Can't Install OSX/Boot on Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro

[hfg]

Do you want to run the 2 x SSD in RAID 0? If yes, then you need to mount both SSDs in the standard hard drive bays, RAID them together, then install OSX, THEN remount them on the Sonnet Card.

If you do NOT want RAID, and just want two separate drives on the Sonnet, then you don't need to do anything fancy. Just move the existing drive to the Sonnet and it will continue to work, and mount the new drive to it and you can format it as needed.

It's only when using RAID that you need to first do it all in the standard drive bays.

Hope this helps

I was able to successfully install RAID-0 SSDs on a new Sonnet in a 2012 Mac Pro using a USB fresh install of OS X 10.8.3 just last week. I had another issue which caused me to also perform the in-bay install then transplant the SSDs to the Sonnet which also worked equally well, although the issue remains.

The issue is that I cannot get a "option key" restart boot-device menu if a bootable drive is installed on the Sonnet card. Sonnet technical support has been able to duplicate the problem and issued a Trouble Ticket with engineering and they hope to have a firmware fix available soon. Other than that small issue ... the card is performing great! (I did exchange the card for a new one, and the replacement also had the issue ).

-howard

 

[scottrichardson]

Scott,

Greatly appreciate your quick response! I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing before I end up messing things up big time and lose a lot of data...Phew...great to know you have such great knowledge on this, I am so thankful for that. Last question...when you mean RAID'ing them as a drive...is it better to use them as a RAID drive? My main purpose of getting this device was so that I can use this as my boot drive...From what I read, and heard about this product was that it doubles the standard SSD boot off the ESATA 3.5 chassis by a lot more, if using the Sonnet Tempo Pro....I am not to familiar with using any sort of RAID format, and knowing everything is based on personal choice...What is the difference formatting it like a RAID like what you did, versus using it as a bootup (like how I mentioned and you responded)?

Instead of adding more to this thread, is there a email I can contact you directly through? Or does this MacForum have a message center where i can just post this to you? Feel free to let me know when you have time.

Pleasure

OK so when I read your question, I gather you have 2 x Samsung SSDs?

When you format drives as RAID, it means you combine multiple disks into ONE 'volume'.

So if you choose to format your two SSDs as a RAID 0 volume (or stripe, as it's known), you will end up with 1 disk that is twice as fast as one SSD, and also twice the size as one SSD.

You will end up with a 512GB drive running at around 950MB a second, which is roughly 4 x faster than running a single SSD off the standard Mac Pro drive bays.

If you choose not to use RAID, you will end up with TWO disks, each 256MB, and each running at it's native speed of around 480MB/sec. Still twice as fast as standard drive bays.

Hope that makes sense!

Scottie

 

[jenzjen]

Similar to Scott's posts, I thought I could take a working SSD with both OS X and Windows 8 from a native port onto the Sonnet Tempo.

Probably not a deal breaker for most, but Windows will not work. In talking to Sonnet support, this seems to be more of a limitation of the MP where it needs the Windows volume on a native port.

I also do not get the OS selection startup screen when holding down the "option" key.

The "option" startup may not be an issue if you have a 2nd system drive in your machine, but I have only 1 system SSD.

Great device, just doesn't fully support my needs.

 

[hfg]

Similar to Scott's posts, I thought I could take a working SSD with both OS X and Windows 8 from a native port onto the Sonnet Tempo.

Probably not a deal breaker for most, but Windows will not work. In talking to Sonnet support, this seems to be more of a limitation of the MP where it needs the Windows volume on a native port.

I also do not get the OS selection startup screen when holding down the "option" key.

The "option" startup may not be an issue if you have a 2nd system drive in your machine, but I have only 1 system SSD.

Great device, just doesn't fully support my needs.

What model Mac Pro are you using?

I am having the "Option-Key Boot" problem with a new 2012 5,1 12-core Mac Pro. The card works fine in my older 2008 3,1 model Mac Pro. The fact than others haven't mentioned this problem makes me suspect that it is a compatibility issue with the new model.

I found that the bare Tempo Pro card itself, or with non-bootable SSDs mounted that there is no Boot-Menu issue. Only when a bootable SSD is on the card does the "Option Key Boot" cause the system to hang.

-howard

 

[jenzjen]

What model Mac Pro are you using?

