How to build your own iMac Pro [Successful Build/Extended Guide]

[izo1]

You must be super unlucky to have 2 drives fail at the same time.........

RAID 6 is a must if you do 4+ drives....

It's not about luck, it's about preparedness.

RAID itself is not a backup solution, but a deterent.

On a local dell server here with 24TB (8x4TB) we use RAID 6 and have had 2 drives fail at very close proximity (think hours in between) and you better be prepared to pop in a replacement drive into the array very quickly (which take hours to repair, and you might even lose another drive during this process). Even if you're using Enterprise HDDs, things can go awry.

If you use 4 drives and below, RAID 5 is ok imo.

Most high end servers with exception to critical data use RAID 10

 

[lukeslater]

RAID 6 is a must if you do 4+ drives....

It's not about luck, it's about preparedness.

RAID itself is not a backup solution, but a deterent.

On a local dell server here with 24TB (8x4TB) we use RAID 6 and have had 2 drives fail at very close proximity (think hours in between) and you better be prepared to pop in a replacement drive into the array very quickly. Even if you're using Enterprise HDDs, things can go awry.

If you use 4 drives and below, RAID 5 is ok imo.

Most high end servers with exception to critical data use RAID 10

Drobo supports 2 disks for redundancy, I have a Drobo 5D working flawlessly

 

[izo1]

Drobo supports 2 disks for redundancy, I have a Drobo 5D working flawlessly

You're talking about RAID 1....aka mirroring.

Which is what RAID 10 is (with 2 large RAID 1 arrays).

I don't know what kind of work you do, but when you're moving terabytes of data per day and pushing drives a ton, a drobo won't survive.

For example, if you have 5 editorial stations accessing a Dell PowerEdge server with 24TB of data, your drives will die quicker and will need more maintenance.

Drobo is fine if you're doing photography work or stuff with DSLR footage....

 

[lukeslater]

You're talking about RAID 1....aka mirroring.

Which is what RAID 10 is (with 2 large RAID 1 arrays).

I don't know what kind of work you do, but when you're moving terabytes of data per day and pushing drives a ton, a drobo won't survive.

For example, if you have 5 editorial stations accessing a Dell PowerEdge server with 24TB of data, your drives will die quicker and will need more maintenance.

Drobo is fine if you're doing photography work or stuff with DSLR footage....

If you need to move that amount of data a Drobo probably isn't working. It's just a comfortable external drive bay, probably not suited for heavy workload. But if you need that kind of performance then maybe http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/tower-raid-storage-enclosure.htm are an option, but they won't be cheap.......

 

[RuleBreaker01]

So I played with the SSDT/DSDT, I understood that the BR1X device was built from the original BR1A device found on the Prime X299, it's identical code, except for the PRW method removed. So I adapted it for the ASRock, accounting for the TB card to be located in BR2A, and that my TB chip is a JSL 6540 vs the previous DSL6540 (so device id 0x15d4)


I had to remove the XOSI SSDT as it's included in this TB3 one.

Device BR2A is correctly renamed BR2X
Device shows up in the PCI section of System Information..

TB hotplug works as usual.
USB-C hotplug doesn't work. And my USB-C device (Samsung S8) isn't detected either (though it charges just fine). It was a bit of a hit and miss with the original @maleorderbride 's SSDT

I'm curious how the :

    OperationRegion (GNVS, SystemMemory, 0x4FEE6918, 0x0403)
    Field (GNVS, AnyAcc, Lock, Preserve)
    {
        OSYS,   16
    }

data was found, I don't see anything like that in the original Asus Prime SSDT, nor in the iojones file @kgp sent me a while back...

So in all, it's not worth, but it's no better either...
I had issue with sleep in the past with TB3 not working upon resume.. Will see if it's any better now.

 

[RuleBreaker01]

Yeah I went with Meshify C because I needed more airflow as my last Phanteks case was horrendous in terms of airflow. The Meshify C feels like an mATX chassis but it fits ATX fine but the hard drives are crammed in. I don't really do custom watercooling, I always get AIOs (currently have a BeQuiet! AIO that's mounted to the front as intake).

Damn, I had contacted Fractal Design, who told me that my ATX graphic card wouldn't fit in there (with the AIO radiator+fans mounted).. That's why I went with the Define C

Maybe when I see the Define R6 on sale I'll grab it. I am just not a huge fan of their plastic front bezel.

Hmm, that was the first case I bought, but I returned it because it was huge... but it's an aluminum front. It's actually super well designed.
The PC shop that did my custom cooling provided me with a Thermaltake Suppressor F51, it's a Define R6 rip-off. I had no real choice on the case because I was visiting Paris for just 3 days and that's what they had in stock...

