MP 7,1 Booting from external USB SSD?

[choreo]

Is it possible to boot from an external Samsung USB SSD if the boot volume is copied with Carbon Copy Cloner?

Also, if I have an SSD on an internal PCI card, will that work to boot the Mac if cloned with CCC? CCC gave me a message that said I would have to restart I guess in recovery mode and turn off something in a System Security setting?

 

[flowrider]

^^^^Remember these posts:

Anything else not on a USB port. So, any drive on a PCIe card or SATA port.

You realize that any USB drive wont boot - right?

So - Question 1 - No!

Question 2 - Yes!

BTW - I use SuperDuper.

Lou

 

[choreo]

^^^^Remember these posts:





So - Question 1 - No!

Question 2 - Yes!

BTW - I use SuperDuper.

Lou

Got it.

 

[LeonPro]

My impression is that all you have to do to enable this is to go into System Security and allow booting from external and removal drives.

This post shows it's possible:

 

[erroneous]

My impression is that all you have to do to enable this is to go into System Security and allow booting from external and removal drives.

I had the same impression too, though my memories mostly stem from pre-Time Machine rescues using with Firewire 3.5" drives on my original PowerMac G5 using SuperDuper(?), and that was very, long time ago.

I do have a pair PCIe Samsung 970 EVOs in my current MacPro7,1, with Carbon Copy Cloner set to update with regular syncs, and have tested booting to them successfully - once my System Security settings were correct, as you point out. Hadn't tried any USB devices though.

So I found a USB3 external Seagate 3.5" hard drive I used to use as a Time Machine target on my old 15" 2017 MacBook Pro, and hooked it up to my MacPro 7,1. Erased it, formatted it APFS, added a volume on it, added a Carbon Copy Cloner task, and let it run.

I regret my decision to test this with a spinning drive...

The sync task finished, selected the external USB3 drive as boot target, and up comes 10.15.6. I'm typing from it now. I didn't realise how long it have been since I worked on a 'puter without an OS SSD. Do not recommend!

Next time I'll spend 5 minutes longer, find a USB3 SSD to test on, and save so... much... time.

 

[choreo]

I do have a pair PCIe Samsung 970 EVOs in my current MacPro7,1, with Carbon Copy Cloner set to update with regular syncs, and have tested booting to them successfully - once my System Security settings were correct, as you point out. Hadn't tried any USB devices though.

How/Where did you set your "Security Settings" to get this to work?

 

[flowrider]

^^^^

I'm very skeptical about this method using USB drives. Of course I have it enabled because I boot from a device on a PCIe card. If it works with USB, this is something new. As recently as the cMP 5,1 you could not boot from a USB device. If now possible, I would not use an SSD on the USB chain as a startup device because you can not enable TRIM.

Lou

 

[choreo]

So this Startup Security Utility is only accessible when you boot into Recovery Mode?

 

[eflx]

I've tried several times to boot a working copy of Windows 10 via external drive on the MP 7,1 with no luck. Even after installing/injecting the proper Mac Pro storage drivers.

No go. My old MacBook Pro would boot it no issues. I've not been able to try with an internal SSD connected to a SATA port, which I may do - but I know booting Windows at least from external ports does not work at all.

 

[erroneous]

So this Startup Security Utility is only accessible when you boot into Recovery Mode?

Yes. Set it once and you don't have to go back to it again unless you decide to alter the setting.

 

[LeonPro]

So this Startup Security Utility is only accessible when you boot into Recovery Mode?

That's correct. It's not even apparent after going into that mode. You'll have to go up to one of the top menu items to see it. But once I accessed it, I just disabled the security altogether - "No security" and "Allow booting from external" for future actions. It's not like the Mac Pro is going somewhere and being hacked at the same time. Unlike the MBP which has full security enabled.
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I've tried several times to boot a working copy of Windows 10 via external drive on the MP 7,1 with no luck. Even after installing/injecting the proper Mac Pro storage drivers.

No go. My old MacBook Pro would boot it no issues. I've not been able to try with an internal SSD connected to a SATA port, which I may do - but I know booting Windows at least from external ports does not work at all.

I did try with Windows 10 as well using an external SSD. I followed 9 to 5 instructions using VMWare and WinToUSB, it would boot but not complete the setup instructions despite having successfully set up from the Apple SSD.

