MP 7,1 Mac Pro 2019 NVME RAID drives failing to mount

[LukeMacPro]

Hey guys,

I am havining an inconsistant issue with both my NVME drive adapters intermittingly failing to mount on my 2019 Mac Pro on Monterey 12.6. I'm constantly having to restart the machine to get the drives to mount. No drive issues or fails via Disk Utility and just gives 'Invalid Disk' error when I try and mount manually. I've also just sent back the Sonnet Flex J3i back for a replacement as the Raid setup was failing on each restart via the USB connnected SSD so not sure if this is a related issue. Also worth mentioning that I've recently replaced the MPX module with 2x RX 6900 XTs.

1x Sonnet’s M.2 4x4 PCIe card
- 4x Samsung 980 Pro 2TB (8TB HFS+ Raid0)

1x OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe card
- 4x Sabrent 1TB (3TB HFS+ Raid0 & 1TB Windows)

It's worth mentioning that the 1TB Windows SSD always mounts and the issue is just with the 3TB & 8TB RAID drives.

My system report is attached in case there's anything in there that could help.

Thanks in advance for any advice that you may have!

 

[it4music]

I'm having the same issue on two different systems, both 7,1 Mac Pros.

System 1
OS 12.5.1
Sonnet Silent 4x4
(4) 4TB PNY 3040
Configured with Apple RAID (2) 8TB RAID 0


System 2
OS 12.6.1
(4) separate PCIe to M.2 adapters (RIITOP)
(2) 2TB Samsung 980+s
(2) 2TB Samsung 980 Pros
Configured with Apple RAID (2) 4TB RAID 0


I've changed out the cards and the M.2s, but still no luck. I'm having the same intermittent drives on boot up. The systems have to be rebooted many times to get all of them to show up. The drives show up in the Disk Utility, but RAID shows that it's invalid. My guess is that it has something to do with Monterey. Both system worked flawlessly in Big Sur.

If you find any leads let me know and I'll do the same.

 

[tommy chen]

same problem since monterey on my cMP 5,1 with the highpoint 7101-a* : -(

* 2 x raid 0 with 2TB samsung 970 evo pro

 

[nicodep]

Same problem here, MP 7,1:
- 1x Sonnet Fusion SSD M.2 4x4 PCIe Card
- 4x Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB (2x2TB APFS Raid0)
- Monterey 12.6.2

 

[it4music]

I found a work around! I think there's something going on with Apple RAID and OS Monterey and higher. I read some thread about APFS having issues with external drives, so I tried reformatting the drives in HFS+, but that didn't work. The system would see the newly formatted RAID fine, but as soon as I restarted the machine, the RAID would disappear and couldn't be remounted.

So the fix is using SoftRaid. It changes the Apple Raid to a SoftRaid array. It doesn't destroy any data. There are two drawbacks: 1) You have to always run SoftRaid in the background and 2) you have to purchase it. But it fixed both systems and there are no more issues with the RAIDs missing in both systems.

I would hope Apple will fix this in future releases, but since it's still happening in Ventura, I doubt it.

 

[djstudio]

hi there,
Having the exact same issue with the random mounting and not mounting on my 7,1 with sonnet silent 4x4.
Did you simply convert to SoftRAID and the problem was fixed?
Any tips much appreciate and has it continued to solve the problem?
All the best,
Dom

 

[LukeMacPro]

Well done for finding a fix (I hope) @it4music! I'm in the process of trying to buy a (very expensive) pro softraid license to see if it fixes the Sonnet’s M.2 4x4 PCIe card and Sonnet J3i SSD mount issues.
So far having converted the OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe card to softraid I haven't had any mounting issues with that one.
Kind of annoying though having to spend money to fix an issue that will be affecting a lot of MacPro users with Raid drives on the newest OS's!

 

[it4music]

@djstudio Yes, after I installed Softraid, it asked to convert the Apple Raid format to the Softraid format and the problems went away. I've not heard from the clients that they are having any issues anymore.

I was talking with a colleague and they had found another free program called OpenZFS. I've not tried it or researched it, but it's another option.

 

[djstudio]

ok great thanks, I'll try this route. JBOD at the moment on both my sonnets and problems still occur, so I'll convert to RAID 0 and try SoftRAID.
ta,
Dom

 

[LukeMacPro]

Softraid seems to be working for now. I went with Lite version (XT only supports OWC) to save on cost as opposed to Pro as I only need Raid0. Will update if I encounter any further issues.

 

[djstudio]

same here, a few days in with softraid (raid 0) and the drive has mounted without issue.

 

[AndreeOnline]

EDIT: in my case, pulling the card in reinserting it solved my issue.

----------------------

Continuing this thread do see if there are any updates.

For the first time since I installed it way back, my Sonnet Fusion with Samsung 970 EVO Plus raid won't mount. I don't even see the card or the disks listed. It happened just now so I haven't had time to investigate, but I have rebooted with no effect.

