Using SSD with MAC Pro 2010 RAID card

Question

Level 1

8 points

Using SSD with MAC Pro 2010 RAID card

Hi,

I have a MAC Pro (I believe it is a 2010 model). It has 4 x 1Tbyte Samsung HDD in RAID 5 configuration. It has been working well for 5 years. I now want to bump up the performance (RM is already 32Gbytes & Video card is the fastest NVidia you can get that is recommended by Apple). I want to replace the HDDs with 1Tbyte Samsung EVO 850 SSDs. I put the new SSDs in and the system has reliability problems. Sometimes it won't see the SSD in the baie and if I get it to see all the SSDs & do the RAID 5 build, then the OS won't install. There seems to be some sort of incompatability. Anyone have any ideas how to get this to work?

Thanks,

M

MAC Pro Specs are:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro

Model Identifier: MacPro4,1

Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz

Number of Processors: 2

Total Number of Cores: 8

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache (per Processor): 8 MB

Memory: 32 GB

Processor Interconnect Speed: 5.86 GT/s

Boot ROM Version: MP41.0081.B07

SMC Version (system): 1.39f5

SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f5

Serial Number (system): CK*******20H

Serial Number (processor tray): J5*********LUC

Hardware UUID: ***

System Software Overview:

System Version: OS X 10.10.4 (14E46)

Kernel Version: Darwin 14.4.0

Boot Volume: Veez MACPro

Boot Mode: Normal

Computer Name:

User Name:

Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled

Time since boot: 8 minutes

Mac Pro RAID Card:

PCI Slot: Slot-4

Hardware Version: 2.00

Firmware Version: E-1.3.2.0

Expansion ROM Version: 18

Shutdown Status: Normal shutdown

Write Cache Enabled: Yes

Battery Info:

Firmware Revision: 1.0.2

First Installed: 01/01/2001 01:04

Last Date Conditioned: 16/06/2015 23:42

State: Working battery

Fault: Normal battery operation

Status:

Charging: Yes

Conditioning: No

Connected: Yes

Discharging: No

Sufficient Charge: Yes

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4), 2010 Model

Posted on Jul 7, 2015 11:26 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

lllaass

Level 10

210,417 points

Jul 7, 2015 12:36 PM in response to MMatijas

Apple in

Mac Pro (Mid 2012 and earlier): Frequently Asked Questions about the Mac Pro RAID Card and Xserve RAID Card - Apple Supp…

says

SSD drive modules are not recommended for the Apple RAID Card because these drives use their own on-disk cache and cannot take advantage of the protection provided by the battery-backed cache on the RAID card.

BTW, the MacPro4.1 is a 2009 Mac Pro

Reply

Answer 2

MMatijas Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 8, 2015 1:03 AM in response to lllaass

Hi,

This answer I believe is not relevant. Cache or no cache, we are talking about reliable recognition of the SSDs in the baies. Cache only defer where the data is stored. If you lake a look at a processor, they can have up to 3 levels of cache & that doesn't affect how they operate. In this cache with cache on the SSD & cache on the RAID, the worst that can happen is you loose data if the power goes off or a fetch/write may take twice as long, i.e. the delay of the SSD cache + the RAID cache. In my case I am asking why the RAID card cannot reliably work with the SSDs. Do the SSDs run too fast so the RAID card loses track or queue or command? Any other ideas?

Reply

Answer 3

Jul 8, 2015 1:42 AM in response to MMatijas

The Apple RAID card, and in fact the built-in drive bays are limited to SATAII i.e. 3Gbps speed. For SSDs you really want SATAIII i.e. 6Gbps otherwise the speed improvement you get from using SSDs is minimal.

You can theoretically get a third-party SATAIII internal RAID card and there is also one company which makes special drive carriers which draw power from the drive bays but bypasses the slow SATAII connectors and lets you instead connect to the replacement third-party RAID card. See https://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_ ID=452&ParentCat=351 as an example - they have various options available.

Note: The MaxConnect RAID card they use does not support booting from the RAID. You would need to either use an external drive to boot from, or fit a drive in one of the optical drive bays to boot from, or perhaps also consider a PCIe SSD card.

However you may want to consider getting an external RAID5 enclosure and fitting the drives in that instead. This could be a FireWire 800, eSATA, or USB enclosure, however remember the Mac Pro 2010 only has USB2 so USB is not worth using for this. The Mac Pro 2010 of course does not and never will have Thunderbolt. It is possible to fit a USB3 PCI card and even potentially a USB3.1 card.

