Tiger 12TB Internal RAID for
Mac Pro Tower
Originally posted March 14th, 2016 by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist
Previously we reported on the 2TB Tiger 6Gbps SSD from Trans International. We found yet another way to use it to enhance your Mac Pro tower's 'power.' How about a 12TB internal RAID set using Double Decker sleds and a x16 SAS RAID Host Adapter?
GRAPH LEGEND
6 Tigers = 12TB = Six TransIntl 2TB Tiger 6Gbps SSDs mounted on Double Decker sleds (factory drive bays) and connected to the PCIe x16 HighPoint RocketRAID 2740 6Gbps SAS/SATA RAID host adapter in x16 slot 2
4 Tigers = 8TB = Four TransIntl 2TB Tiger 6Gbps SSDs mounted on Double Decker sleds (factory drive bays) and connected to the PCIe x16 HighPoint RocketRAID 2740 6Gbps SAS/SATA RAID host adapter in x16 slot 2
Test mule was a 2010 Mac Pro 3.33GHz 12-core (OWC Turnkey Upgrade) running OS X El Capitan. SoftRAID 5.1 was used to create the RAID 0 set. You can also use HighPoint's RAID manager.
LARGE SEQUENTIAL TRANSFER TEST
We used AJA System Test to benchmark file level sequential transfer speed using a 16GB test size. LONGEST graph bar means the fastest overall in Megabytes per Second.
ANALYSIS and DETAILS
The 'Mac Mac Scientist' has found yet another way to pump up the Mac Pro tower. The 2TB SSDs like the 2TB Tiger facilitate the desire of professionals to gain both speed and capacity for their large, complex projects.
Though we published results for four and six Tiger SSDs, one could add two more (total of eight) 2TB SSDs to create a 16TB RAID set. (We only had six Tigers or we would have tried it. However, we added two more non-Tiger SSDs for a total of eight but the transfer speed maxed at 3300MB/s. Though we hoped for closer to 4000MB/s, the limitation in transfer speed may be with the RocketRAID 2740 itself.)
The Double Decker sleds enable you to mount two 2.5" SSDs in each Mac Pro factory drive bay. The SSD's ports are faced outward. Custom power cables are included with each sled that let you to pull power from the factory backplane. The outward orientation also makes it easy to connect each drive's SATA data port to the internal host adapter.
There are other models of HighPoint RocketRAID other than the 2740 that will do the job, depending on how many drives you want to connect and how fast you want to go. We were able to run up to four internal SSDs with the RocketRAID 2721. ATTO Tech makes the ExpressSAS R608 (up to 8 internal drives) and R644 (up to four internal drives). We will test our setup with the R608 in the near future.
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WHERE TO BUY 2TB TIGER 6Gbps SSDs
WHERE TO BUY DOUBLE DECKER SLEDS FOR ALL MAC PRO TOWER VERSIONS
- Order Double Decker sleds for 2006-2008 or 2009-2012 Mac Pro towers from Trans International
WHERE TO BUY A MAC FRIENDLY RAID HOST ADAPTER W/INTERNAL PORTS
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