything that having more upgradable internal storage would be a thing, especially on their flagship machine. But noooo.


View attachment 919256

(BTW excuse the cat hair, they're always walking back and forth behind the machine and, ya know, velcro. That won't stay clean for more than a day.)

Yeah, almost steampunk haha. Depending on your machine, you could open it and either insert or swap out the HDD inside of it. You could f.ex. have a 10 TB HDD + 1TB SSD in it. Not an easy task after 2011 but totally doable with tutorials and the right tools.

 

[theluggage]

Guys, the solution really is a hackintosh.

...and that isn't a bad solution for purely personal/hobbyist use - hats off to the folks who've produced the tools that make it easy - but since it involves breaching the license conditions on Mac OS it really can't be recommended for any sort of serious/commercial use.

I'm not going to lecture people on IP rights (I experimented with a Hackintosh myself for a while) or defend Apple's license terms and Apple would be pretty stupid to harass private customers over the issue ...but then, with the Mac Pro, they've just told a segment of their customers to shove off, so who knows what they'll do if they get it into their head that 10% of Hackintosh users could be bullied into buying $10k Mac Pro systems?

Want to play with a Hackintosh? Fine - but the reality is:

• if you use a Hackintosh in a commercial environment where you could get software audited, you're taking a huge risk.
• if an OS update bricks your Hackintosh - tough. I mean, updates have been known to brick genuine Macs but then, at least, Apple is under some pressure to fix it. If they break your Hackintosh, you get to keep both parts. Even third party vendors have an instant excuse to drop support if they find you're using a Hackintosh.
• Apple could clamp down overnight, cancel your Apple account, turn your FCP/Logic license into a pumpkin etc.
• Within the next six months, Apple will almost certainly update the iMac to include a T2 (or successor) chip. After which, every Mac sold will have T2 Apple will then kill non-T2 support in MacOS as soon as they can possibly get away with it, and bye-bye Hackintosh.

I think the moral is: don't spend significant cash on "Hackintosh" hardware that you wouldn't be happy to use with Windows or Linux, or "invest" heavily in Apple-store software (including Logic/FCPx). Or see it as a temporary stepping stone to transitioning to Windows or Linux.

 

[HackMacDaddy]

...and that isn't a bad solution for purely personal/hobbyist use - hats off to the folks who've produced the tools that make it easy - but since it involves breaching the license conditions on Mac OS it really can't be recommended for any sort of serious/commercial use.

I'm not going to lecture people on IP rights (I experimented with a Hackintosh myself for a while) or defend Apple's license terms and Apple would be pretty stupid to harass private customers over the issue ...but then, with the Mac Pro, they've just told a segment of their customers to shove off, so who knows what they'll do if they get it into their head that 10% of Hackintosh users could be bullied into buying $10k Mac Pro systems?

Want to play with a Hackintosh? Fine - but the reality is:

• if you use a Hackintosh in a commercial environment where you could get software audited, you're taking a huge risk.
• if an OS update bricks your Hackintosh - tough. I mean, updates have been known to brick genuine Macs but then, at least, Apple is under some pressure to fix it. If they break your Hackintosh, you get to keep both parts. Even third party vendors have an instant excuse to drop support if they find you're using a Hackintosh.
• Apple could clamp down overnight, cancel your Apple account, turn your FCP/Logic license into a pumpkin etc.
• Within the next six months, Apple will almost certainly update the iMac to include a T2 (or successor) chip. After which, every Mac sold will have T2 Apple will then kill non-T2 support in MacOS as soon as they can possibly get away with it, and bye-bye Hackintosh.

I think the moral is: don't spend significant cash on "Hackintosh" hardware that you wouldn't be happy to use with Windows or Linux, or "invest" heavily in Apple-store software (including Logic/FCPx). Or see it as a temporary stepping stone to transitioning to Windows or Linux.

You have a point about the legal stuff there, that's undisputable. Still I am willing to take the risk, which I think is extremely low. At least in my case.

From a moral standpoint I am ok: I own several Apple computers + iPads/iPhones. Been a loyal customers since G4 days. I use Logic Pro X to make a living and if it wasn't for this single piece of software I would have ditched Apple long time ago.

- Os updates don't brick Hackintoshes since a long time anymore. It just works ;-)

- I am not scared for the T2 implementation so much, because it will take some time untill they stop supporting the 2019 iMac. I don't plan to move away from Mojave for now either.

Let's see what the transition to ARM will bring us. If Logic gets ported to ARM, I am buying either a new iPad or the rumored ARM MacBook for traveling. And hopefully the 8,1 Mac Pro will fix some of the 7,1 problems.

 

[ssgbryan]

Maybe this is true, but we certainly don't have to be happy about it.

We ALL know Apple can do better. Why are we defending their not trying harder? Especially when they're charging over five grand for the thing?