Similar machine - 5,1 6 core

 

[nekton1]

I think I may have a dud Sonnet Temp card (not pro) out of the box. I tried moving two working OS X 10.8.3 RAID 0 SSDs from the backplane and the boot just stalls at a spinning cursor.
Then I tried moving it with a single Windows 7 SSD into a Windows 7 PC and it stalls at the AHCI driver installed message.
Even the bare card without an SSD has the same effect. I tried different BIOS boot drive settings but same thing—as soon as the boot starts, it stalls at the same AHCI place every time.
emailed Sonnet last Friday but not a peep out of them—going to wait a few more days and call my CC company if they don't reply.

 

[soccerfreakpete]

Scott!

I haven't been able to update the good news, but my MAC PRO is working like a beast. It's very fast and I can hear the power (the motor running). It was actually a lot easier than I imagined. Took less than 15 minutes to do everything. But long story short, did EXACTLY what you told me to do by first cloning my SSD, then on system preferance I had my BOOTUP as my other DRIVE....once I had cleared my SSD and raided it...I had restarted my computer and my RAID was still in tact, that's when I went back into Bootup with the SSD (RAID) and it worked without ANY problems!

Thanks so much for your help, greatly appreciate it!

-Peter

 

[dave-tx]

I installed a new ST SSD Pro card with 2x500GB Samsung 840 drives, RAID0 configuration, over the weekend. Mac Pro 3,1.

I cloned my OS to the new volume with CCC, seems to be working mostly flawlessly. I have one user account on the same volume, others remained on my old drive.

Haven't done much benchmarking, but this thing screams. I do a lot of audio processing, and can now easily saturate all 8 CPU cores with parallel tasks fed off the new volume.

My only issues that I'm still debugging:
1) With this installed, one of my eSATA drives (OWC Mercury Elite Pro Qx2) is no longer recognized, but another (single drive) is. My eSATA card is Sonnet E2P.
2) Keychains seem hosed, probably because of moving the boot volume and/or my user account?

If anyone wants to request benchmarks or other usability/setup questions I'd be glad to contribute my data.

 

[hfg]

Here are my results with the Sonnet Tempo Pro running RAID-0 SSDs:
As you say ... it does scream!
(2012 Mac Pro 2.4 12core)


<<--- Left: Crucial M4 2 x 500GB SSD in RAID-0
--->> Right: Samsung 840 Pro 2 x 250GB SSD in RAID-0 (actually 1/2-500GB and 250GB ... other 1/2 is Windows)

..

 

[jenzjen]

Right: Samsung 840 Pro 2 x 250GB SSD in RAID-0 (actually 1/2-500GB and 250GB ... other 1/2 is Windows)

Is the 1/2 Windows the Windows OS drive or just a Windows data volume?

 

[hfg]

Is the 1/2 Windows the Windows OS drive or just a Windows data volume?

It is the Windows bootable OS drive. The 512 GB SSD is divided into 2 partitions: one is devoted to Windows OS, and the other partition is paired with the other 256GB drive in a RAID-0 array for OS X.

I have to admit I am currently troubleshooting the ability of Windows to boot from the Sonnet Tempo Pro card with this configuration. The 2-drive system works fine when installed in the Mac Pro backplane ... both OSs boot and run, and it is easy to switch between them as the startup disk. However, when on the Sonnet card, Windows will start to boot, then hang, requiring a forced power off. My next attempt is to put the dual OS SSD on a Velocity Solo X2 card and the single SSD on the Sonnet, still running RAID-0, and see if the Velocity x2 card will provide the proper interface for booting the Windows image as and external (PCIe) disk.

I have absolutely no problems with a different PCIe setup where the OS X RAID-0 using a pair of Crucial M4 SSDs is contained on the Sonnet Tempo Pro and Windows is on a Crucial M4 SSD on the Tempo x2 card. Both OSs boot fine, and switching between them using startup-disk works great.

It's never easy ...


-howard

 

[jenzjen]

I have to admit I am currently troubleshooting the ability of Windows to boot from the Sonnet Tempo Pro card with this configuration.

I have absolutely no problems with a different PCIe setup where the OS X RAID-0 using a pair of Crucial M4 SSDs is contained on the Sonnet Tempo Pro and Windows is on a Crucial M4 SSD on the Tempo x2 card. Both OSs boot fine, and switching between them using startup-disk works great.

See my post #28 above, as I could not get Windows to boot while the Win OS SSD was on the Sonnet card, and Sonnet support confirmed that it would not work.

Can you expand on your point with the Crucial SSD? How did you get Windows to boot in that setup?

 

[hfg]

See my post #28 above, as I could not get Windows to boot while the Win OS SSD was on the Sonnet card, and Sonnet support confirmed that it would not work.

Can you expand on your point with the Crucial SSD? How did you get Windows to boot in that setup?

