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ezylstra

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 7, 2017
51
19
Anyone running an SSD in their 2009 XServe's optical bay? Which adapter and drive are you using?
 

hobowankenobi

macrumors 68020
Aug 27, 2015
2,082
886
on the land line mr. smith.
I ran a boot SSD in a 2009 Xserve for several years, no issues, from 10.10 through 10.12.

The first one was a Mercury 3G, and later on a Samsung. Both were run from one of the 3 SSD slots, not the optical bay.
 

ezylstra

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 7, 2017
51
19
I ran a boot SSD in a 2009 for several years, no issues. The first one was a Mercury 3G, and later on a Samsung. Both were run from one of the 3 SSD slots, not the optical bay.

I need the 3 sleds for my SAS drives. I don't want to spend lots of money dealing with the slow SSD port. I also am looking to keep my PCI slots for other devices. That leaves the still-not-so-fast optical bay.
 

hobowankenobi

macrumors 68020
Aug 27, 2015
2,082
886
on the land line mr. smith.
All I can add is...if you have an SSD, give it a shot.

Similar vintage MBPs, Pros, and iMacs had their optical drives on good performing SATA buses...same performance as main drive bus as I recall. Just a hunch, but I would hope the optical bay would have a same/similar SATA bus too.


I don't have any Xserves left to inspect or test with.
 

ezylstra

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 7, 2017
51
19
All I can add is...if you have an SSD, give it a shot.

Similar vintage MBPs, Pros, and iMacs had their optical drives on good performing SATA buses...same performance as main drive bus as I recall. Just a hunch, but I would hope the optical bay would have a same/similar SATA bus too.


I don't have any Xserves left to inspect or test with.
I have an SSD which I did install into a tray, installed Catalina, and booted with no issues. Moved it to my optical adapter, and it would crash while booting--error text streamed to the screen. I then booted from a USB drive and did a Disk Utility First Aid on the SSD in the optical adapter, and it had errors. I moved the SSD back to the tray slot and repeated the First Aid, no errors.

E
 
Last edited:

hobowankenobi

macrumors 68020
Aug 27, 2015
2,082
886
on the land line mr. smith.
Hmm....sounds like there in fact a different spec/requirement on the optical bay SATA bus then.

Are you using the PCI slot? Could add a SATA card, or a PCI NVMe card? Info here...though not for Xserve. This is reported to Xserve compatible, and bootable.
 

ezylstra

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 7, 2017
51
19
Hmm....sounds like there in fact a different spec/requirement on the optical bay SATA bus then.

Are you using the PCI slot? Could add a SATA card, or a PCI NVMe card? Info here...though not for Xserve. This is reported to Xserve compatible, and bootable.
I was using a PCIe slot until my SSD went bad. I want to keep my only two PCIe slots for other uses. I also want to keep all three drive slots for large scale storage. That leaves me with USB, built-in SSD (slow and expensive to make work--damned proprietary connector), or the Optical Bay, which I don't need for optical drives anymore. Optical bay is the best alternative.

So far, not a single user has replied that they have an optical bay adapter working.
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All I can add is...if you have an SSD, give it a shot.

Similar vintage MBPs, Pros, and iMacs had their optical drives on good performing SATA buses...same performance as main drive bus as I recall. Just a hunch, but I would hope the optical bay would have a same/similar SATA bus too.


I don't have any Xserves left to inspect or test with.
I did give it a shot. The drive worked hooked up in one of the internal drive caddies--but I need that slot for large scale storage. Put it into my Optical Bay adapter and it almost works, but gives kernel panic partway into booting.
 

ezylstra

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 7, 2017
51
19
You can also solder a standard sata port directly to the motherboard on the 3,1
Not exactly a clean solution. My solder skills are for sh*t.

If we could find a connector to fit the 16-pin jack on the board from somewhere like Digikey.com, preferably one that is wired, then we could more simply solder directly to a standard SATA connector.
 

Ludacrisvp

macrumors 6502a
May 14, 2008
797
363
Not exactly a clean solution. My solder skills are for sh*t.

If we could find a connector to fit the 16-pin jack on the board from somewhere like Digikey.com, preferably one that is wired, then we could more simply solder directly to a standard SATA connector.
its not from digikey but they probably have them too... this will fit the connector for the optional SSD.
This site has the pinout:
And this may be the easiest route to get a sata connection:
 
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