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h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,586
Hong Kong
I only RAID'd these pair of 2TB SSD's because several years ago when I had outgrown the one 2TB SSD I had for OS X at the time, a 4TB SSD was just cost prohibitive ($1,600+). Since I didn't need a full 4TB just for OS X, it was cheaper to buy another 2TB, RAID it, then partition a 3TB for OS X which allowed a 1TB for Win10 via UEFI; RAIDing was never about performance. This seemed to work well for my needs as far as I knew.

But after finding the x509 issues that tsialex reported and was able to fix, I decided to switch to Legacy BIOS and this is where I discovered it just won't work with the Duo.

Now that 4TB SSDs have come gone significantly in price, that will be next step in my quest for Win10 Legacy BIOS on SSD.

I see, in this case, I will suggest

1) Break the RAID
2) Install macOS on the 2TB SSD
3) install Windows on another 2TB SSD. HOWEVER, during the "create new partition" step in my Windows installation guide (step 6), do NOT give it all 2TB, but only 1TB.
4) After Windows installation, you can then partition the remaining 1TB for macOS data storage.
 

startergo

macrumors 603
Sep 20, 2018
5,019
2,282
Windows cannot not be installed on external drive natively. And your setup is considered "External".

May be you want better sequential speed, therefore RAID the SSD together, and then partition the RAID again into 2 partitions (or more) for Windows and macOS. TBH, this is pretty much asking for trouble but provide little to no benefit in most real world usage.

You better use only one SSD for Mojave, and the other one for Windows.
I have installed Windows on my sonnet tempo. Isn't that considered external as well?
 

startergo

macrumors 603
Sep 20, 2018
5,019
2,282
Natively in EFI mode .I haven't tested legacy yet.
[doublepost=1545031613][/doublepost]Most probably it does not appear as an external to the Windows(installer)
 
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zozomester

macrumors 6502
Apr 26, 2017
370
266
Hungary
Natively?

I know it can be down with some work around, but I don't think the Windows installer can do that natively.
I've installed Windows 10 with your solution. It works. However, it appears in the Mac Hard Disk List to be reserved for a System Patrition. This is normal?
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,586
Hong Kong
I've installed Windows 10 with your solution. It works. However, it appears in the Mac Hard Disk List to be reserved for a System Patrition. This is normal?

Interesting, I never test that, but I don’t expect it can work that way. Good to know. May be the new firmware (or Windows) changes something.

I have a Sonnet Tempo SSD card as well. I may give it a try later.

That resevered partition is normal now. It wasn’t there on the initial Windows 10 release. But added by MS after few update.
 

zozomester

macrumors 6502
Apr 26, 2017
370
266
Hungary
Yes, it does not look under Windows (Reserved Patrition), but under Mac.
 

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Speedstar

macrumors regular
Oct 10, 2008
116
37
Thanks for the heads up! I never knew about this issue, but this probably also applies to Windows 7 SP1 because I always get the BSOD whenever I try to do any file operations beyond simple navigation on an HFS+ volume.
As I wrote it is a problem only with Windows Aniversary Update and above build 1511 runs with BootCamp 5.1 on MacPro.
I manually searched for 5.1 BootCamp for Win8 installed it in Windows 1511 and tested with builds above, THAT is why Apple removed hfs Drivers in BootCamp 6 and above ...
If you have a hfs.sys driver working with Windows 10 Aniversary Update please let me know, It might be a cheaper alternative to MacDrive
I have Windows 7 SP1 running on Mac Pro 3.1 and 5.1 with hfs.sys running but I did not install recent Updates...(maybe I overlooked something )

It is not recommend to install. Windows 10 in Efi-mode on external Drives or NVME because of microkernelupdate which makes trouble with firmware and nvram
Ask or search for tisalex' posts
https://forums.macrumors.com/members/tsialex.1033365/

He is an Expert on this topic.

I have sonnet tsata6-SSD-e2 it breaks alt bootmenu on every Mac Pro 5.1 when you install bootable system on it, I did not try Win10efi-mode on this....disks always have yellow external drive icon even with new Bootrom 140.0.x.x from Mojave
 
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Auggie

macrumors 6502
Jan 21, 2017
384
108
I have installed Windows on my sonnet tempo. Isn't that considered external as well?
Natively in EFI mode .I haven't tested legacy yet.
[doublepost=1545031613][/doublepost]Most probably it does not appear as an external to the Windows(installer)

