Mac Pro 2019

Question

Level 1

15 points

Mac Pro 2019

I received my new Mac Pro and I notice that the SSD/hard drive configuration is different than what was described online and in technical presale discussions over the phone:

There appears to be just a single 2TB SSD installed instead of two 1TB SSD discs which is more conducive to my workflow.

Does anyone know if this is a RAID0 setup? It does not appear as such in disk utility so I do not understand what is going on or how to get 2 drives to appear instead of one single 2TB drive.

Mac Pro, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 5, 2020 11:35 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

gtaffet Author

Level 1

15 points

Jan 6, 2020 10:34 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Hello all,

I received this followup message from Apple tech support today which confirms Malcolm's notes about the T2 chip and gives a bit more info:

I found out you in fact have 2 SSDs and they are keyed by the T2 chip in your Mac as 1, this why we only see 1 when we look anything up, because they are keyed you can not just remove just one and replace it, you need to replace both of them together by Apple, so if you wanted more SSD room you’d need to replace both of these, or, purchase and install PCIe SSD drives into your machine.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 5, 2020 12:03 PM in response to gtaffet

2TB is supposed to be provided by 2 1 TB modules, according to tech Specs.

Launch Disk Utility, and see what it tells you about the Drives listed by immutable hardware-name, not "Macintosh HD"-type Volume-names.

Reply

Answer 3

Jan 5, 2020 5:19 PM in response to gtaffet

That really looks like its is ONE SSD drive.

It is certainly not a software RAID, although how it is implemented is not clear.

I think this may be a good question for Apple support. If the first-responder does not know, gently but firmly ask for a next-level tech who DOES know.

Reply

Answer 4

Jan 5, 2020 5:42 PM in response to gtaffet

The other possibility is that this is a documentation/production problem.

Perhaps they originally intended the 2G configuration to have two SSD arrays, but exactly that model ended up being cheaper or faster or better with just one, and they made a change in the production model, but did not get the update into the final documentation.

Reply

Answer 5

Jan 5, 2020 7:28 PM in response to gtaffet

There was a last minute change to double the maximin storage, so that may have changed the number of modules used for all configurations.

No matter how many modules, Disk Utility is only going to show one drive. Everything is handled by the T2 chip, so whether multiple modules are just concatenated or used in RAID 0 will not show in macOS except possibly higher speed with RAID 0.

If you need to, you can partition it.

Reply

Answer 6

Jan 6, 2020 7:04 AM in response to gtaffet

I expect Malcolm has the true answer. But another experiment point would be to pull the cover and look at how many devices are plugged into the two slots. There is a picture of their location in the main (advertising) article on Apple.com.

Reply

Answer 7

gtaffet Author

Level 1

15 points

Jan 5, 2020 2:31 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

This is what I see (not sure how to interpret it...):

Reply

Answer 8

gtaffet Author

Level 1

15 points

Jan 5, 2020 5:34 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I have talked to a few Apple tech support people already. So far, they have been as puzzled as you and I are. When (if) I get a definitive answer, I will report back to this thread. : )

Reply