I like a lot of the things Apple does, but I'm also willing to call them out when they're lacking, and this is one situation where they're really lacking.

6K, not 5K to start. For 8 cores, a 5 year old video card, and a dead end CPU that can be outperformed by mid-tier boxes 1/3 of the price of a 7,1.

No, we don't know that they can do better.

Apple isn't a computer company anymore. They are a luxury phone maker that dabbles (badly imo) in hardware and software.

 

[MVMNT]

A solution you have to PAY FOR to offer expansion like the cMP, and they can't even get the colour of the cables right.

 

[Ronlap]

There is already a 3D printable project on the net, based on the Pegasus. Just google it. You will need to make your own cables too.

Cables: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...technology_cabsataj2i_sata_cable_for_j2i.html

 

[zorinlynx]

Yeah, almost steampunk haha. Depending on your machine, you could open it and either insert or swap out the HDD inside of it. You could f.ex. have a 10 TB HDD + 1TB SSD in it. Not an easy task after 2011 but totally doable with tutorials and the right tools.

It's totally not worth it with an iMac. They're a huge pain in the ass to open up to add/change storage. You have to buy a kit that includes adhesive strips to replace and it's very easy to accidentally damage something when doing the work.

This is why I specced out this iMac with a 1TB internal SSD and just resigned myself to using external storage and the network for any additional storage. The iMac is the best bang for the buck for MacOS performance at the moment, and the 5K screen is unmatched. It'd be so easy for them to design in a swappable drive bay though.

 

[alphaod]

$200 for a mounting bracket and 2 slightly-customised SATA cables that should have been included with the Mac in the first place...

To be fair, the third cable is a USB3-to-SATA cable which might set you back as much as $7!

Sheesh. I've bought entire PC cases that cost less than $200 and they don't charge extra for the flippin' drive brackets. ...and that's premium Fractal Design/Silverstone stuff that you can compare with Apple and keep a straight face, although the Mac Pro blows right past "premium" and into "over-engineered to the point of parody"...

OK, I know all the big IT firms will charge you $50 for a cable tie if they think you're ordering with a corporate credit card and not watching the price, but that doesn't make it right - and they're usually doing it to compensate for under-bidding on support contracts.
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...probably because there are only 2 SATA connectors (plus a USB-3) on the Mac Pro mainboard...?

Niche products have always been expensive and it's expected to be. It takes time and costs money to design these; these companies need to be able to recover these expenses and still run a business.

This is always why copy-cat products can be sold cheaply. It didn't take any time nor money to design them. The aforementioned original designers need to recuperate as much as they can before the copy-cats flood the market.

 

[theluggage]

Niche products have always been expensive and it's expected to be. It takes time and costs money to design these; these companies need to be able to recover these expenses and still run a business.

It's a mounting bracket for 3.5" hard drives and what should be standard SATA and power cables.
If it needed more than a day's R&D then something was very, very wrong.

$50-$100 would be a premium "niche" price for something like that. The only question is whether Sonnet are trousering the profit or if Apple have gratuitously designed the Mac with nonstandard/expensive fixings and connectors - when there are perfectly adequate and standard ways of connecting SATA and power to a motherboard. Or maybe they are charging licensing, or imposing excessive "quality" standards (the Mac Pro is grotesquely over-engineered for what is basically a bog-standard PCIe tower).

 

[Onelifenofear]

This is so absurd for a machine that STARTS at over $5K. I don't get it, why has Apple gone in such a ridiculous direction with the Mac Pro? I bought a Mac Pro back in 2006. It was $2500. It had a beautiful SATA backplane which could take four internal hard drives.

The new Mac Pro costs over twice as much and you need to buy overpriced third party accessories just to put extra storage in it. WTF, Apple? I mean, at least it's better than the trash can, which was COMPLETE rather than partial stupidity, but they could have done better, especially at this price.

Pah I am really narked off that Apple have not included a SCSI connector and a Serial port

I’m really surprised no one has mentioned this...SATA is older technology and maxes out and 600Mb/s with an SSD ( 50mb/s with a Spinner) ... NVME though PCIE can be 3500Mb+ And can hit 7,000MBs on a single PCIE with 4x NVME stick in raid.

I get that people might want Huge cheap Spinners for backup or something, but an 2.5 SSD is a bit pointless when a NVME is not much different in price and a single or dual caddy is not a lot of money ( the 4 slot RAID cards are )

it has 8 PCIE slots for a reason... even with a double wide Vega2 and the IO card installed - you could add 20 4tb NVME cards in the other 5 PCIE slots ( if you were rich enough! )

 

[satcomer]

All I know Sonnet Store Mac Pro PCIE cards for 2019 Mac Pro that might mean something if you have some older devices that need ports!

 

[ssgbryan]

NVMe drives are fast, but they aren't very large - which is why a lot of us still use spinning rust. My iTunes library is around 8Tb, and I am still moving my TV series to it.