Much Info. Read this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-10-10-4-experiences-and-trimforce.1893358/
I have Trim enabled on both 10.10.4 and 10.11 PB. I'm running two Duos and 4 Samsung SSDs.
Lou
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Resolved Dual boot CONFIRMED for new Apricorn Velocity DUO X2!!!
- Thread starter m4v3r1ck
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Much Info. Read this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-10-10-4-experiences-and-trimforce.1893358/
I have Trim enabled on both 10.10.4 and 10.11 PB. I'm running two Duos and 4 Samsung SSDs.
Lou
Great!
Read the thread Lou provided! For checking if TRIM is enabled simply click the "SATA/SATA Express" section!
BTW using TRIM FORCE command in OS X 10.10.4 with 840 EVOs on DUO x2 aswell.
Cheers
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1. Expand the windows to max using the green 'trafiic light' button. Use your mouse to move the vertical divider to the right.
2. Click on the "SATA/SATA Express" section
3. Check for "Trim Support" section in your SSD info's
Cheers
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Worked like a charm!
R/W speeds went from 250ish to 480~ on my 850EVO! Happy camper
Solo X2 Duo with an 850 EVO 500GB and a 120 Kingston V200 for Windows.
I got about the same speed increase on my system when i changed to a 500gb 840 evo. I got another 500gb evo now and i am gonna put that in the card also and RAID0'em. Lets see what that does.
How do I set up the Apricorns built in Hardware RAID (0)? I once read somewhere this had to be done in a PC is this still true?
I just send Apricorn engineers an email, requesting for some more details on configuring the hardware RAIDS, on Mac and/or PC. Keep you posted!
Cheers
Darn it... I wish I had stumbled upon this thread before taking the plunge....
I was going to ditch my old Mac Pro 2008 (3.2 eight core, 32 GB RAM, Quadro 5600 FX) and get a new Mac Pro (2nd Gen) when it comes out. While waiting, I decided to do some upgrades and decided to go with the Sonnet SSD Pro with two 500 GB EVO 850. Bought an extra 250 GB EVO 850 for Windows 10 to put in bay 1. Bay 2, 3, and 4 I kept the old 1 TB drives and configured it as RAID 0 and installed 10.11 (which sucks, especially Disk Utilities, had to boot with 10.10 to configure RAID).
Long story short, I had to yank out the Sonnet card to install Windows 10 on the SSD in the internal bay 1. Once I put the Sonnet back, Windows won't boot. I saw that some other folks here had the same problem and decided to send the card back and go with the Apricorn DUO. For me, I simply don't want the hassle of returning it because it works great with OS X. So my question is:
1. Is there a way to fix this? (To boot Windows off the drive in Bay 1)
2. If #1 is not possible, can I get another PCIe card just for booting Windows and works with the Sonnet? I don't mind holding the Option key during boot
3. What should I get? The single Sonnet, Solo x2 or Duo x2?
4. Slot 1 & 2 is already taken (by the video card and Sonnet), will doing RAID 0 on the Duo x2 be futile since the bus speed on slot 3 is not as fast as slot 1 & 2?
5. If the bus speed is limited, then would it make sense just to get the Solo x1 and save on the cost of the card? I don't mind paying more if is makes sense to do so.
Many thanks!
I was going to ditch my old Mac Pro 2008 (3.2 eight core, 32 GB RAM, Quadro 5600 FX) and get a new Mac Pro (2nd Gen) when it comes out. While waiting, I decided to do some upgrades and decided to go with the Sonnet SSD Pro with two 500 GB EVO 850. Bought an extra 250 GB EVO 850 for Windows 10 to put in bay 1. Bay 2, 3, and 4 I kept the old 1 TB drives and configured it as RAID 0 and installed 10.11 (which sucks, especially Disk Utilities, had to boot with 10.10 to configure RAID).
Long story short, I had to yank out the Sonnet card to install Windows 10 on the SSD in the internal bay 1. Once I put the Sonnet back, Windows won't boot. I saw that some other folks here had the same problem and decided to send the card back and go with the Apricorn DUO. For me, I simply don't want the hassle of returning it because it works great with OS X. So my question is:
1. Is there a way to fix this? (To boot Windows off the drive in Bay 1)
2. If #1 is not possible, can I get another PCIe card just for booting Windows and works with the Sonnet? I don't mind holding the Option key during boot
3. What should I get? The single Sonnet, Solo x2 or Duo x2?
4. Slot 1 & 2 is already taken (by the video card and Sonnet), will doing RAID 0 on the Duo x2 be futile since the bus speed on slot 3 is not as fast as slot 1 & 2?
