McFiver PCIe Card
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Driver (3)
Firmware (0)
Manual (1)
IDDownload TitleDownload LinkPost Date
1186 McFiver PCIe Card Quick Start Guide [English]Apr-12-24
 
FAQ (9)
IDArticle TitlePost Date
814 I'm getting low throughput on macOS. How can I fix this?May-26-22
976 In a Mac Pro, the SSDs are seen as external drives, how do I prevent accidental ejects?Feb-14-23
1069 How do I configure RAID under Windows 10?Feb-14-23
1073 How do I configure RAID under macOS?Feb-14-23
Create a disk set using Disk Utility on macOS

1. You can create a Redundant Array of Independent SSDs (RAID) set to optimize storage performance, or increase reliability in case of a SSD failure. You can also create a set that concatenates smaller SSDs to act as one larger SSD.

2. In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose File Menu -> RAID Assistant.

3. Select a Set type:
• Striped (RAID 0) Set: A striped RAID set can speed up access to your data. You can't create a RAID set on a startup SSD; you must start up your computer from a single SSD.

• Mirrored (RAID 1) Set: Protect your data against hardware failure with a mirrored RAID set. When you create a mirrored RAID set, your data is written to multiple SSDs so the information is stored redundantly. You can't create a RAID set on a startup SSD; you must start up your computer from a single SSD.

• Concatenated Set: Increase storage space with a concatenated SSD set. If you need one large SSD, but you have several smaller SSDs, you can create a concatenated SSD set to use as one large SSD.

4. Select the checkboxes of the SSDs you want to include in the set.

5. For each SSD, click the pop-up menu in the Role column and choose "RAID slice" or "Spare" to designate the disk as a standard member or spare in the set, then click Next.

6. Enter a name for the RAID set in the RAID Name field.

7. Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose a volume format that you want for all the disks in the set. (See File system formats available in Disk Utility.)

8. Click the "Chunk size" pop-up menu, then choose a disk chunk size that you want used for all the disks.

When you create a striped set, chunks of data from the same file are distributed across the SSDs. Ideally, you want data distributed across SSDs evenly and at an optimum size so that it can be efficiently accessed. If you want high data throughput from your set, choose a smaller chunk size so that data is spread across the drives and one drive can be accessing data while another is seeking the next chunk. With mirrored disk sets, choose a chunk size that matches the data you are accessing. For example, when working with video files, your Mac is accessing large chunks of data, whereas when using a database of many small records, your disks may be accessing smaller chunks of information.

9. If you are creating a mirrored RAID set, select the "Automatically rebuild" checkbox to allow the set to be automatically rebuilt when member disks are reconnected.

10. Click Create.

11. Click Done.
 
1077 Programming SSDs to 4k Block Size for Compatibility With macOS 10.13.6Feb-08-23
1122 Thunderbolt 3 NVMe volumes may experience a stop error under Windows 10 version 20H2Feb-14-23
1136 How can I use my new SSD volume to hold my user folder on macOS?Feb-14-23
1183 The Write performance of my SSD is very slow under Windows.Feb-14-23
The Windows default for any external storage media is for Write Caching policies to be disabled. If you have enabled it, then the write performance to an SSD will be very slow. To get significantly increase write performance, disable Write Caching. For instructions, see this Microsoft Document.
 
1189 The x8 PCIe lanes can deliver up to 7.8 GB/s. How do you fit the RAID, the 10gig lan and the 2x USB 3.2 in this bandwidth?Jun-08-22
The most important design feature is that every device is connected at its maximum PCIe 3.0 lanes: each SSD@x4; USB 3.2@x2; and 10GbE@x2, which gives each device its maximum usable bandwidth: SSD@3.5 GB/s x2; USB 3.2@1.0 GB/s x2; and 10GbE@1.0GB/s. Adding up the total bandwidth is indeed greater than 7.8GB/s, but considering that PCIe input and output bandwidth are independent, one can achieve the full 11MB/s bandwidth of simultaneous use of the devices as long as there is a mix of reading and writing. It is extremely unlikely that one would need to use all the ports simultaneously, at full bandwidth, and all writing-or all reading. The alternative of a larger PCIe bridge chip to connect to the computer at x16 would have increased the cost of the McFiver, without any performance gain in virtually any practical use scenario.