Windows will definitely install on the "external" RAID of my Duo in EFI mode as well as in Legacy BIOS, but the Legacy BIOS install had corrupted my OS X partition of the hybrid GPT hardware RAID (FYI, the first three partitions belonged to EFI/OS X and took up the first 3TB; the FAT32 partition took the last 1TB of the 4TB RAID. I believe because of the 2TB limitation of Legacy BIOS/MBR, this lead to the OS X corruption because Windows was being installed past 2TB). So I will dedicate an entire SSD to Win10 and format it in MBR.
[doublepost=1545144995][/doublepost]
As I wrote it is a problem only with Windows Aniversary Update and above build 1511 runs with BootCamp 5.1 on MacPro.
I manually searched for 5.1 BootCamp for Win8 installed it in Windows 1511 and tested with builds above, THAT is why Apple removed hfs Drivers in BootCamp 6 and above ...
If you have a hfs.sys driver working with Windows 10 Aniversary Update please let me know, It might be a cheaper alternative to MacDrive
I have Windows 7 SP1 running on Mac Pro 3.1 and 5.1 with hfs.sys running but I did not install recent Updates...(maybe I overlooked something )

I installed Win7 Ultimate SP1 fresh and the initial install of Boot Camp drivers with no updates I get a BSOD when attempt to launch, copy, or move any files located on an USB HFS+ formatted hard drive. I've been trying to update Win7 but it always fails when attempting to install all 164 updates listed, so I've now been selectively installing small batches at a time. Apple Update found new updates and I installed it, which it reinstalled the HFS driver. I disabled it but I may test it to see if it perhaps may be a different version than that which came with the initial Boot Camp drivers.

It is not recommend to install. Windows 10 in Efi-mode on external Drives or NVME because of microkernelupdate which makes trouble with firmware and nvram
Ask or search for tisalex' posts

This is the whole reason why I've been trying to reinstall Win10 in Legacy BIOS, which has been unsuccessful so far with my Duo using a partitioned RAID. Tsialex was able to provide a cleaned ROM so I'm done with Win EFI.
 
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cococheaf

macrumors regular
Jul 10, 2018
102
54
Austria - Lake of Constance
Hey, just to inform you about my latest findings.
When installing Bootcamp in CSM Mode with Mojave installed, the Boot-Volume selector preference Pane only shows the Windows Disk when it is mounted as read only. If you mount it as R/W, it will disappear.

Has anyone else found that behavior?
Maybe that can solve Problems switching to windows.
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,586
Hong Kong
Hey, just to inform you about my latest findings.
When installing Bootcamp in CSM Mode with Mojave installed, the Boot-Volume selector preference Pane only shows the Windows Disk when it is mounted as read only. If you mount it as R/W, it will disappear.

Has anyone else found that behavior?
Maybe that can solve Problems switching to windows.

That's a known behaviour for long time. Windows partition won't shows up if you enabled any NTFS software. Not just in Mojave.
 
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flehman

macrumors 6502
Feb 21, 2015
352
194
I apologize if I missed any discussion of this, but I have read most of this thread and did not notice anything on-point.

After updating my Bootcamp control panel to the iMac Pro version, Windows 10 can see my APFS-formatted drives but does not provide any information other than "Mac OS" as the title. I have two HS 10.13.6 SATA SSDs, one as the main boot and the other as a backup that is only updated 1/week or so, and I can't tell which is which when trying to boot over. Any advice?
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,586
Hong Kong
I apologize if I missed any discussion of this, but I have read most of this thread and did not notice anything on-point.

After updating my Bootcamp control panel to the iMac Pro version, Windows 10 can see my APFS-formatted drives but does not provide any information other than "Mac OS" as the title. I have two HS 10.13.6 SATA SSDs, one as the main boot and the other as a backup that is only updated 1/week or so, and I can't tell which is which when trying to boot over. Any advice?

Just pick one to try, then you will know which one it is. The order never change.
 

flehman

macrumors 6502
Feb 21, 2015
352
194
Awesome, I wondered if the drive order was random or fixed so I appreciate this answer. Thank you!
 

eksu

macrumors 6502
Aug 3, 2017
329
151
I was under the impression that we can't currently legacy boot to a M.2 SSD, NVMe or AHCI, but reading through here I'm not sure.

It sounds like we can legacy boot to M.2, but first you need to install it on a internal drive then clone the partitions over to the PCIe attached drive? Is this so?

In Legacy Mode, booting from a NVMe M.2, does windows use NVMe drivers? What about from a AHCI M.2, does it then use SATA or IDE drivers?
 
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Charmandrigo

macrumors member
Jul 3, 2018
94
22
OK, done!

Thanks for providing all the required info. This is my version of "how to do it".

