[Oliver Peters]

[Joe Marler] “The Pegasus J2i appears to be a simple sled for two 3.5” SATA HDDs. The announcement said it will use a “custom cable assembly”, getting data from the Mac Pro’s SATA header.”

Any links to that?

Edit: Never mind. I see it on Promise’s home page.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Drives in the older Mac pro were typically less then 1TB. “

You are talking about stock from Apple, not after market upgrades. I haven’t actually tested whether the power supplies would handle it, but a 2012 MP should be able to easily take 4 x 4TB, plus 1 or 2 SSDs up to 4TB each. You can get spinning disc drives up to 14TB these days, so in theory up to 4 x 14TB in an older tower, plus the SSDs. Again, the caveat being the power supply. I have personally run 2009 towers with 2 x 1TB SSDs, plus 2 x 2TB 7200RPM drives.

So yes, if this tower could take 4 x 14TB 7200 RPM drives, that would be great. But it doesn’t look like that’s possible.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Shane Ross] “And no, no slots. Only TWO drive slots for M2 SSD drives. “

Correct. That’s my concern. It appears that the intention is to mount drives into an MPX module, like Promise is planning to release. Therefore, I would presume that if you wanted to add your own raw drive(s), you would have to purchase the MPX chassis from Apple. Potentially there will be third-party MPX modules available. And, would you even be able to add a 3.5″ spinning hard drive or will you be limited to 2.5″ SSDs or only NVMe drives?

[Shane Ross] “That we all want external drives for everything!”

They have to justify Thunderbolt 3 somehow ☺

[Shane Ross] “What’s wrong with allowing for 4 internal drives?”

In fact, if you used the optical drive bays, you could do up to 6 drives on the older Mac Pros.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

OK wait. You are thinking SATA cable connectors, instead of a drive slot. I see.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

Those aren’t SATA slots, though.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Shane Ross] “Yeah…but no POWER…just the ports”

I don’t see that. Only PCIe slots. See below.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Dom Silverio] “There are also SATA ports.”

There are? In the 2019 MP?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

Updated:

[Andre van Berlo] “Wouldn’t it be possible to add fast ssd storage via the pcie slots? “

It can’t be standard SSD internal drives. If possible, it would have to be card-mounted, like the regular NVMe drives. However, that depends on whether or not the card mounting structure will actually hold these in place.

I think right now there are still a lot of questions around whether standard PCIe form-factors will work without some type of special Apple mounting chassis like the MPX. You’ll note that Promise has announced their product – a 4-drive RAIDed NVMe in an MPX chassis.

Regular PCIe cards? Probably for full length cards like Kona or Decklink. Others? Hmm…

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Andre van Berlo] “Wouldn’t it be possible to add fast ssd storage via the pcie slots? “

It can’t be standard SSD internal drives. If possible, it would have to be card-mounted, like the regular NVMe drives.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Andre van Berlo] “Does that mean that is doesn’t have to be identical GPU’s or CPU’s?”

I believe this is the case. That is already being experienced when people have an eGPU. But it is application-dependent.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com