5. If the bus speed is limited, then would it make sense just to get the Solo x1 and save on the cost of the card? I don't mind paying more if is makes sense to do so.
Many thanks!
Anything back? Drives are installed and waiting?
Response from Apricorn I received:
1. Creating a software RAID0 in OS X using Disk Utility gave me no problem at all, easy-does-it. Now my DUO x2 is configured as both an OS X & Windows bootdrive on separate SSDs on the same DUO x2.
2. Never tried the hardware RAID0/1 using the Marvel RAID tool (If using a PC), because I don't own a PC anymore since 2008.
Perhaps a MR member who configured the hardware RAID with the DUO x2 using a PC can chime in.
Sorry I can't help you with the Windows setup myself! Good Luck.
Cheers
Hmm. The expected unsatisfactory answer... Im happily PC-free also. I could maybe try it on my brothers PC system. Ill google around a bit about that Marvel thing.
Like you said anyone tried?
Like you said anyone tried?
I've just bought a Velocity Solo X2 and it seems like a great card, but I'm having a couple boot issues with it. I've heard it's basically the same card as the Duo, so if anyone can help that would be great.
I have a single SSD on the Solo partitioned into 3: OS X 10.11.3 / OS X 10.10.5 / Windows 7
I can boot into both OS X partitions without any problems, however the Windows 7 partition won't boot at all (It just defaults to OS X).
However, I wanted to give Window 10 a go so I installed it on a internal drive bay and restarted to it... and it displayed a "Choose which operating system" type screen that had my Windows 7 partition listed on it, so I selected it and it booted up fine to Windows 7 on the Solo!!!
So it seems like the internal bay Windows install piddy-backs the Solo partition and allows it to boot?
So why does this work? Does anyone know what is happening?
Also, I can't Option-Boot Screen with the Solo. The only drive that gets listed is the internal bay Windows 10 drive (the Solo and it's partitions don't get listed).
If I remove the internal bay Windows 10 drive, then it goes back to the original behaviour of not allowing Windows 7 to boot (and Option-Boot Screen doesn't work at all).
I have a single SSD on the Solo partitioned into 3: OS X 10.11.3 / OS X 10.10.5 / Windows 7
I can boot into both OS X partitions without any problems, however the Windows 7 partition won't boot at all (It just defaults to OS X).
However, I wanted to give Window 10 a go so I installed it on a internal drive bay and restarted to it... and it displayed a "Choose which operating system" type screen that had my Windows 7 partition listed on it, so I selected it and it booted up fine to Windows 7 on the Solo!!!
So it seems like the internal bay Windows install piddy-backs the Solo partition and allows it to boot?
So why does this work? Does anyone know what is happening?
Also, I can't Option-Boot Screen with the Solo. The only drive that gets listed is the internal bay Windows 10 drive (the Solo and it's partitions don't get listed).
If I remove the internal bay Windows 10 drive, then it goes back to the original behaviour of not allowing Windows 7 to boot (and Option-Boot Screen doesn't work at all).
I'm assuming you have a Mac Pro 3,1. When I tried using my old Apricorn SATA 3 card with my old Mac Pro 3,1, I had all sorts of trouble when trying to boot in to bootcamp. When I contacted Apricorn support, I was told it was an issue with the 3,1 EFI firmware and that it would work fine for some 3,1 and not others while never giving me any solution to the problem.
On my 5,1, the Velocity Solo X2 has always performed as advertised. However, I never had multiple bootable partitions on my drives. I always assigned entire drives to my operating systems...
That's interesting to read. So you're running 2 SSD's on the SoloX2, one with Mac and one with Windows?
I thought I'd try the Windows 10 drive on the Solo with no other drives in the Mac... and it didn't load.. hmm
No. I currently use a PCI-e SSD for OS X and have a 1TB SSD on the Velocity Solo X2 as a scratch disk. My Windows 10 drive is on one of the stock SATA 2 bays.