Did Sonnet support think there will ever be a solution to booting Windows from their card? Or have they simply given up on that. I was hoping to get to a single-PCI-card solution for both Windows and OS X with RAID-0 on the OS X side. I have been able to create such a system on 2 SSDs which works fine on the native (slow) SATA-II bus, and want to simply put that on a PCIe card with dual SATA-III capability.


With my current "running" setup, I am using 2 PCIe slots for SSDs. One is the Sonnet card with a pair of Crucial 500GB SSDs configured as OS X in RAID-0 (see DiskTest speed above). Another Velocity Solo x2 card has a Crucial 250GB SSD which has a bootable Windows 8 system on it. Everything is working great with both operating systems, including switching to the other OS from within the current OS (note: both OS are "external drives" due to their being on PCIe cards). These 3 SSDs also work fine when installed "internally" to the native Mac Pro SATA backplane.

Since I know the Velocity Solo x2 card WILL boot Windows successfully ... my next test is to try the 2-SSD dual OS RAID-0 which is on the Samsung 840 Pro SSDs (which will NOT boot windows when both are on the Sonnet card) on the Velocity x2. Unfortunately, I only have one x2 card, so I am hoping that I can test this by putting the larger SSD which has the Windows system on one partition on the x2 card, and putting the other half of the RAID-0 on the Sonnet card. If this works, that will indicate that the Sonnet card does, in fact, have a problem with booting Windows for me too, which will really be unfortunate as that would be a terrific single-board dual-OS with RAID-0 solution. Otherwise ... I could get another Velocity x2 card to replace the Sonnet card, but now I am consuming 2 PCIe slots, although I would be able to access the "option-key" boot menu which the Sonnet can't currently do in my Mac Pro due to a bug in the design of that card.

-howard

BTW: Just for fun ... I also took the above described 2-SSD configuration (Windows & RAID-0 OS X) and joined the RAID-0 drives with a 3 TB hard disk into a DIY Fusion drive. And it actually works!

 

[jenzjen]

Did Sonnet support think there will ever be a solution to booting Windows from their card? Or have they simply given up on that.

Keep in mind that this is from frontline support, but support said he has heard about it not working to boot Windows OS but believed it was a limitation of the Mac Pro not wanting to boot Windows if not connected to a native port so there's no fix planned by Sonnet.

Your experience with the x2 shows that it isn't a Mac Pro/native port issue but more of a Sonnet limitation.

 

[hfg]

Keep in mind that this is from frontline support, but support said he has heard about it not working to boot Windows OS but believed it was a limitation of the Mac Pro not wanting to boot Windows if not connected to a native port so there's no fix planned by Sonnet.

Your experience with the x2 shows that it isn't a Mac Pro/native port issue but more of a Sonnet limitation.

Yeah ... if my next test works, that will tend to indicate that the Sonnet card has another "bug" which could/should be fixed to make it into a great card.

I notice that both cards flash a "BIOS" like message on the Windows boot-up screen, so that may be where the problem lies. I have run into similar situations when trying to create bootable external Thunderbolt Windows setups on my iMac with various Thunderbolt enclosures.


-howard

 

[hfg]

Keep in mind that this is from frontline support, but support said he has heard about it not working to boot Windows OS but believed it was a limitation of the Mac Pro not wanting to boot Windows if not connected to a native port so there's no fix planned by Sonnet.

Your experience with the x2 shows that it isn't a Mac Pro/native port issue but more of a Sonnet limitation.

As a further test, I took the single Crucial M4 SSD with Windows 8 which boots fine from a Velocity Solo x2 PCIe card, and moved it to the Sonnet Tempo Pro PCIe card (the only SSD on the card) and Windows would not boot. Moving the SSD back to the Solo x2 card restored my Windows boot capability.


-howard

 

[jenzjen]

As a further test, I took the single Crucial M4 SSD with Windows 8 which boots fine from a Velocity Solo x2 PCIe card, and moved it to the Sonnet Tempo Pro PCIe card (the only SSD on the card) and Windows would not boot. Moving the SSD back to the Solo x2 card restored my Windows boot capability.


-howard

Same here, I took my OS SSD from optical bay onto the Tempo - no Windows boot.

Then, OS SSD onto the Solo x2, Windows boots fine.

 

[hfg]

Man ... this stuff is driving me crazy ... ponder this:

My goal was to have a single PCIe card with all the OS storage (OS X RAID-0 and Windows) on it. To that end, I used 2 SSDs, a 512GB and a 256GB, with the larger one partitioned in half. Using 1/2 of the large and the small SSD, I created a RAID-0 array for OS X. On the other 1/2 of the large SSD I installed Windows. With only 2 physical SSDs, I could put them both on the Sonnet Tempo Pro PCIe card.

