MP 1,1-5,1 Mac OS 10.12 Sierra & HighPoint SSD701A NVMe Drive

[roush_phantom]

Hello everyone,

My Mac Pro currently has a bootrom of 144.0.0.0.0. Previously, my HighPoint SSD701A has been placed in slot #2 in a Raid 0 running under Mac OS High Sierra / Mojave perfectly using (3x) WD Black SN750 1Tb NVME drives.

At the moment, I need to use a set of programs that are compatible with Sierra and not anything ahead of that.

After reading posts by tsialex, handheldgames, Nick Woodham's guide on "getting your NVMe SSD working on macOS Sierra 10.12.2", and even a few youtube videos (How to: Install Samsung 960 1Tb NVMe m.2 PCIe SSD on Mac Pro 2009), I've run into a log jam figuring out how the HighPoint could be recognized in Sierra.

Looking in my Mac's system information, the NVMExpress tab acknowledges (3x) Apple SSD controllers. The PCI tab recognizes "pci15b7,5002 NVM Express Controller" stating that the drivers are installed in slot 2. The Mac knows something is there, it just doesn't seem to know what to make of it, unlike in High Sierra or Mojave.

I know that Sierra didn't natively support NVME and read that pioneers here and elsewhere got NVME drives functioning effectively on that version of Mac OS years ago. I am hoping that with the advice from people here, I can get the ball rolling. I don't need to have the HighPoint to be bootable, just something that can have a high throughput for data when the Mac Pro is on.

I'm ready. Where do I start? Many thanks for any assistance! ^_^

 

[r6mile]

This may not suit you, but have you thought of simply running a Sierra Virtual Machine? If its just to run a specific application, this may be a good solution that also avoids having to reboot.

 

[joevt]

Patch the High Sierra NVMe driver (only supports 4K block size) to work with your NVMe devices (which are set to use 512 byte block size)

GitHub - RehabMan/patch-nvme: A set of scripts and plists for patching IONVMeFamily.kext for non-Apple NVMe SSDs (based on the work of PikeRAlpha)

A set of scripts and plists for patching IONVMeFamily.kext for non-Apple NVMe SSDs (based on the work of PikeRAlpha) - RehabMan/patch-nvme

github.com

Instead of using the patch, you can try to set the WD Black drives to use 4K block size? Changing the block size will remove all the data.

If you use the patched kext, then you need to remove the original IONVMeFamily.kext kext.

 

[roush_phantom]

Patch the High Sierra NVMe driver (only supports 4K block size) to work with your NVMe devices (which are set to use 512 byte block size)

GitHub - RehabMan/patch-nvme: A set of scripts and plists for patching IONVMeFamily.kext for non-Apple NVMe SSDs (based on the work of PikeRAlpha)

A set of scripts and plists for patching IONVMeFamily.kext for non-Apple NVMe SSDs (based on the work of PikeRAlpha) - RehabMan/patch-nvme

github.com

Instead of using the patch, you can try to set the WD Black drives to use 4K block size? Changing the block size will remove all the data.

If you use the patched kext, then you need to remove the original IONVMeFamily.kext kext.

Hello,

Thank you for your response!

Well, if my NVMe drives are not supported, it looks like the patch is the way to go for me, hahaha. ^_^ If I do this, will my Mac be able to recognize the NVMe drives despite them only being 512 block size vs 4k?

I did look into trying out RehabMans next patcher. My problem is my lack of experience.

Do I use the patch specific for the OS build? (i.e. os 10.12.6). I see plists for different builds but only the hacker.kext.

Would you be up for walking me through it?

If this doesn't work out, would you have a recommendation for a NVMe that I could use with the Highpoint that would be able to be recognized without modification?

I appreciate your help. Thank you!

 

[joevt]

Hello,

Thank you for your response!

Well, if my NVMe drives are not supported, it looks like the patch is the way to go for me, hahaha. ^_^ If I do this, will my Mac be able to recognize the NVMe drives despite them only being 512 block size vs 4k?

I did look into trying out RehabMans next patcher. My problem is my lack of experience.

Do I use the patch specific for the OS build? (i.e. os 10.12.6). I see plists for different builds but only the hacker.kext.

Would you be up for walking me through it?

If this doesn't work out, would you have a recommendation for a NVMe that I could use with the Highpoint that would be able to be recognized without modification?

I appreciate your help. Thank you!

The patch is for making the 512 byte NVMe devices work. I think it makes 4K NVMe devices stop working?

Use the patch for your OS version. There's many for 10.12.6. Check your build number. I think it should be automatic if the build number matches one of the existing plist files?

execute the command ./patch_nvme.sh

Once the patched kext is created, move /System/Library/Extensions/IONVMeFamily.kext to a safe place, install the new HackrNVMeFamily kext, rebuild the cache and reboot.

 

[roush_phantom]

Hello,

I'm including a few screen shots for you to reference. So far, no luck. Hopefully, with just the right push, I can make this happen.

Thanks for any advice! ^_^

 

[joevt]

Hello,

I'm including a few screen shots for you to reference. So far, no luck. Hopefully, with just the right push, I can make this happen.

Thanks for any advice! ^_^

If you examine all the NVMe_patches_10_12_6* files, you can see that they all have the same patches, just different MD5s for the unpatched and patched kext. Therefore, it is probably safe to just add the --override flag to force the creation of the hack kext.
./patch_nvme.sh --override 10_12_6