You may need to install AHCI drivers to get Windows to boot. More info at: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/760482/
You may need to install AHCI drivers to get Windows to boot. More info at: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/760482/
That's interesting as Device Manager in Windows already say's its using AHCI (Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller)??
I've now also tried running the Windows 10 SSD drive as a second drive on the Velocity Solo X2 (with cable) and it shows up under OS X, but once again won't boot when selected as the startup device. Interestingly my monitor turns on and kind of lights up as if it's about to do something, but remains a black screen and nothing happens.
Hi Pastrychef - I think I've read elsewhere in the forums that you had Windows on the Solo at some point. Do you remember if you had installed from the Windows DVD and used BIOS mode, and did the Solo run in AHCI or ATA mode?
Thanks.
[doublepost=1457277205][/doublepost]Seems like the Marvel chipset in the Duo X2 is absolutely horrible. Here's an Amazon review for albeit a different card but which uses the same Marvell 9230 chipset:
"Unfortunately this chipset barely implements enough of the AHCI spec for our AHCI driver to probe the disks. It only reports three capabilities. It reports AHCI v1.2 and S64A, NCQ, and PMD, and that's it. It does not report SSNTF or SCLO and it definitely does not report FBS (FIS-Based Switching support). Without SSNTF and particularly without SCLO there's no way this chipset can be even remotely reliable. It also doesn't report low-power or other mod e capabilities and is missing numerous other standard capabilities. For example, the motherboard AHCI chipset reports: S64A, NCQ, SSNTF, SMPS, SALP, SAL, SCLO, SPM, PMD, SSC, and PSC. (Obviously I'm testing on a Linux or BSD system and not windows, so I have full control over the driver and know exactly what the chipset is doing at the PCIe host interface level).
If this chipset supported proper port multiplier detection it would report SPM (Port Multiplier support on each port) and if it supported FIS-Based switching via the AHCI port multiplier spec it would report FBS. It reports neither.
What this chipset is doing is basically aggregating the real ports behind the scenes and doing the port multiplier detection and scanning behind the scenes, and reporting them as separate AHCI ports. In other words, it is hiding the port multiplier behind some firmware and chip magic rather than implementing the port multiplier spec on the host-facing ports. Honestly I'm not sure how it is supposed to work when the chip only reports 8 ports (one of which contains the MARVELL controller... also off-spec), is aggregating PM ports behind the scenes, but has two external and two internal SATA ports (which theoretically should be able to support at least 20 drives if one connected a port multiplier to each port).
This might be OK except for three things: (1) Without SCLO you can't have a reliable AHCI chip, period. (2) If it is implementing FIS-Based switching internally it sure isn't showing up when I do read tests on the ports. With two hard drives in a port multiplier I get ~70MB/sec reading from either but if I read from both simultaniously I get ~35MB/sec from each. In otherwords, it is clearly NOT doing FIS-Based switching internally when you have an actual port multiplier connected to the E-SATA port. And (3) It doesn't handle hot-plug properly.
When I booted the machine the first time it detected two of the three drives in my PM. When I hot unplugged and replugged two of them it detected that two of the ports unplugged and plugged, but then failed to detect one of the two replugged drives. In addition, for about 30 seconds before detecting one of the two replugged drives the console was spewing DMA engine failures. When I rebooted it got stuck in the BIOS (didn't even get to the machine boot)... twice. A few reboots later it got past the BIOS and reported all three disks. It's a real mess. Not even remotely reliable.
This chip is basically trying to do PM detection behind the scenes and presenting the individual drives as individual AHCI ports to the host, instead of implementing the port multiplier AHCI chipset feature and exposing it to the host. And it's doing a horrible job of it. I can see why others have reported Windows BSODs with this chip family. The firmware is insanely bad, even worse than the SiS cards.
I was hoping that it implemented the port multiplier AHCI spec. It doesn't. I was hoping that it implemented FIS-Based switching... it really doesn't seem to.
I recommend that people give anything based on this chip family a very WIDE berth. Avoid it at all costs. It's total junk."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R13LE62QHLRCZP/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewpnt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00AZ9T31I#R13LE62QHLRCZP
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