Q: Getting 6G SATA into the Mac Pro 2010 drive trays
After some research, it seems like the procedure for attaching a PCIe miniSAS card to drives in the internal Mac Pro drive trays is pretty straightforward for the 2006-8 Mac Pros, but not so much for 2009-2012.
Regarding the very simple procedure for 2006-8 Mac Pros:
http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgrade-your-06-08-mac-pros-internal-bays-to-sata -3-0
AFA I can tell, the 2009-12 Mac Pro is not a SATA passthrough to a mniSAS connector on the motherboard like the 2006-8, but requires some more monkeying around. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I found this kit, which is pricey, but seems like it will do the job
Any thoughts on any of this or alternatives?
Hardware:
3x Samsung EVO 850 1TB 2.5" drives
1x HGST Ultrastar 3TB 3.5" drive
Areca ARC-1882-ix-24
Thanks for reading this.
Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), 2010, 12-core 3.33, 64 ram
Posted on Jul 16, 2016 1:35 PM
I have a Mac Pro 2010 model and I have fitted a PCIe miniSAS card and the maxupgrades drive bay adapter sleds. I did this more because I could then having a real need and got the parts cheap off eBay. (I have upgraded practically everything in my Mac Pro so I now have 802.3ac WiFi & Bluetooth 4.0 LE with Continuity support, USB 3.0, a new video card, faster CPU chips with more cores and of course SATA III.)
It all works fine and does give a genuine SATA III speed. For traditional hard disks you are not going to notice the improvement but for SATA SSD drives you can easily spot the improvement. Obviously a PCIe direct connect SSD is even faster these days.
I have tried two different miniSAS cards both successfully for booting in to OS X, and both successfully for booting via Boot Camp in to Windows. There is however an issue with Boot Camp you need to be aware of to get that to work successfully. Read on…
While Windows can boot directly from the standard internal drive bay connections because the drivers are built-in, it will not boot from a PCIe miniSAS card initially. I got round this by first having the drive connected using the original drive bay connection, then booting via Boot Camp in to Windows, then installing the Windows driver for the PCIe miniSAS card, and then shutting down, swapping the connection for the drive bay to the miniSAS and then I was able to boot Windows via the PCIe miniSAS card.
I have successfully done this with both a StarTech PCIe card, and an Attotech ExpressSAS card. Both these cards have Windows drivers, neither needs any Mac software but the Attotech one does have Mac software. The Areca card seems huge overkill, the StarTech card is the cheapest and lowest end option, the Attotech is available as both a RAID and non-RAID version and would be in the middle ground. I believe Highpoint do a suitable card as well but I would avoid them as their Mac driver situation is a mess.
PS. For 2.5" SATA SSD drives you normally could get drive sleds specifically for 2.5" drives but these then do not work with the miniSAS. Instead you need to fit a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter to the maxupgrades drive sleds. The following or similar will do the job. See http://www.newertech.com/products/adaptadrive.php I have again done this myself.
Posted on Jul 18, 2016 7:48 AM