-- It works fine on the Sonnet in OS X, but as we know, wouldn't boot Windows.
-- It works fine on the MacPro backplane in both operating systems.

-- Mounting one SSD with 1/2 devoted to Windows on a Solo x2 card, along with my standard Sonnet RAID-0 array also works fine in both operating systems. The Windows boots fine from the x2 card

-- Mounting the 2-SSD dual OS drives on 2 Solo x2 cards ... won't boot windows although the RAID OS X works fine. Why would using 2 identical Solo x2 cards at the same time prevent Windows from booting? Is it because there are 2 bootable OS on them?


In writing this down, I see there is one combination I missed: That of putting the large SSD with Windows on the Solo x2 card, and putting the other half of the OS X RAID-0 on the Sonnet card. I'm not too keen on using mis-matched host controllers in a RAID-0 array. We will see what that does...

-howard

Perhaps I should follow Tesselator's advice and just go back to a RAID-0 array of 2,3, or 4 cheap hard disks!

 

[hfg]

-- Mounting the 2-SSD dual OS drives on 2 Solo x2 cards ... won't boot windows although the RAID OS X works fine. Why would using 2 identical Solo x2 cards at the same time prevent Windows from booting? Is it because there are 2 bootable OS on them?


In writing this down, I see there is one combination I missed: That of putting the large SSD with Windows on the Solo x2 card, and putting the other half of the OS X RAID-0 on the Sonnet card. I'm not too keen on using mis-matched host controllers in a RAID-0 array. We will see what that does...

Well ... splitting the drives with one on the x2 card and one on the Sonnet works fine in OS X, but then booting Windows (part of SSD on x2 card), it started to boot showing the blue window, then the circling dots, then crashed with the message "No Boot Device Found".

I also found with a fresh OS X RAID-0 install on 2 ea. Solo x2 cards that when I went to try to install windows from DVD, the DVD didn't read the disk. I also had to remove my CalDigit eSATA/USB-3 card to even get it to boot.

Very strange.....

I guess I will give up for now on having a 2-drive SSD system with OS X in RAID-0 and Windows boot.

My system is very stable with a pair of SSDs on the Sonnet running OS X in RAID-0, and a separate SSD on the Solo x2 card devoted to Windows. Perhaps when some of the firmware bugs on the PCIe cards are updated, it may be possible to try again.


-howard

 

[5050]

Hi all,
UPDATED - RESOLVED!! After discussing my issue with Sonnet tech - they suggested to connect my 2 SSDs into the SATA 2 backplane of my mac pro, install OSX, then move the drives back to the PCI Card. Seems OSX Does NOT like installing on drives that are mounted on the PCI card. Sonnet Tech did say that you could just use CCC to clone the OS to the PCI mounted drives, although I was hesitant to do so as I'd experienced corruption previously using CCC.

Scott

Does the serial of your Sonnet Tempo SSD PCIe Card Adaptor begin with a "B"?

 

[scottrichardson]

Does the serial of your Sonnet Tempo SSD PCIe Card Adaptor begin with a "B"?

Yes it does

 

[Cecco]

Found this thread in search for reports about the EFI boot menu not showing up on Mac Pros with "Tempo SSD Pro" in RAID 0 configuration.

For the record: I have a 4,1 (2009) Mac Pro upgraded to 5,1 and hexacore cpu.

1.) Was wandering whether it is the RAID 0 on the Tempo SSD Pro or the fact that there is a bootable volume on the Tempo SSD Pro, that generates the missing EFI boot menu. Did anyone test both configurations (RAID 0 with and without boot volume vs. single drives with and without boot volume)?

2.) I have installed bootcamp as well but on a harddrive in bay 4. Found that Windows 7 crashed after I've installed the bootcamp drivers and it seems to be an incompatibility between the bootcamp HFS+ drivers and the RAID 0 on the Tempo SSD Pro (probably any presence of a HFS+ formatted RAID 0). Worked around it by removing the bootcamp HFS+ drivers but now lost connectivity to my HFS+ Mac drives and this might be as well the reason, that I cannot boot back to OS X from the bootcamp assistant in Windows (could as well be related to the missing EFI boot menu). System always reboots to Windows. Because I have no EFI boot menu as mentioned above, the only way back to OS X is by resetting the NVRAM, which is a bit annoying.

Workarounds for any these bugs are welcome.

 

[hfg]

Found this thread in search for reports about the EFI boot menu not showing up on Mac Pros with "Tempo SSD Pro" in RAID 0 configuration.

