Fusion Dual 2.5" SSD RAID PCIe Card Support Library

Description: This software installs a kernel extension for current Sonnet USB 3.2 PCIe cards that tells macOS that the Sonnet ports can charge iOS devices and have the power required to operate the Apple SuperDrive and bus-powered peripherals plugged into the Apple wired USB keyboard. This kext does not affect non-Apple devices.

Note: This driver does not support the 2019 Mac Pro. The cards will work fine in the 2019 Mac Pro, just not for connecting an Apple USB 2.0 SuperDrive or connecting a mouse (or thumb drive, etc.) to Apple USB wired keyboard.

Description: ASMxHCI_FWUpdateV1291_251230700240V1.exe is a Windows app that updates ASMedia ASM3142 firmware to revision 251230700240 in the following Sonnet Technologies products:

Allegro Pro USB-C 8-Port PCIe Card (USB3C-8PM-E)

Allegro Pro 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A PCIe Card (USB3-PRO-4P10-E)

Allegro Pro 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C PCIe Card (USB3C-4PM-E)

Allegro USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C PCIe Card (USB3C-2PM-E)

McFiver PCIe Card (G10E-USBC-M2-E)

Fusion Dual 2.5-inch SSD RAID PCIe Card (FUS-SSD-2RAID-E)

Note: This release provides a fix for controller detection failure with certain motherboards with Intel® 800/700/600 Series desktop chipsets.

Description: This is the English language quick start guide for Sonnet's Fusion Dual 2.5-inch SSD RAID PCIe card.

This is revision J of this document.

None of Sonnet's Cards with USB 2.0 or USB 3 (either Type A or Type C) ports support the Apple SuperDrive. You must use a built-in USB 2.0 or 3.0 port on your Mac.

According to http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5630, "The Apple USB SuperDrive is compatible with Mac models from 2008 and later that don't have a built-in optical drive."

All Sonnet Allegro (and Fusion Dual 2.5" SSD RAID) PCIe Cards use a macOS pre-installed driver.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.10 in the MacPro 3,1; 4,1 & 5,1 and in Thunderbolt 2 Expansion chassis.

These cards are not compatible with macOS 10.11, due to a bug in the Apple driver.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.12 (2)-10.14 in the MacPro 5,1 and in Thunderbolt 2 & 3 Expansion chassis.

These cards are compatible with macOS 10.15-macOS 12 in the 2019 Mac Pro and in Thunderbolt 2 & 3 Expansion chassis.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes:

- These cards are not compatible with Thunderbolt 1 expansion chassis.

- macOS 10.12 erroneously reports a 5Gbps connection when connected at 10Gbps.

- The maximum Apple-supported OS for the Mac Pro 3,1 and 4,1 is OS X 10.11. Dosdude1 offers patchers to allow installation of newer versions of macOS. The Apple USB 3 driver in these patched newer versions will support the Allegro cards.

- Performance of the Allegro cards may be limited by the Mac Pro 5,1 PCIe 2.0 bandwidth.

These cards are compatible with only Thunderbolt 2 or 3 PCIe expansion chassis; they are not compatible with Thunderbolt 1 PCIe expansion chassis (unless they have been upgraded to Thunderbolt 2).

There is no provision in macOS to make SSDs on a PCIe card to appear as internal and non-ejectable. If you want to prevent accidental ejection, open a file on the volume with Text Edit, which will prevent macOS from ejecting the volume, because a file will be in use by Text Edit.

You need to update the firmware of your Samsung SSD. See the Samsung Firmware Updater Page.

Yes. Note that 15mm drives are taller than allowed by the PCIe card specification. If the adjacent PCIe slot is empty, then 15mm drives will fit.

To minimize power usage during sleep, power is removed from PCIe cards. Because of this power-saving specification, the controller on the Fusion Dual 2.5" SSD RAID PCIe card is unable to maintain its port power during sleep. In macOS, this may result in the SSD RAID disconnecting upon waking from sleep. The SSD RAID will automatically remount, but the system reports a disconnect message. Because macOS flushes all caches before sleeping, this disconnect should never result in any loss of data.

The uniqueness of Sonnet USB 3.2 products is each USB port has a USB power switch (MOSFET) that manages and monitors the current flow of the USB port. The USB switch limits the current draw when a new USB device is connected minimizing the voltage droop of the main USB 5V power rail, thereby protecting devices connected to other USB ports from going offline because of port power droop. The USB switch is also a very effective current limiter that does not degrade over trips the way a resettable poly-fuse would.

Mac Pro 5,1

• Booting not supported

2019 Mac Pro

• To boot from an "external" SSD, you need to enable External Boot. Then, if you configure the two SSDs as RAID 0 or 1, you can boot from the RAID; but if you configure the SSDs as Independent, then you can boot from only the SSD closer to the PCIe bracket.

For the significantly better performance, make a hardware RAID 0 on each card, and software RAID 0 across the two cards.

A red ERR light will flash when an SSD has failed. It the top ERR flashes, the SSD in connector J2 (nearer to the PCIe bracket) needs to be replaced. It the bottom ERR flashes, the SSD in connector J1 (farther from the PCIe bracket) needs to be replaced.

Replacing a failed SSD

1. Shut down and remove card from your system.

2. Remove the faulted SSD and replace with a new SSD. The new SSD capacity must be equal to or greater than the original SSD. The rebuild process will wipe out any data on the replacement SSD.

3. Plug the card into your computer and boot.

4. The RAID will rebuild automatically. While the RAID is rebuilding, the green ACT LEDs of both SSDs will flash. It may take several hours to rebuild a RAID 1 array (a rule of thumb is an hour per TB). Do not shut down or sleep your computer during the rebuild process.

5. When the process is complete, the red ERR light will go out and both ACT LEDs will turn solid green.

1) Make a backup of the user folder

2) Copy the user folder to the SSD volume.

3) In System Preferences, open Users & Groups.

4) Unlock.

5) Right-Click on the user you moved to the SSD volume and select Advanced Options

6) Point the Home Directory to the user folder on the SSD volume.

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.