'Can the built-in backplane on a 2009 Mac Pro physically accept a SAS drive with a SFF 8482 connector?'
Hi,
The new March 2009 Mac Pro models no longer provides a method to connect 3rd party internal SAS controllers to the Apple internal backplane. While the Apple Mac Pro backplane connector is SAS compatible the motherboard controller only supports SATA.
Apple sells a 4-port PCIe RAID card that adds SAS compatibility. It uses the connectors in PCIe slot 4 bus to automatically make the connection. So far, this change has caused all of the 3rd party internal SAS controllers to no longer be able to connect with the internal Apple Mac Pro backplane.
If you are determined to only consider an internal SAS solution, the Apple RAID card is your only choice. Personally, I prefer an external solution that allows easier access to the hard disks and provides hot swap capability.
You may want to read about the HighPoint RR4322 if you are interested in a faster external option.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
Have fun!
The RS3WC080 12 Gb/s PCIe 3.0 SAS/SATA RAID Controller Card from Intel is a mainstream RAID controller card with internal mini-SAS HD SFF8643 SAS/SATA connectors for connectivity inside the server. This controller card provides performance. Jan 09, 2020 This drive is already formatted for Mac and fully compatible with Thunderbolt 3. It's a 1TB solid state drive, making it perfect for smaller projects, with transfer speeds of up to 770MB/s. This portable RAID solution comes in black, white, gold, gray, and silver, and features a rugged enclosure that's designed to be taken on the road with you.
HighPoint high port count (HPC) NVMe RAID controllers are ideal for professional applications that require a small-footprint, mass-storage NVMe solution that can take full advantage of the PCIe 3.0 x16 transfer bandwidth. This performance-focused NVMe RAID architecture ensures that up to x4 lanes can be assigned to each device channel, and deliver up to 14,000 MB/s of transfer performance – ideal for professional media workstation and server environments designed to support a wide range of editing, rendering, capture and streaming applications.
HighPoint HPC U.2 NVMe Controllers allow customers to complete saturate the PCIe 3.0 bus-bandwidth with write performance over 14,000MB/s, while simultaneously supporting up to 120TB of storage capacity!
The average write performance of a standard off-the-shelf U.2 NVMe SSD is approximately 2100MB/s.
Each high port count RAID controller features eight independent M.2 or U.2 channels, and can support from 16TB up to 120TB of storage capacity configured to act as independent drives or into one or more RAID 0, 1 or 10 arrays.
No other NVMe controllers in today's marketplace can match the massive storage capability, blazing fast transfer rates or flexibility in such a compact package.
HighPoint HPC U.2 NVMe Controllers allow customers to complete saturate the PCIe 3.0 bus-bandwidth with write performance over 14,000MB/s, while simultaneously supporting up to 120TB of storage capacity!
The average write performance of a standard off-the-shelf U.2 NVMe SSD is approximately 2100MB/s.
Each high port count RAID controller features eight independent M.2 or U.2 channels, and can support from 16TB up to 120TB of storage capacity configured to act as independent drives or into one or more RAID 0, 1 or 10 arrays.
No other NVMe controllers in today's marketplace can match the massive storage capability, blazing fast transfer rates or flexibility in such a compact package.
Raid Controller For Mac Pro
HighPoint high port count series NVMe RAID controllers are truly independent NVMe storage solutions. Unlike most NVMe devices in today's marketplace, which are tied to a specific hardware platform or brand of SSD or motherboard, SSD7000 series controllers do not require a hardware environment with Bifurcation support, or any specialized software released by SSD manufacturers; any AMD or Intel motherboard with a dedicated PCIe 3.0 x16 slot can now support more than 120TB of NVMe storage, and experience sustained write performance in excess of 10GB/s via a single compact PCIe device.