For the record: I have a 4,1 (2009) Mac Pro upgraded to 5,1 and hexacore cpu.

1.) Was wandering whether it is the RAID 0 on the Tempo SSD Pro or the fact that there is a bootable volume on the Tempo SSD Pro, that generates the missing EFI boot menu. Did anyone test both configurations (RAID 0 with and without boot volume vs. single drives with and without boot volume)?

2.) I have installed bootcamp as well but on a harddrive in bay 4. Found that Windows 7 crashed after I've installed the bootcamp drivers and it seems to be an incompatibility between the bootcamp HFS+ drivers and the RAID 0 on the Tempo SSD Pro (probably any presence of a HFS+ formatted RAID 0). Worked around it by removing the bootcamp HFS+ drivers but now lost connectivity to my HFS+ Mac drives and this might be as well the reason, that I cannot boot back to OS X from the bootcamp assistant in Windows (could as well be related to the missing EFI boot menu). System always reboots to Windows. Because I have no EFI boot menu as mentioned above, the only way back to OS X is by resetting the NVRAM, which is a bit annoying.

Workarounds for any these bugs are welcome.

(using MacPro 5,1)

I found that the Sonnet card would block the "option-key" boot menu anytime a bootable SSD was installed on it, either RAID or single drive. The bare card and a dual RAID-0 SSD data only configuration did not have this issue. I am unable to get a Windows SSD to successfully boot on the Sonnet at all even though the same SSD works fine on a Solo X2 card or the Mac Pro backplane. Sonnet Tech Support of aware of and had reproduced these problems and hopes to issue a firmware upgrade to fix them.

I have found that the latest version of BootCamp drivers causes a Windows 8 crash (CACHE_ERROR) even with no PCIe drives installed. Removing the HFS drivers fixed the problem completely (other than not being able to view the OS X volumes ... not a problem for me). I currently have my Windows 8 SSD on a Solo x2 PCIe card.


-howard

 

[hfg]

Well ... shoot ... confused again!

I just put everything together again in the Mac Pro, and all of a sudden I am able to get to the boot-device menu with the option-key on startup.

I have 2 bootable environments I am experimenting with: a Fusion OS X and a SSD RAID-0 OS X, both with a bootable Windows 8 SSD.

My hardware layout:

Bay-1: empty
Bay-2: Samsung 840 Pro (part of OS X Fusion array)
Bay-3: Seagate 3TB Hard Disk (part of OS X Fusion array)
Bay-4: Seagate 3TB Hard Disk (used with OS X RAID-0 for archive, movies, etc.

PCIe Slot 4: CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 6G eSATA & USB 3.0 Card Card
PCIe Slot 3: Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro with 2 ea. Crucial M4 512GB SSD in RAID-0 OS X
PCIe Slot 2: Velocity Solo x2 with Crucial M4 256GB Windows-8
----
PCIe Slot 1: Sapphire HD 7950 Graphics


I don't know what changed in the drive / card arrangement that caused the Boot-Selection to again function while the Sonnet card is active.


-howard

 

[Cecco]

Howard,

after your first reply to my post I was sure all I could do was wait for Sonnet to bring out a new firmware, as using the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro as a boot drive is key for my usage. Not necessarily as a RAID 0 though.

With your second post everything is open up for tinkering again. :-/
I assume you told Sonnet techsupport about your new findings. If not, please do so.

My configuration is similar to yours, except I have a WD Raptor in bay 4 dedicated to bootcamp and a Seritek eSATA card in slot 4 instead of your CalDigit card. Bay1 has a data drive with a small OS X Partition for tinkering and bays 2+3 hold a RAID 0 media partition.

Well, my main reason for using the Efi boot menu aside from troubleshooting was to boot into bootcamp and back into OS X, as for some unknown reason, I cannot switch back to OS X from the bootcamp assistant in Windows (always reboots into Windows until I clear NVRAM during boot).

I resolved that issue by using a small app called QuickBoot, that aliows me to boot only once into another OS without changing the boot volume permanently. That way a simple reboot in Windows brings me back to OS X.

A bit annoying, when you install software in Windows, that forces you to reboot Windows several times, but otherwise works fine.

Btw. are you happy with your CalDigit card? Any issue, sleep/wake working, performance good?
I slowly feel the upcoming need for USB 3 ports and the combination of eSATA and USB3 on a single card saves one of the valued PCIe slots in the Mac Pro, so I might replace my Seritek card with this one. Just fear I might loose the rock solid stability of the Seritek ...