970 evo won't accept OSX

[PickledPC]

I have a 09>5,1 High Sierra
SSD 850 evo through PCI Card slot 4.
I installed a GTX680 - flashed for Mac.
Updated to Bootloader to 141.0.0.0

Picked up a 970 evo on a cheap PCI M.2 adapter, installed in slot 3. I can see it, format it, install linux on it, copy files to it as a drive. But when I try to install High Sierra on it from my USB it fails, Installer says it fails and must reboot.

I've tried to take my SSD/PCI out of slot 4 and same results. I also have a SSD in slot 1 of the drive bays with Windows on it and a backup storage drive in bay 2.

So what to try to get OSX loaded on the NVME drive? New installer maybe? New Adapter.

 

[tsialex]

I have a 09>5,1 High Sierra
SSD 850 evo through PCI Card slot 4.
I installed a GTX680 - flashed for Mac.
Updated to Bootloader to 141.0.0.0

Picked up a 970 evo on a cheap PCI M.2 adapter, installed in slot 3. I can see it, format it, install linux on it, copy files to it as a drive. But when I try to install High Sierra on it from my USB it fails, Installer says it fails and must reboot.

I've tried to take my SSD/PCI out of slot 4 and same results. I also have a SSD in slot 1 of the drive bays with Windows on it and a backup storage drive in bay 2.

So what to try to get OSX loaded on the NVME drive? New installer maybe? New Adapter.

970 EVO or 970 EVO Plus?

970 EVO Plus is not macOS compatible, 970 EVO and 970 Pro are. Read here Blade SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

 

[PickledPC]

970 EVO, The Blade SSD thread and all other threads have greatly helped! I knew not to buy the plus.

 

[tsialex]

970 EVO, The Blade SSD thread and all other threads have greatly helped! I knew not to buy the plus.

A 970 EVO just need BootROM 140/141/142/144.0.0.0.0 to work and work with HighSierra or Mojave, no need of any patches or hacks.

Standard HighSierra or Mojave installers work perfectly with 970 EVO.
[doublepost=1557325638][/doublepost]Just noticed that you have a GTX 680, that's the problem with Mojave. You have to install macOS from another macOS install, not from USB. Read the GTX 680 note here: MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions)

 

[PickledPC]

I'm just trying to do a clean High Sierra install, no real desire to push to mojave. Fails on a high sierra install.

 

[tsialex]

I'm just trying to do a clean High Sierra install, no real desire to push to mojave. Fails on a high sierra install.

Did you tried with another GPU? Eliminate the GTX 680 from the equation here, since it's a know problem.

 

[PickledPC]

No, I can try that though. Since I have the right bootrom it doesn't matter. I had to have the GPU to get the bootrom from the mojave installer.
Anything else to try? Can I do it from my other drive, or should it be USB?

Or should I just go to Mojave?

 

[tsialex]

No, I can try that though. Since I have the right bootrom it doesn't matter. I had to have the GPU to get the bootrom from the mojave installer.
Anything else to try? Can I do it from my other drive, or should it be USB?

Or should I just go to Mojave?

GTX 680 can't do Mojave installs from USB, this is a know problem. You could try 10.14.4 full installer from another macOS install.

 

[macguru9999]

boot from a good hard drive, maybe sierra, copy 10.13.6 full installer across and run. do the firmware update if required for high sierra when it asks. install high sierra on a spare drive , boot into it and format the nvme ssd and clone across or install onto that. The gtx680 will be fine that way. I am back to using an ahci 512 ssd blade as the boot times were too long with an nvme and as i have an rx580 the black screen for 2 minutes was too much to bear (vs 30 sec for bay mounted ssd or 30-60 sec for an ahci pci blade)

 

[w1z]

Either your installer is corrupt or you need to destroy the gpt partition on the Evo NVMe drive.

Try downloading and creating a new High Sierra USB installer, boot to it then open terminal, locate your Evo NVMe's disk no then run

gpt destroy /dev/diskX

where X is the NVMe's disk no

Then reboot once again to the USB installer and try installing High Sierra again.

 

[PickledPC]

I'm already on 141.0.0.0 because of the help of this forum!

SO I downloaded a new copy of High Sierra, just ran the installer from my current High Sierra SSD and it installed fine on the new M.2. At least I know it works that way so I'll get a better adapter with heat sink and get that set up correctly.