Maybe I missed a step as I followed their old instructions prior to Catalina. They posted an update a few days ago using the latest OS and the latest versions of the apps I mentioned above. I'm tired trying again.

I have 4TB. So really don't need to do external booting. Will just reinstall Windows internally maybe this weekend.

If anyone was able to successfully boot Windows 10 externally, let us know.

 

[erroneous]

Maybe I missed a step as I followed their old instructions prior to Catalina. They posted an update a few days ago using the latest OS and the latest versions of the apps I mentioned above. I'm tired trying again.

I watched 9to5Mac's recent video on how to do this, and thought the title describing it as "the EASY way" somewhat... optimistic?

If that's easy, I really wouldn't like to see the hard way.

 

[choreo]

That's correct. It's not even apparent after going into that mode. You'll have to go up to one of the top menu items to see it. But once I accessed it, I just disabled the security altogether - "No security" and "Allow booting from external" for future actions. It's not like the Mac Pro is going somewhere and being hacked at the same time. Unlike the MBP which has full security enabled.

So is this a "sticky" setting? (i.e. once you change those Security Settings does it retain those settings until you manually set them back)?

 

[LeonPro]

So is this a "sticky" setting? (i.e. once you change those Security Settings does it retain those settings until you manually set them back)?

Correct. It's a one time setting as it lives in the T2 chip.

 

[ZoomEnhance]

If anyone was able to successfully boot Windows 10 externally, let us know.

I got this working. Since I already have Parallels, I ended up using a modified version of Vtudio's process from this thread. But I've seen both 9to5Mac's old and new videos and it seems like they should work. I don't have VMWare so YMMV.

My aim was to install Windows on a PCIe SSD, but Parallels can't do PCIe passthrough, so I first needed to install in a USB enclosure.

Some things I learned:

- If you normally connect to your display via TB3 on a W5700X, temporarily use HDMI instead.
- Download the BootCamp drivers (WindowsSupport folder) using your MP7,1. BootCamp Assistant downloads are based on the platform on which it is run.
- Skip adding your license key when installing the Windows 10 VM otherwise you'll need to transfer the key over to the SSD install later.
- Since I was installing Windows 10 Pro, I used Rufus instead of WinToUSB (WinToUSB requires a license for W10 Pro). Rufus is quite similar to WinToUSB, so its easy to figure it out. Just make sure you select "Windows To Go" and not the "Windows Standard Install". The W10 Standard Installer won't install to a USB device.
- After installing the BootCamp drivers in Windows 10, the 10G ethernet still didn't work (yellow triagle in Control Panel).

There are drivers for the AQC-107, but I haven't gotten around to installing them yet. For now, WiFi serves my purposes. Will sort that out later.

After the Windows install, I moved the SSD back into a PCIe adapter and it boots fine. Looks good so far.

HTH

 

[LeonPro]

Great to know @ZoomEnhance! I copped out and installed Windows 10 again, but internally. It was a painful process than when I was trying via external SSD.

I was wondering about how Apple will dealing with the introduction of Big Sur and the disappearance of Boot Camp. Will they allow Boot Camp to exist if Big Sur detects it in the Apple SSD? Will it wipe it out of existence? One thing for sure, not over-writing Catalina with Big Sur but will be creating a separate partition while these answers come to light.

I digress.

 

[ZoomEnhance]

OK so even though the BootCamp Installer (Build 7675) doesn't install the Aquantia/Marvell 10G drivers, you can manually install them by pointing DeviceManager to the WindowsSupport/$WinPEDriver$ folder. There are several other device drivers there that you should also install.

Once you have the 10G ethernet up and running, make sure to adjust the settings.

@LeonPro Yeah the process is much more complex than it should be!

The rumours are that Apple will release new Intel Macs for a while yet. Also, apparently the Microsoft Surface Pro uses ARM, so maybe a full-fledged Windows for ARM isn't so far away. Either way, BootCamp may not be going away anytime soon. Hopefully Big Sur on Intel Macs will handle it well.

 

[Grumply]

Can anyone confirm the partition type required for an internal PCIe NVME install of Windows 10?

I have VMFusion and WintoUSB both ready to go. So the plan is to install it externally initially and then move the installation inside the 7,1 (unless WintoUSB can install to an internal drive as well?)

Is GPT and UEFI the way to go?