I’m shaking with excitement, everyone. After being up all night working on getting this RocketRAID 2720SGL working with OS X El Capitan on my Mac Pro 1,1 -> 2,1, I’m happy to say it works! It was quite the multi-step process/rabbit-hole. Why am I so excited? This 1,1/2,1 now has SATA III 6.0 Gb/s.
What sparked the idea?
Part of an ongoing nostalgia project + productivity Mac, I wanna take one of my favorite Macs of all time as far as it can go, as a Mac (with Windows for some games). The Mac Pro 1,1 –>2,1 was my daily driver when I first joined Low End Mac, and I wanna see what else this lil’ machine can do.
- Back in 2018, I had a 960 GB SSD RAID0 array made of 4x 240 GB SSDs, but it ran off the existing SATA II bus. This severely cut the boot drive’s potential top speed.
. - Initially the idea was to use a “blade style SSD” as a boot drive such as an OWC Mercury Accelsior, but was disappointed to find out I’d be limited to PCIe x1 – 250 MB/s. I had a 480 GB one spare for the project so that’s what it’s using as a boot drive for now, saves a drive bay in the process.
The RAID0 card
Looking into an October 2011 by Chris S. article from Other World Computing, I found out about the RocketRAID 2721. It’s a PCIe x8 hardware RAID SAS/SATA controller card with SATA III and a singular SFF-8087 internal port, but it’s also long since out of stock and is also rather unavailable on eBay.
Moreover, mostly any compatible hardware RAID card I’d find would be listed for more than I even bought the Mac Pro 1,1 for. After doing some digging, I stumbled into a detailed April 2017 post by Creation Machines LLC where they used a RocketRAID 2720SGL in a 5,1 – as well as a MacRumors thread suggesting this card is supposedly bootable.
 |
 |
(Above, pictured: A RocketRAID 2720SGL)
A quick eBay search uncovered a variety of listings hovering around $30. Remembering the prices for other cards as well as the prior $170 pricetag for this card as mentioned by Creation Machines LLC, I couldn’t hesistate – not wanting to miss out on the chance. Got mine for $26.
Troubleshooting with OS X El Capitan
According to the HighPoint RocketRAID website and Creation Machines LLC, the RocketRAID 2720SGL has native built-in drivers for OS X 10.8+, as well as downloadable ones for Snow Leopard/Lion. For Mac OS X El Capitan this isn’t as straightforward – after downloading and successfully installing multiple pieces of software, including somehow the earlier & macOS 10.12/M1+ versions of the driver.. nothing.
An InsanelyMac forum post discusses how a RocketRAID driver package has missing PNPID / IOPCIPrimaryMatch Strings, and one user was able to get their card working after making this correction. This seems to be the same issue I was running into.
I tried swapping to different slots including 1 & 4, adjusting the PCIe profile, rebooting several times, checking system profiler.. and still nothing. It’s time to open up terminal and see what’s really going on.
1: We can see whether or not OS X’s PCIe device tree even sees the hardware or not, by using this command:
ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep -iE ‘”vendor-id”|”device-id”|”class-code”|”model”|”name”‘ | grep -i -B5 -A5 “1103”
Right there on line “name” = <“pci1103,2720”>, is the key info: Vendor 1103 is HighPoint Technologies, while Device 2720 is the RocketRAID 2720 family. This confirms the 1,1 can see the card, so the problem has to do with drivers/kext attachment.
2: We can also see whether or not a kext is loaded to the PCIe device, by running this command:
kextstat | grep -iE ‘highpoint|rr272|rr27|rocket’
If it returns blank, it means the card is just sitting in the PCIe slot doing nothing. If it returns with any bit of information, it means you may have the incorrect drivers installed.