I have a set of the above replacement drive carriers in my MacPro 2010 but use a cheaper card which cannot do RAID5. This does however still boost the speed of each SSD drive since my cheaper card still does SATAIII.

Reply

Answer 4

MMatijas Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 8, 2015 1:48 AM in response to John Lockwood

Hi John,

You answer is useful & I appreciate your thoughts. You are obviously correct about SATA II & III. However I have done upgrades to other machines putting in SATAIII SSDs in to SATAII systems and have seen enormous speed improvements - simply put, the spin & read speed of a classic HDD cannot keep up with the SATA interface speed. So I need to say I am stubborn & want to pursue my SSD upgrade but need to know why my RAID card won't reliably interface to EVO 850 SSDs. These babies work wonderfully in other machines. I am wondering if I should simply look for another RAID card on eBay/Amazon & swap it out to see if it maybe the RAID card itself that can't handle the speed. It has been working beautifully for 5 years on the existing 1TB HDD units.

Thoughts?

Reply

Answer 5

Jul 8, 2015 3:21 AM in response to MMatijas

On a Mac Pro 2010 only the Apple RAID card works with the drive bays. On some older Mac Pro models which have a standard miniSAS connector on the logic board you can use a different third-party RAID card and use a miniSAS cable to connect to the drive bays. This is why if you want to upgrade the drive bays to SATAIII on a 2010 model you need those special drive carriers I pointed you to.

You could check and see if there are any firmware updates for the EVO 850 drives, this might require using Windows either via Boot Camp or on a real PC, you would not be able to do this via a virtual machine.

Reply

Answer 6

MMatijas Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 8, 2015 3:27 AM in response to John Lockwood

Hi John,

Its almost the summer holidays here in Europe & the Apple stores are always full. I think I will now wait until September & take the machine to an Apple store & get them to look at the beast. BTW, I did check the firmware on the SSDs. Its the 1st thing I did - validate, firmware check plus full check & format. This is why I know they work & are very fast. I checked them on SATAII & SATAIII interfaces & they rocket along.

Regards,

M

Reply

Answer 7

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Jul 8, 2015 3:28 AM in response to MMatijas

Performance = Samsung SM951 1300MB/sec PCIE-SSD

Reply

Answer 8

MMatijas Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 8, 2015 3:32 AM in response to The hatter

Hi Hatter,

I am not sure why you posted the above info. It doesn't help with my problem.

M

Reply

Answer 9

Jul 8, 2015 3:45 AM in response to The hatter

The hatter wrote:

Performance = Samsung SM951 1300MB/sec PCIE-SSD

Yep definitely the fastest but you don't have enough PCI slots available to be able to build a RAID5 out of them as the original poster requested.

Reply

Answer 10

MMatijas Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 8, 2015 4:00 AM in response to John Lockwood

Here is another idea. What about if I remove the RAID completely & simply use software for RAID. Obviously if there is sudden power loss then the system can be corrupted but it may be a workaround in the worst case. Any thoughts on this?

Reply

Answer 11

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Jul 8, 2015 6:50 AM in response to MMatijas

You wanted better performance. And I think Apple RAID is POS PITA card.

Did not realize you lacked open PCIe slots.

I was trying to type on a phone so "brief" - and to alert mod to edit ur post.

For software RAID, invest in Softraid.com v. 5 of course.

Reply

Answer 12

Jul 8, 2015 8:10 AM in response to MMatijas

MMatijas wrote:

Here is another idea. What about if I remove the RAID completely & simply use software for RAID. Obviously if there is sudden power loss then the system can be corrupted but it may be a workaround in the worst case. Any thoughts on this?

The Apple software RAID does not support RAID5, there is SoftRAID which does support RAID5 see http://www.softraid.com/ but I would not expect software RAID to be helpful from a performance point of view. You cannot boot from SoftRaid.

Reply

Answer 13

Jul 8, 2015 8:12 AM in response to The hatter

The hatter wrote:

You wanted better performance. And I think Apple RAID is POS PITA card.

Did not realize you lacked open PCIe slots.

I was trying to type on a phone so "brief" - and to alert mod to edit ur post.

For software RAID, invest in Softraid.com v. 5 of course.

To do RAID5 the way the original poster wanted would need 4 drives which with the Samsung SM951 would require four PCI cards. As there are only a total of four PCI slots including the video card there is not enough slots unless you add a lot of extra cost and get an external PCI expansion chassis as well.

Reply