Once connected, the four drive bays in the Mac Pro are now being controlled by the RAID card, making it capable of both high-speed data transfer and more advanced RAID options.Īt this point, we run into a bit of a problem the Highpoint card isn’t bootable in a Mac. This is easily remedied, however, by using a mini-SAS extender cable to bridge the distance. Once you install the Highpoint card in your Mac, you’ll notice that the mini-SAS cable that connects to the logic board is located near the front of the Mac Pro and the internal port on the card is located near the rear – much too far away from each other to connect. Not only does it feature six internal mini-SAS ports, it also has a built-in (hardware) RAID controller which supports RAID Level 0, 1, 5, 10, and 50 along with individual drive support and disk spanning, as well as an external port for more expansion options.īut we’re getting ahead of ourselves let’s concentrate on upgrading those drive bays.

This Highpoint RocketRAID card fits the bill. The trick is to find one with that mini-SAS connector on the inside. The great thing is that mini-SAS is a fairly common connector for PCIe SATA controller cards.

The backplane (where the drives in the bays are connected) consists of four pass-thru SATA connections which are, in turn, connected to the SATA controller on the logic board (located near the front of the Mac Pro) via a mini-SAS connector. On top of that, those RAID levels are all software-based, which can reduce overall performance.įortunately, if you happen to have a 2006-2008 Mac Pro, you can improve the performance in those bays, with only one small thing to lookout for. If you wish to put the drives in to a RAID array, you are limited to either a mirrored RAID 1, losing half your capacity, or a RAID 0, which is faster, but increases the risk of data loss.

As they currently sit, they only move data at SATA 2.0 speeds, roughly three gigabits per second. Unfortunately, the fast evolution of technology means that, after a while, that older Mac may seem a little slow and may not be able to take full advantage of current tech. Most of the time, your average xpc has a longer useful life than its PC counterpart.

Mac pro 5.1 2010 upgrades