MP 1,1-5,1 Catalina on RAID with APFS on MacPro 5,1

[Digital Nomad]

It took me a really long time to get to the point where I am running Catalina on a RAID 0 using the Amfeltec Squid and 4 x 1 TB HyperX Predator blades. Part of the problem was getting the right information, part of it a blown power supply that almost had me retire my 4,1 (as one of the screws holding the power supply in place stripped).

There are a number of issues with running Catalina on a RAID 0 on a MacPro 5,1

1. Catalina does not support the MacPro 5,1
2. Catalina does not support installation on a RAID drive
3. Catalina does not let you assign a RAID 0 as the boot drive via System Preferences and
4. Depending on your configuration, your MacPro may not have access to a boot screen - which is a real issue as the boot screen is the only place where you can assign a RAID as a startup drive

So how do these issues get resolved?

1. The first step is to get your MacPro 5,1 to get ready to run Catalina. @tsialex has done a great job laying out how to do this here
2. The second step is to prepare a RAID drive where you can install Catalina. @toru173 laid out how to get this done for Mojave here and the process for Catalina is very similar. As you go through the process, make sure to amend it per @dwlg's comment here. Once you create the hard drive, you can use the VMWare process laid out by @tsialex here to install Catalina to it
3. Getting Catalina to assign a RAID drive as the startup drive proved impossible for me - until @dwlg mentioned that I needed to use a card that provided a Boot Screen - and he suggested the original GT120. I did not think that'd work - but I was wrong. Turns out that once you have installed Catalina you can use a non-metal compatible card to boot your MacPro. Once your computer starts up, you can hit option and then select the drive you want to have your computer start up with and press the Control key. The problem I run into is that I was not able to get the GT120 to work with my 4K displays - so I needed to hook up a 2K display. This was not convenient for me, so I ended up using my NVIDIA 980TI card that had been flashed by MacVidCards. The card worked like a charm driving my 4K monitor

Now the one inconvenience this creates is that if I would like to update Catalina, I need to change the boot drive - which means I'll need to uninstall my current video card (RX56),install my 980TI, change the boot drive & use VMWare to update my system. The best way to eliminate this hassle is to buy from MacVidCards a flashed AMD card that will allow you to have a boot screen & select your start up drive. I have sent a 580 to be flashed and once I get it back will send my RX56

I am the least technically inclined person I know - and would have never been able to get this done without the help of the community in general and @dwlg in particular.

Hope this helps and best wishes for a great 2020 to everyone

 

[Stez]

Hey there, during the installation process of the Catalina VM, did you have to deal with the bluetooth keyboard connection screen? I've set my profile to Windows 10 x64 and the mouse and keyboard to Windows profile but it won't let me past this screen. Any ideas?

Thanks for sharing your steps. I feel like I'm almost there!

Edit: Okay, I just tried switching the profile back to macOS and it worked

 

[Snow Tiger]

a blown power supply that almost had me retire my 4,1 (as one of the screws holding the power supply in place stripped).

Unless you are extremely careful , those fasteners should be considered consumable ( i.e. need to use new ones for every PSU installation ) . That's because Apple added a lot of Loctite on the threads of the fasteners at the factory . It's best if you remove all PCIe add on cards first , so you can get some solid leverage on the fasteners with your 2.5mm hex driver .

 

[Digital Nomad]

Stez - did you end up being able to boot off your Raid?

 

[Stez]

Stez - did you end up being able to boot off your Raid?

I didn't get it to work in the end. But I tried a different method instead, by using CCC I cloned a Sata SSD to the Raid 0 and it worked/is bootable ?

 

[manielli]

Hi,

I have been able to successfully install latest Cataline 10.15.4 to a RAID set using the VMware method, however I can't log in to my Apple ID in Mac App Store, is this a known issue? Anyone with the same issue?

By the way, I initially had the same issue as the user in post #2 with keyboard, but I rebooted the VM with different settings for mouse and keyboard and it eventually worked and let me past the bluetooth keyboard connection screen.

 

[manielli]

Hi everyone, for those interested, it looks like the 10.15.5 Catalina update broke the RAID Catalina posted in this thread. I booted into a Mojave backup OS I have for updating the Catalina using VMWare. The update went well and smoothly. However I can not boot into Catalina with my Sapphire Pulse RX580 anymore, I can boot with my ATi Radeon HD 5870 but the performance is poor. I can still boot into Catalina using VMware. Any solutions or ideas on how to resolve this will be much appreciated.

 

[Digital Nomad]

I am having a very hard time upgrading to 10.5.4 or 10.5.5. I have used the external disk method and my issue invariably is Facetime and Messages not working. Very strange . . .

 

[tsialex]

I am having a very hard time upgrading to 10.5.4 or 10.5.5. I have used the external disk method and my issue invariably is Facetime and Messages not working. Very strange . . .

Messages and FaceTime not working usually is a problem with hardwareIDs inside the BootROM.

About My Mac show your SystemSerialNumber (SSN) correctly? It's the same as the one from the ESN label near the video outputs, on the backside?

 

[Digital Nomad]

Tsialex- great idea, let me check.

Btw the method I described earlier for creating a bootable drive no longer works with Catalina 10.15.5 - as I can create a RAID, but Carbon Copy Cloner is unable to clone the Operating System as it tries (and fails) to add a partition to the disk. Guess it's 10.15.3 for me until I figure this out . . .

 

[pottersfield]

Any updates on this topic? Is right now the latest version of Catalina 10.15.3 which supports RAID APFS for the Operating System? I am planning on updating my HW in my cMP from a single NVMe blade to a quad RAID with the Highpoint SSD7101-A. Because starting with 10.15.4 Apple screwed up HDR with third party monitors I would happily start again with a fresh install on 10.15.3 and stay there until the issues are sorted out.

Would these instructions work on Catalina: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mojave-on-raid-with-apfs-a-howto.2125096/post-26641599 ?

Apple RAID via diskutility or rather a hardware RAID with another Highpoint card?

Or otherwise, did anyone test to "combine" two (multiple) SSD's to a FusionDrive, which officially supports APFS?

 

[Digital Nomad]

Happy to report process is working great with 10.5.7 via the Fusion method. Please bear in mind that because you are booting from a RAID, the RAID volume no longer has the Boot Recovery partition (so you may want to keep a single boot volume in your system for that reason). Also if you decide to get a MacVidCards card, go via MacVidCards Europe on eBay, as the US operation is unpredictable (they ended up keeping a 580 I sent to be flashed)