3: If you already have RocketRAID software installed like I did, it’s time to find out what the software actually installed:
find /System/Library/Extensions /Library/Extensions \
-iname ‘*highpoint*’ -o -iname ‘*rr27*’ -o -iname ‘*rocketraid*’ 2>/dev/null
If this gives any .kext outputs, it’s time to inspect the PCI match table. We’re looking for the value 0x27201103, which is the specific ID for the 2720SGL. I only had 2 outputs:
/Library/Extensions/HighPointIOP.kext
/Library/Extensions/HighPointIOP.kext/Contents/MacOS/HighPointIOP
sudo grep -R -i “2720\|IOPCIPrimaryMatch\|CFBundleIdentifier” \
“/Library/Extensions/HighPointIOP.kext/Contents/Info.plist”
4: I found CFBundleIdentifier and IOPCIPrimaryMatch, but no 2720 in the list. There’s one more place to check before being totally sure these drivers won’t work:
grep -A2 -B2 “IOPCIPrimaryMatch” /Library/Extensions/HighPointIOP.kext/Contents/Info.plist
Since 0x27201103 is not among the IDs the kext claims, the drivers I installed earlier don’t bind to the card. This is rather unusual, as I downloaded the correct drivers. In Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, kexts changed because Apple introduced SIP (System Integrity Protection), which mandated all kernel extensions to be digitally signed by an Apple-approved developer.
5: What I checked next is HighPointRR.kext somewhere in the system?
find /System/Library/Extensions /Library/Extensions \
-name ‘HighPointRR.kext’ -print 2>/dev/null
Also: kextstat | grep -i highpoint
Lastly, to see if any kext has a matching PCI ID: grep -R -i “27201103” /System/Library/Extensions /Library/Extensions 2>/dev/null
Absolutely nothing came up for all 3 commands when I tried them in terminal.
Finding the correct driver
Does anyone remember the last time their Google search had only 1 result? Nether do I. For safekeeping and in the event that link goes down, the driver will now also be available from our software repository.
- Download: RR272x_1x-Mac-v150_120509.dmg_.zip (2.5MB)
Warning: The following steps may only be performed with SIP (System integrity Protection) off. I had to create a recovery USB. I made mine the standard way restoring a “Install OS X.app” via terminal, then just Drag-n’-drop the Piker Alpha boot.efi files to their corresponding folders in the flash drive.
This package is the latest known meant specifically for this RR27xx card. Download but DO NOT install, just mount on desktop. Now let’s go back to terminal.
1: Open terminal, make a new folder on your desktop named “RR”.
2: Drag the file “RR272x_1x.mpkg” out of the DMG and into the new folder named RR. Time to inspect the contents: ls -la /Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/Desktop/RR/RR272x_1x.mpkg
Keep in mind where it says YOUR_USER_NAME above, is to be replaced by your user directory. rr272x6.pkg contains the 64-Bit kext we need (is also 32-Bit) while rr272x5.pkg is a 32-Bit only driver.
3: Run this to see what’s inside rr272x6.pkg: find /Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/Desktop/RR/RR272x_1x.mpkg/Contents/Packages/rr272x6.pkg -maxdepth 3 -print
4: Now we’re gonna copy what’s in the package installer, and extract it to a new folder:
First run: mkdir -p ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x6-extracted
Then: cd ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x6-extracted gzcat ~/Desktop/RR/RR272x_1x.mpkg/Contents/Packages/rr272x6.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz | pax -r
4A: Now let’s see whether or not the extracted folder has our kext, by entering: find ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x5-extracted ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x6-extracted -iname “*.kext” -print
5: You should be able to find “rr2722.kext”.. it’s now time to inspect whether or not it has the right PCI/Device IDs. Enter:
grep -A4 -B4 “IOPCIPrimaryMatch” ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x6-extracted/rr272x_1x.kext/Contents/Info.plist
The PCI match list should contain “0x27201103“, for the RocketRAID 2720SGL. Now it’s time to double-check to make sure this is a 64-Bit kext.
5A: file ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x6-extracted/rr272x_1x.kext/Contents/MacOS/*
You should get a response saying the file is “Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures…” including “..(for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit kext bundle x86_64”.
Testing a copy, then injecting the kext
Since this driver was made in 2012, it predates Apple’s El Capitan kext-signing requirement, so there will be a persistent “unsigned driver” warning. This is where the cookie crumbled with 10.11 and this driver. First let’s make a copy and give it root ownership. If SIP hasn’t already been disabled, this is where the project will stall.
