Sep 13, 20232 min read

No Where to Mount 2.5” NVMe Drives in a 2023 MacPro? HighPoint Has an Alternative

HighPoint’s RocketAIC 7749EM Brings Enterprise Grade AIC Form-Factor Storage Drives to the 2023 Mac Pro

In the recent past, if you need a truly high-density, enterprise-grade NVMe storage solution for a tower workstation platform, (something in excess of 16TB), your only realistic option was to install a U.2/U.3 based-solution. U.2/U.3 media are available in very large capacities, and generally provide enterprise class features and endurance ratings.

Unfortunately, U.2/U.3 NVMe SSDs aren’t ideal for the Mac Pro - they were designed with rack mount storage servers in mind. While the U.2/U.3 PCIe add in cards are compact and can be easily installed into most modern Mac Pro workstations, these platforms were simply not designed to host 2.5” storage media.

Customers looking to add NVMe drives in a Mac Pro are likely very familiar with both of these concerns. While it’s true that both 2023 and 2019 Mac Pro’s provide plenty of PCIe slots, only 2023 platforms are likely to have enough free interior space to host the cabling accessories. Unfortunately, this platform is not equipped with internal drive bays. So, suddenly, you are back to ground-zero….

While it is true that there are third-party drive-bay solutions out there, few if any support more than a pair of drives. That may provide more storage than your average M.2 solution, but in truth, it’s barely outside the realm of a modern high-port-count M2 solution. You can always opt for 30+TB U.2 drives, but it’ll cost you. On average, you can expect to shell out 3000USD per SSD; that’s $100 per TB of storage!

Thankfully, there are alternatives. HighPoint’s RocketAIC 7749EM expansion drives can offer you the best of both worlds; a compact M.2-sized storage solution capable of delivering enterprise storage capacity, performance and reliability, without the massive price tag of U.2/U.3 media. HighPoint RocketAIC 7749EM series NVMe drives are equipped with eight datacenter class E1.S NVMe SSDs, and are capable of providing over 60TB of storage at speeds up to 27,000MB/s. RocketAIC 7749EM drives also provide enterprise-grade reliability, with high-endurance DWPD (disk writes per day) ratings and advanced features such as power-loss-protection (PLP). PLP can help reduce the risk of data loss during a sudden power outage by flushing data that was stored in the cache to the drive’s permanent flash memory.