MP 1,1-5,1 Help with configuring PCI/NVMe drive

[glawrie]

I've just installed a Sabrent 2TB NVMe drive using the kryoM.2 evo PCIe adapter.

The install was easy and the drive is now visible as a PCI-Express External drive.

My machine is a mid 2010 5.1 cMP running macos 10.14.6.

My intention is to use this new drive to act as the system disk (replacing a SATA SSD that is doing this currently) and then eventually try to update the machine to run Catalina (presumably either via Dosdude or OpenCore approach).

Some questions:

• I reset the drive using Disk Utility and was only given the option to format as HFS+ or MS-Dos / ExFAT - no APFS option. What do I need to do to format using APFS?
  • Self-answered: reformat the disk rather than the volume (select disk via View:show all devices in Disk Utility)
• I've seen a thread that discuss ways to make the drive appear as an internal drive using Lilu + Innie kext mods. If I do this, is this going to be compatible with Dosdude / OpenCore methods for running Catalina? If so, is there some other way to get the drive to be seen as internal that is compatible with these mods?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[kohlson]

Is your intention to go to Mojave? If so, download the *full* 10.14.6 installer and execute. You may already have this as you have upgraded to 144 firmware.

Is your intention to upgrade to Catalina? If so, consider #1,314

 

[nekton1]

This worked for me with nVME Samsung disks on a HighPoint 7500 series card.
Thanks for the excellent description.

 

[glawrie]

Is your intention to go to Mojave? If so, download the *full* 10.14.6 installer and execute. You may already have this as you have upgraded to 144 firmware.

Running Mojave already.

Is your intention to upgrade to Catalina? If so, consider #1,314

Yes - but not right away. So will get it stable running Mojave off new disk first, and only then have a go at Open Core installation and then see what happens. So your link to 'easy install' post most helpful - thanks.

 

[jonesey5]

I'm having a similar issue getting my 5,1 to boot directly to Western Digital NVME 1TB drive. I'm running Catalina 10.15.4 thanks to Dos Dude and can boot to my SATA SSD, restart and then boot to my NVME. I just can't boot directly to the NVME drive. If I remove the SATA SSD with Catalina and try to boot to the NVME, I just get a gray screen. Videos on booting to the NVME drive make it look simple but I'm missing something. It's not that bad rebooting the machine to get to the NVME drive but it's not ideal and kind of bugs me. I've got boot ROM 144.0.0.0.0 and Catalina runs great once I've finally booted to the NVME drive. Thanks for any thoughts.

 

[ric2021]

Running Mojave already.



Yes - but not right away. So will get it stable running Mojave off new disk first, and only then have a go at Open Core installation and then see what happens. So your link to 'easy install' post most helpful - thanks.

Were you able to boot from it and use it as a replacement of the system drive? Looking for exactly the same setup and about to hit the "order" button

Your information will be very much appreciated.