1) Insert the Windows installation DVD into the super drive (How to burn a Windows installation disc properly)

2) Shutdown the Mac

3) Hold "C" to boot

4) Follow the on screen instruction until reach the "Where do you want to install Windows" step
View attachment 797517

5) "Delete" all the target SSD's partitions. In the above capture (downloaded from internet), you can see that there are 4 partitions for existing EFI mode Windows. Select each partition one by one, and click Delete. Be careful, do NOT remove other drive's partition. All partitions should be on the same drive. e.g. In the above example, all belongs to Drive 0. There is no requirement to remove any other hard drive from the cMP. But if you want to play safe, you can physically remove them between step 2 and 3 to avoid error.

Eventually will looks like this. No more partitions, but just a single large piece of Unallocated Space.
View attachment 797518

6) Click New. This will automatically create the correct and required partitions with all available space. For legacy installation, should be only two partitions automatically created.
View attachment 797527

7) Select the newly created partition, and continue the installation.

8) For Windows 10, the LAN line should work straight away after installation completed. So now, you can use Edge to access the internet.

9) Go to https://github.com/timsutton/brigadier/releases

10) Download brigadier.exe (0.2.4)

11) insert a USB drive (this is not mandatory, but just make the command prompt work easier)

12) Format the USB drive to FAT32

13) Copy brigadier.exe to the USB drive (assume it's the E drive)

14) Open Command Prompt (search CMD can find it)

15) type
Code:
e:

16) type
Code:
brigadier -m MacPro5,1

17) Once finished, rename the "Bootcampxxxxxxxxxx" folder to "Bootcamp5"

18 ) type
Code:
brigadier -m iMacPro1,1

19) Once finished, rename the "Bootcampxxxxxxxxxx" folder to "Bootcamp61"

20) search CMD again, but this time right click, and choose "run as admin"

21) type
Code:
e:

22) type
Code:
cd Bootcamp5/Bootcamp/Drivers/Apple

23) type
Code:
msiexec /i bootcamp.msi

24) After installation finished and reboot. Search CMD again, right click, and choose "run as admin"

25) type
Code:
e:

26) type
Code:
cd Bootcamp5/Bootcamp/Drivers/Apple

27) type
Code:
msiexec /x bootcamp.msi
This will NOT remove the drivers, but just the bootcamp apps

28) type
Code:
cd Bootcamp61/Bootcamp/Drivers/Apple

29) type
Code:
msiexec /i bootcamp.msi

30) Let it finish the installation and restart

So now, if you run the bootcamp apps. You should see something like this.
View attachment 797522
Language doesn't really matter, but you can see all the selections.

Those HFS+ High Sierra options will show the hard drive's name (e.g. 8T Backup)

Those APFS Mojave options will show as "Mac" above macOS.

From now on, you can use startup disk in Mojave to select Windows 10 (I renamed the SSD, usually it should shows BOOTCAMP, but not Win 10)
View attachment 797524

And of course, we can use bootcamp apps in Windows to select Mojave.

And have everything working as expected. e.g. Keyboard functions keys, Magic Mouse, BT 4.0, Wifi ac, USB 3.0, etc.

P.S. I am not sure if step 24 - 27 can be skipped or not. You may try, may safe you a minute for rebooting.

Hi I did this but I'm experiencing a issue (Unrelated to the Bootcamp manager)

First of all thanks! I can restart with the system tools or bootcamp manager with no issue, BUT I think the bootcamp drivers are the cause of my current issue.

I have a Radeon RX480 card installed and reinstalled windows with the driver gotten from windows update, but after finishing the installation of the bootcamp drivers, restarting Windows 10 lead to a black screen, only way to boot right now is disabling the AMD driver from Safe Mode, but if I restart with the display driver enabled then I experience the same black screen. Everything happened after installing the main MacPro5,1 drivers package.

I am trying to look what is exactly messing with the official AMD Crimison drivers, right now i tried the Display Driver Uninstaller utility to erase all registry of display drivers, and I'm testing installing the official drivers again, but if someone knows what can be causing this problem, that'd be greatful!

EDIT: The crimson software is kind of triggering this issue, with the default windows Update drivers I didn't experienced this issue, has anyone experienced the same with the latest AMD software?
 
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Auggie

macrumors 6502
Jan 21, 2017
384
108
After much consternation, I can finally report back a successful endeavor to install Win10 Pro in Legacy BIOS to its own dedicated 2TB SSD on a Velocity Duo x2, including the ability to use Boot Camp Control Panel to select the Mojave 4TB SSD also located on the Duo.

