Early 2008 Mac Pro: Some SATA 3.0 and mini-SAS questions

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Level 4

1,192 points

Early 2008 Mac Pro: Some SATA 3.0 and mini-SAS questions

Hi everyone

I'd like to upgrade my 2008 Mac Pro with new HDDs. I was intrigued by OWC's blog post that the 2008 Mac Pro can be upgraded to SATA 3.0 using the Newer Technology MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i controller card. So I was thinking of getting one of those and install 4x3TB HDDs. I also want to have an external enclosure for backups of the internal drives.

The card has an external mini-SAS port. Can someone recommend an external HDD enclosure with mini-SAS connection?

Also, is such a connection reliable, for instance, does it wake up and sleep with the computer? Ideally I would want to maintain the fast connection rather than use another type of port.

The HDDs I'm considering are the Seagate Barracuda 3TB ST3000DM001. They are big and comparably inexpensive. However I've read very mixed reviews about them. Reliability seems a bit low. I would be interested to hear people's experiences with this drive.

Cheers and many thanks in advance

Philip

Mac Pro 2008 , 2.8GHz , 2xSSD 4xHD -OTHER, ACD 23" , Lion 10.7

Posted on Jun 6, 2012 3:33 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Jun 6, 2012 5:54 AM in response to pullman

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1379883

http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120419_1-OWC-Mercury-Accelsior-CS 6-diglloydHuge.html

http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120411_1-Hitachi-Deskstar-4TB-tes ted.html

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Answer 2

pullman Author

Level 4

1,192 points

Jun 6, 2012 6:04 AM in response to The hatter

Thanks hatter but I'm afraid those links are not on point. Yes, I posted a similar question at Macrumors, specifically about the Seagate drives.

I would very much like information about mini-SAS and good external enclosures with such a connection.

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Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Jun 6, 2012 6:11 AM in response to pullman

My vote is not in favor of Seagate and of course external drives don't sleep.

For good enclosures go to http://www.macgurus.com

I've been a fan of ATTO for over 15 yrs and continue to feel they are the real deal.

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Answer 4

Feb 8, 2016 11:40 PM in response to pullman

Hi there,

have you been using the newer tech raid card? I've read about it too, but haven't found any conclusion, if it really works welI the end.

still trying to figure out, which setup might be the best For my Mac Pro 3.1

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Answer 5

Feb 9, 2016 8:14 AM in response to ElectriMF

RAID is a good speedup for Rotating drives that are reading very large amounts of data from the exact same file. Random Reads are not improved by RAID. ANY intervening reads to any other file kill the RAID's performance and can drop performance back to SLOWER than regular drives.

Your earlier suggestion of installing an SSD will give you a far larger performance boost than a RAID for all but very specialized data.

To get the promised performance from a RAID you need to have Source files on one RAID, Destination files on a different RAID, scratch/work files on completely different drives, and a separate Boot/System/Applications drive. Otherwise stray reads will move the Read heads away and derail the desired RAID performance.

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Answer 6

Feb 9, 2016 8:52 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thank you.

but would I not have the advantage of using sata 3 instead of sata2( built in), which the card is supposed to offer, or is that an advantage my Mac wont be able to actually use?

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Answer 7

Feb 9, 2016 9:18 AM in response to ElectriMF

Today's Rotating magnetic drives can source a single burst of data off the platters at about 125 to 150Mytes/sec, not sustainable.

SATA-II at 3Gbits/sec or 375MBytes/sec is not a bottleneck for those drives. SATA-III at 6GBytes/sec or 750MBytes/sec is also not a bottleneck. For rotating drives, SATA-II vs SATA-III is total specsmanship, not real-world performance. Do not pay extra for SATA-III for rotating drives under any circumstances.

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The reason you are seeing a move away from SATA into stuff like ThunderBolt has much more to do with SSD speeds, where certain Samsung SSDs at this writing can briefly reach speeds above 1000MBytes/sec.

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Answer 8

Feb 9, 2016 9:16 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

again, big thank you, as I was wondering through the world of theory found in threads. This sounds really good.

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Answer 9

Feb 12, 2016 10:24 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

SO I have read about other sata 3 pci solution, that's bootable.

Re: Mac Pro 3.1 upgrade 2016

Which ssds work well with OS X 10.7 In my 3.1 mac pro? I have read much about difficulties concerning trim especially on owc ssds And ssds not being very good for older macs and so forth, but I couldn't figure out which actually works fine. The samsung you mentioned was ratEd quite good, as far as I remember.

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