The Define R6 front filters actually serve some purpose. On the Thermaltake, they put the filter mesh on in front of the air vents: that is it doesn't filter anything, air can come in from the side vents and go in, never going through the filter. Totally idiotic design...

Today, I really regret that I didn't keep the R6, was a great case, and super silent.

Phanteks is coming out with an Evolv X with better airflow (previous version I had was horrendous) and a ton of SSD/HDD bays. Of course those RGB lights are tacky and if I do go with that case I will turn it off completely. That design reminds me a lot of the Mac Pro cheesgrater...

SAS is a pretty affordable solution, and if you have an internal hardware RAID HBA . you can easily use mini-SAS to connect to a cost-effective external SAS enclosure with multiple drive bays. I just need to find a good hardware RAID controller that works OOB with macOS and supports RAID 5 (or RAID6, I just need to have this option so I can choose depending on the amount of drives).

Well, may go this way in the future, at least I'll be able to reuse the 2x4TB Toshiba disks.

It is cheap indeed, but having said that, if all you want is JBOD, the most affordable TB3 4 disks enclosures are:

The Caldigit T4
OWC ThunderBay 4
The Akito Thunder 3 quad (almost identical to the OWC one)

The nice thing about the Caldigit is that it can feed 85W over the TB3, so if working with an Apple macbook pro, you won't need to worry about splitting power.

I like the OWC best, and really hesitated in going with that.

I do love the internal RAID 1, it makes my PC dead quiet, the Pegasus2 was rather loud, much more than the PC.

 

[RuleBreaker01]

Looking at the console's log, there's every few seconds the entries:

default 01:18:44.911535 +0200 kernel 000468.144886 XHC5@02000000: AppleUSBHostController::setPowerStateGated: going to state 1 returned 0xe00002e9
default 01:18:44.911554 +0200 kernel 000468.144908 XHC5@02000000: AppleUSBHostController::hardwareExceptionThreadCallGated: attempting recovery
default 01:18:44.911560 +0200 kernel 000468.144915 XHC5@02000000: AppleUSBHostController::hardwareExceptionThreadCallGated: 0x00000004
default 01:18:44.911566 +0200 kernel 000468.144921 XHC5@02000000: AppleUSBHostController::hardwareExceptionThreadCallGated: attempting recovery
default 01:18:44.911638 +0200 kernel 000468.144991 XHC5@02000000: AppleUSBHostController::setPowerStateGated: going to state 2 failed with 0xe00002e9
default 01:18:44.911646 +0200 kernel 000468.145002 XHC5@02000000: AppleUSBHostController::hardwareExceptionThreadCallGated: 0x00000008

showing..

any ideas what that is? XHC5 is the TB's card USB port

 

[nathanaelweir]

Curious if anyone on here has experienced their hackintosh freezing upon unplugging an ejected thunderbolt drive?

I'm thinking it may have something to do with the thunderbolt chain out of my Areca 8050 Raid?

 

[kgp]

So I played with the SSDT/DSDT, I understood that the BR1X device was built from the original BR1A device found on the Prime X299, it's identical code, except for the PRW method removed. So I adapted it for the ASRock, accounting for the TB card to be located in BR2A, and that my TB chip is a JSL 6540 vs the previous DSL6540 (so device id 0x15d4)

View attachment 339916
I had to remove the XOSI SSDT as it's included in this TB3 one.

Device BR2A is correctly renamed BR2X
Device shows up in the PCI section of System Information..

TB hotplug works as usual.
USB-C hotplug doesn't work. And my USB-C device (Samsung S8) isn't detected either (though it charges just fine). It was a bit of a hit and miss with the original @maleorderbride 's SSDT

I'm curious how the :

    OperationRegion (GNVS, SystemMemory, 0x4FEE6918, 0x0403)
    Field (GNVS, AnyAcc, Lock, Preserve)
    {
        OSYS,   16
    }

data was found, I don't see anything like that in the original Asus Prime SSDT, nor in the iojones file @kgp sent me a while back...

So in all, it's not worth, but it's no better either...
I had issue with sleep in the past with TB3 not working upon resume.. Will see if it's any better now.

Seems that you missed that @nmano and myself are working already on a new approach without BR1x and with new SSDTs (see post #9034).

I am not using @maleorderbride 's approach anyway... So also in this we totally defer...

Cheers,

KGP

 

[kgp]

Looking at the console's log, there's every few seconds the entries:

showing..

any ideas what that is? XHC5 is the TB's card USB port

See post #9049.