Both OS's appear to be running perfectly with no corruption as has happened when I was trying to do this with a partitioned RAID on the Duo.

Kudos to those who contributed to outlining the steps to keep our cMPs chugging along with the latest OSs; hopefully near the end of this year I can finally pull the trigger on the much anticipated new Mac Pro to debut and start working on the latest hardware...
 

stix666

macrumors regular
Nov 13, 2005
229
27
After much consternation, I can finally report back a successful endeavor to install Win10 Pro in Legacy BIOS to its own dedicated 2TB SSD on a Velocity Duo x2, including the ability to use Boot Camp Control Panel to select the Mojave 4TB SSD also located on the Duo.

Both OS's appear to be running perfectly with no corruption as has happened when I was trying to do this with a partitioned RAID on the Duo.

Kudos to those who contributed to outlining the steps to keep our cMPs chugging along with the latest OSs; hopefully near the end of this year I can finally pull the trigger on the much anticipated new Mac Pro to debut and start working on the latest hardware...
How did you manage it?
 

Auggie

macrumors 6502
Jan 21, 2017
384
108
How did you manage it?

I followed h9826790's post #214, with a few changes for 64-bit Win10 Pro on a MacPro5,1:

  1. Installed Mojave (APFS) on one of the target SSDs on the Duo (4TB Samsung 860 EVO).
  2. Formatted the target SSD on the Duo to FAT32 MBR via Disk Utility (2TB Samsung 850 EVO) and named it something unique to make it easier to identify the target drive during Win10 install.
  3. Downloaded Apple's Boot Camp 64-bit Drivers 5.1.5621 for 2010/2012 Mac Pro, uncompressed it onto a flash drive and renamed its root folder to "bootcamp5" to make it easy to follow the steps from h9826790.
  4. Loaded Win10 Install DVD into optical drive.
  5. Powered down and removed all unnecessary drives. I had a dual-Win7/XP-booting 2TB in bay 4 and wanted Win10 to incorporate them in the Win boot picker start up screen so I kept that installed.
  6. Installed an EFI GPU; in my case, it was a GT120. I kept the 580 installed. With only the 580, it appeared that trying to boot off the DVD with the "C" key depressed it was stuck on a black screen. So I used the GT120, holding the "Option" key, and was able to specifically select the Legacy BIOS boot of the Win10 Install DVD (the EFI boot was also an option, but of course, something we now want to avoid).
  7. Deleted all partitions on the target SSD and formatted it, then commenced Win10 install (steps 4-7 in h9826790 instrux)
  8. Installed brigadier and downloaded iMacPro1,1 drivers onto the aforementioned flash drive and installed first the 5.1 drivers, then 6.1 drivers (steps 9-15, 18-30). FYI, I didn't do any restarts between the different steps.
  9. Deleted the file c:/windows/system32/drivers AppleHFS.sys to prevent the BSOD when accessing HFS+ drives.
  10. Finally, restart Win10 and enjoy.
 

skizzo

macrumors 6502
Apr 11, 2018
260
83
for those of you who are on cMP 4,1 or 5,1 and running Windows 10 1809 in Legacy mode, is there a solution to having Windows Explorer be able to read HFS+ drives?

I have currently BootCamp 5.1.5621 running on it, and everything works well other than seeing my other HFS+ drives. I have not experienced any issues relating to the two AppleHFS drivers that caused BSOD. I did notice when these drivers were installed Windows 10 could not use any of its system restore type features. After some googling on that I removed said drivers so the system restore features worked as they should.

I am just a bit confused from the plethora of information in this thread. I am well aware of other software like HFSExplorer and MacDrive and Paragon. HFSExplorer isn't too practical since it cannot read in real time and must extract and seems like everything is commercial software. I'd love a free native solution but I am a bit confused if it is even possible on my system. Does the iMacPro BootCamp drivers fix this or do they only solve seeing APFS drives?
 
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skizzo

macrumors 6502
Apr 11, 2018
260
83
gah I finally saw this post! everything I looked up prior to seeing this was several months, or years old and was not very specific to recent WIN10 versions and if they break the HFS+ read capability

You mean File Explorer cannot see the HFS+ drive?

That's normal. The Apple HFS+ driver breaks long time ago.

You can manually install some 3rd party HFS+ driver if you want to. But why?

I think it's better leave the HFS+ drives invisible in Windows. So that nothing can goes wrong.

If you want data only drives that can be share use in both macOS and Windows. Use ExFAT.