1: cp -R ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x6-extracted/rr272x_1x.kext ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x-test.kext
2: sudo chown -R root:wheel ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x-test.kext
3: sudo chmod -R 755 ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x-test.kext
4: sudo kextutil -n -t ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x-test.kext
Now.. time to load the kext without installing, first: sudo kextload ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x-test.kext
6: kextstat | grep -i rr272
7: ioreg -l -p IOService | grep -i -B5 -A10 “rr272”
 |
 |
If terminal looks anything like this wall of text, don’t be alarmed. The important bits are:
- RR272x_1xController, registered, matched, active
- “IOClass” = “RR272x_1xController”
- and “IOPCIPrimaryMatch” = “0x27201103 0x27221103 0x27111103”
Perfect – the 64-Bit RocketRAID kext from OS X Lion loads under El Capitan, it recognizes the installed card, attaches, and creates the SCSI layer. Time to install this permanently!
Installing permanently
1: sudo cp -R ~/Desktop/RR/rr272x-test.kext /Library/Extensions/rr272x_1x.kext
2: sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/Extensions/rr272x_1x.kext
3: sudo chmod -R 755 /Library/Extensions/rr272x_1x.kext
4: sudo touch /Library/Extensions
5: sudo kextcache -i /
6: sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
Reboot
Checking to make sure it works
After logging back in; open terminal again and run: kextstat | grep -i rr272
If you see “com.highpoint-tech.kext.rr272x_1x (1.5.0)”, the kext has been successfully installed! Now the fun may truly begin!
What you need to know
The RocketRAID 2720sGL will dynamically adjust the amount of lanes in Expansion Slot Utility depeding on the amount of drives & types of drives plugged into it. I tried manually adjusting performance, all it will do is cap max performance.
- 1x Standard HDD’s and SATA I + SATA II SSDs: auto-allocates 1x lane only.
- 1x SATA III 6.0 Gb/s SSD: auto-allocates 4x lanes.
- Slot 2 doesn’t let me go beyond x1 lane but everything is ok in slot 3.
. - Keep in mind: A Mac Pro 1,1 (2006) and 2,1 (2007) use PCIe v1.1, so:
- 1x lane = 250 MB/s – Juuuust good enough for a hardware accelerated GUI/eGPU.
- 2x lanes = 500 MB/s
- 4x lanes = 1 GB/s
- 8x lanes = 2 GB/s – Maximum lanes supported by RocketRAID 2720SGL.
- 16x lanes = 4 GB/s.
.
- The RAID card must be wired up to get drives going on it – your Mac won’t just automatically adjust internal drive bay speeds. This is because the internal drive bays are connected directly via an SFF-8087 wiring harness to the logic board, to a SATA II controller on the Intel 5000X GreenCreek chipset.
(Above: A RocketRAID 2720SGL with an unmodified Mac Pro 1,1 Drive Bay wire harness.)
Wiring up the RocketRAID 2720SGL
I realized I didn’t really have a spare SFF-8087 wiring harness, so I made use of what I had. I took a spare Mac Pro “Drive bay backplane”, wired it up to molex in the optical bay, and was able to supply power to 2 of the 4 ports. Low End Mac now has an article covering how to do this.
(Pictured: The completed, modified adapter)
 |
 |
For a singular SATA III SSD on a Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,1, 477 MB/s read + 388 MB/s write is not bad at all! Faster already than the Apple RAID card, with far more room for expansion and performance. Quite promising, and makes that ~1,900 MB/s by creation machines feel more achievable. If on this machine even 3/4 of that could be achieved, it’d be great.
 |
 |
 |
 |
In conclusion
High write speeds are nice especially on this machine, but can rEFIt or another bootloader boot OS X El Capitan off this RocketRAID? Highpoint and Creation Machines LLC both say an EFI ROM is available with instructions to make this a bootable – but I’ve struggled with finding downloads and instructions on how to do so. I’ll need to dig into this some more. I can’t even begin to imagine how fast my old SSD RAID0 array configuration from 2017-18 would’ve been on this card, rather than using the onboard SATA II then.