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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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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
 
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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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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