Add three internal drives to the Mac Pro with the Sonnet Fusion Flex J3i

Sonnet Fusion Flex J3i for Mac Pro

Sonnet Technologies has announced the Fusion Flex J3i, which allows the user to mount three hard drives or SSDs internal to the 2019 Mac Pro.

The Sonnet Fusion Flex for the Mac Pro comprises a custom mounting bracket and plates that support the installation of 3.5-inch SATA hard disk drives and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, mounting hardware, plus the needed power and data cables. The bracket installs on the mount points near the Mac Pro PCIe slots, and connects the mounted drives to the internal USB and SATA ports.

The Fusion Flex J3i is sold without drives. Capacity is limited by the user's provided drives, with 6 gigabits per second max speed for the drives attached to the SATA ports, and 5 gigabits per second for the drive attached to the internal USB port.

Sonnet Fusion Flex J3i assembly for Mac Pro

The Fusion Flex J3i will be available by June 15 at a retail price of $199.99.

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12 Comments

tht

said about 3 years ago

Wow, the 3rd drive uses the internal USB port. What's with the crazy plug on the drive end?

There aren't any single wide PCIe cards that can hold 4 2.5" drives?

Mike Wuerthele

said about 3 years ago

tht said:

Wow, the 3rd drive uses the internal USB port. What's with the crazy plug on the drive end?

There aren't any single wide PCIe cards that can hold 4 2.5" drives?

That is a fairly standard USB 3.0 to SATA cable.

The 2.5-inch drive height pretty much precludes a single-wide PCI-E card with four 2.5-inch drives, but I can't say for sure that there are none. However, I have seen cards that support four M.2 drives, though.

tht

said about 3 years ago

Mike Wuerthele said:

tht said:

Wow, the 3rd drive uses the internal USB port. What's with the crazy plug on the drive end?

There aren't any single wide PCIe cards that can hold 4 2.5" drives?

That is a fairly standard USB 3.0 to SATA cable.

The 2.5-inch drive height pretty much precludes a single-wide PCI-E card with four 2.5-inch drives, but I can't say for sure that there are none. However, I have seen cards that support four M.2 drives, though.

It's an optical illusion that it doesn't look like the red SATA cable plugs?

As for mounting 2.5" form factor drives on PCIe cards, they are of course on the market. Here is one:
https://www.amazon.com/Sedna-Express-Extended-Connector-Included/dp/B07L5SPWNV

The thing with the Mac Pro is that it is much less height constrained for PCIe cards than "normal" PCIe cards. A 10 mm or less thick 2.5" drive will fit in a 1-wide PCIe card, as the picture shows. 15 mm can probably fit too, but it will be tight.

A full length PCIe card is 12.5". Apple's Mac Pro looks like it can hold 5" tall cards, at least. A 2.5" form factor has a 2.76 x 4 inch footprint. This means 4 can be mounted on a 1-wide 12.5" long PCIe card if some vendor wants to do it. Not sure what the worth of using a PCIe slot of 4 to 8 TB of HDD of however large slow SSD drives could be, but it's probably cheap, and probably faster in a RAID config that the SATA ports.

Mike Wuerthele

said about 3 years ago

tht said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

tht said:

Wow, the 3rd drive uses the internal USB port. What's with the crazy plug on the drive end?

There aren't any single wide PCIe cards that can hold 4 2.5" drives?

That is a fairly standard USB 3.0 to SATA cable.

The 2.5-inch drive height pretty much precludes a single-wide PCI-E card with four 2.5-inch drives, but I can't say for sure that there are none. However, I have seen cards that support four M.2 drives, though.

It's an optical illusion that it doesn't look like the red SATA cable plugs?

As for mounting 2.5" form factor drives on PCIe cards, they are of course on the market. Here is one:
https://www.amazon.com/Sedna-Express-Extended-Connector-Included/dp/B07L5SPWNV

The thing with the Mac Pro is that it is much less height constrained for PCIe cards than "normal" PCIe cards. A 10 mm or less thick 2.5" drive will fit in a 1-wide PCIe card, as the picture shows. 15 mm can probably fit too, but it will be tight.

A full length PCIe card is 12.5". Apple's Mac Pro looks like it can hold 5" tall cards, at least. A 2.5" form factor has a 2.76 x 4 inch footprint. This means 4 can be mounted on a 1-wide 12.5" long PCIe card if some vendor wants to do it. Not sure what the worth of using a PCIe slot of 4 to 8 TB of HDD of however large slow SSD drives could be, but it's probably cheap, and probably faster in a RAID config that the SATA ports.

Wasn't this about four-drive cards? I know that two-drive cards exist. I don't think four-drive ones do.

Given that M.2 cards are very, very close in price to SATA ones, I don't foresee a four-drive card for 2.5-inch drives utilizing the extra volume in the Mac Pro.

bsbeamer

said about 3 years ago

Mike Wuerthele said:
Wasn't this about four-drive cards? I know that two-drive cards exist. I don't think four-drive ones do.

Does NOT work with Mac, but 4x SATA SSD via PCIe adapters do exist:
https://www.amazon.com/Sedna-Controller-HyperDuo-Technology-Connector/dp/B07SGQLTQS/