Or even use NAS etc as the "data bridge".
 

monkeybagel

macrumors 65816
Jul 24, 2011
1,142
61
United States
I have been reading through this, and for some reason haven't understood exactly what is going on and why Windows 10 needs to be installed in Legacy mode (therefore, I assume, disabling TRIM and AHCI disk access). What is the undesired effect of Windows adding the certificates? I have had several Windows 10 installations on the same and other SSDs in my 5,1 and have not had any issues. Are you referring to the Startup Disk preference pane not selecting the desired OS from Windows or OS X (I always hold down Option to select the disk I want to start from, and if I want to make it permanent I hold Ctrl while doing so). I am sure I am overlooking something if people are recommending booting Windows in non-EFI mode, but I haven't seen any negative effects with 10.13.6 and Windows 10 Enterprise 2019 LTSC x64.
 
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bookemdano

macrumors 68000
Jul 29, 2011
1,514
846
I have been reading through this, and for some reason haven't understood exactly what is going on and why Windows 10 needs to be installed in Legacy mode (therefore, I assume, disabling TRIM and AHCI disk access). What is the undesired effect of Windows adding the certificates? I have had several Windows 10 installations on the same and other SSDs in my 5,1 and have not had any issues. Are you referring to the Startup Disk preference pane not selecting the desired OS from Windows or OS X (I always hold down Option to select the disk I want to start from, and if I want to make it permanent I hold Ctrl while doing so). I am sure I am overlooking something if people are recommending booting Windows in non-EFI mode, but I haven't seen any negative effects with 10.13.6 and Windows 10 Enterprise 2019 LTSC x64.

Some people whose bootroms were corrupted (some of which could no longer boot) also had multiple MS signing certificates in their NVRAM from Win10 EFI installs. An absolute causal relationship between the two was never established (not to my knowledge anyway) but considering the cMP cannot utilize SecureBoot, MS should not be installing those certs in the first place. Installing in Legacy mode prevents that situation entirely.

But there are other reasons too. For one, Apple never sanctioned UEFI Windows installs on the CMP, whereas they do for later Macs which use UEFI-compliant firmware. They always intended for Windows to be installed in Legacy mode on this hardware. One example of this is that you cannot use the built-in Startup Disk preference to set an EFI Win10 install as bootable. If you do, the cMP will either throw an error or worse it will act as if it's setting it and then once you reboot you'll get stuck in the CSM boot, whereby you can't get to Windows nor macOS without a PRAM reset or option booting (which is not possible for most of us as of Mojave).

It seems to be the consensus here that TRIM indeed is in effect with Win10 installed in Legacy mode, and furthermore that any speed benefits of the SATA controller being in AHCI mode are minor at best. If you're interested, there was even a method posted here a while back of how to get AHCI mode working in a legacy install, although I believe it had some side effects like breaking sleep mode.

For most users who want to be able to easily switch back and forth between Win10 and Mojave using Apple's provided tools, it's easier and safer to just use Legacy mode. You of course are free to use UEFI mode on your own system if you've determined the potential speed advantage is worth the hassle and potential risks.
 

Auggie

macrumors 6502
Jan 21, 2017
384
108
One example of this is that you cannot use the built-in Startup Disk preference to set an EFI Win10 install as bootable. If you do, the cMP will either throw an error or worse it will act as if it's setting it and then once you reboot you'll get stuck in the CSM boot, whereby you can't get to Windows nor macOS without a PRAM reset or option booting (which is not possible for most of us as of Mojave).

This was a big one for me and was the most annoying. And usually after this happens, there is absolutely no way to avoid the cMP continuously attempting to boot into Windows, even after unplugging all drives, and requires a PRAM reset. This happened recently and after the PRAM reset my optical drive tray keeps opening and closing during boots. Another thing to hunt down and fix when I find the time.


I followed h9826790's post #214, with a few changes for 64-bit Win10 Pro on a MacPro5,1:

8. Installed brigadier and downloaded iMacPro1,1 drivers onto the aforementioned flash drive and installed first the 5.1 drivers, then 6.1 drivers (steps 9-15, 18-30). FYI, I didn't do any restarts between the different steps.

FYI, I had to reinstall Win10 and attempted to re-download the iMacPro1,1 drivers and after about 20 attempts all leading to failures on both the newly reinstalled Win10 and on my laptop's Win10 Boot Camp, I discovered you could use Brigadier in OS X by downloading the tar.gz source code, dragging the "brigadier" file to a Terminal window and adding the switches (i.e. "-m iMacPro1,1"). Successfully downloaded the first time, though it doesn't copy over the raw files and folders from the subsequent dmg file; a simple manual step to finish the process.
 
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