I'm on Ventura 13.3.1 on a 7.1 Mac Pro, Sonnet Fusion and 4x 2TB 970 EVO Plus in raid 0.

Zero issues so far. I'll update with more info when I find time to look into it. Anyone else lately? Any obvious tricks to try before resorting to suggestions above (commercial soft raid solutions)?

Just for good measure I'll pull the card and re-seat it when I find time, but that won't help most likely...

 

[CanPhantom]

Had this exact problem. An AppleRaid RAID0 was working just fine until I changed the configuration of the PCI cards in the system. Then the drives would intermittently fail to mount on boot.

Solved by: Breaking and rebuilding the array after a successful boot & mount. (after a thorough backup ofc)

 

[DrEGPU]

I know it’s not the ideal solution, but I’ve always had good luck with the highpoint cards. I’ve used both the 7101a (pcie gen3) and the 7540 which holds 8x name’s. They both worked great, although I the 7540 was limited by pcie gen3 of the Mac Pro (it’s designed to pipe 8x gen3 name’s into a full x16 pcie 4.0 slot).

 

[estherau]

I have a mac pro 2019. Running ventura. I have a Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card with 4x1TB SSDs. I've only just recently seen this issue. I never used to have this issue in ventura but i think maybe a recent upgrade, unless 3 drives just happened to die at the same time. One is still working. I own softrade but I cannot recall if I formatted the drives using disk utility or softraid. But they were all working fine until recently.

 

[estherau]

Restarting did NOT fix the problem. Turning the computer off completely, zapping pRAM has fixed for the moment, but who knows, maybe if i'd just turned it off completely and powered it back on without the zap, it might have fixed it anyway.

 

[LukeMacPro]

Just wanted to update this thread to say I haven't had this issue again with the drives failing to mount on OSX since doing a backup of all my PCIe drives, wiping and Raiding through Softraid. Suggests it was defintely something going wrong when creating Raid0 through the native OSX Disk Utility.
Bascially, I had to buy an expensive Softraid license so that I had full support for my different PCIe drive adapters to solve the issue.

 

[estherau]

And i have no idea if it will stay fixed, but i bet it won't last.

 

[estherau]

after my zapping the pRAM I mean. your solution might last. I hope.

 

[cobra521]

Had to chime in here: Mac Pro 2019 7,1 with two Sonnet 4x4 M.2 cards using a total of 8 Samsung 870 2TB sticks. Every so often one or the other of the cards refuses to appear. Neither Finder nor Disk Utility will show them.

So far if I shut down and wait a minute, most of the time they will reappear on restart. Not always. Sometimes it takes two or three shutdowns.

Wonderful operating system you got there, Apple.

Tom

 

[DrEGPU]

Had to chime in here: Mac Pro 2019 7,1 with two Sonnet 4x4 M.2 cards using a total of 8 Samsung 870 2TB sticks. Every so often one or the other of the cards refuses to appear. Neither Finder nor Disk Utility will show them.

So far if I shut down and wait a minute, most of the time they will reappear on restart. Not always. Sometimes it takes two or three shutdowns.

Wonderful operating system you got there, Apple.

Tom

That sounds like a temperature issue to me, but I certainly could be wrong. The PLX chip on those boards gets really hot, which is what the heatsinks are really for on those cards (most gen3/4 nvme drives are fine without heatsinks).

 

[cobra521]

EG,

Heat doesn't appear to be a factor. Here's why: I turn off the Mac each night. The next morning when there's not any heat in the case at all is when the problem occurs - on cold startup.

All the M.2s have their sticky conductor blankets installed and on top, their heat sinks.

It's likely the problem is elsewhere,

Tom

 

[DrEGPU]

EG,

Heat doesn't appear to be a factor. Here's why: I turn off the Mac each night. The next morning when there's not any heat in the case at all is when the problem occurs - on cold startup.

All the M.2s have their sticky conductor blankets installed and on top, their heat sinks.

It's likely the problem is elsewhere,

Tom

Agree. Probably not an overheating issue. RMA it?

 

[cobra521]

EG,

I got in touch with Sonnet's tech support. They had me send a System Report which coincidentally was run during a time when one of the cards (and its four SSDs) was not recognized.

They told me the report disclosed that the system saw both cards and all eight SSDs. I could not see them on the desktop, nor could Disk Utility. Sonnet asked if I would run another for this scenario(?); it so happened all the SSDs were visible and behaving OK on the desktop at that moment so I ran another System Report and sent it. So they now have System Reports for each case - I asked them to let me know if they could see any differences - nothing back from Sonnet yet but I'm still hopeful.

I wonder if it isn't MacOS: I had some difficulties with seeing Synology NASes after an update to MacOS which took me a while to overcome by using SMB to access the NAS instead of AFP. If I used AFP the Mac Pro would instantly reboot! So it's not too much of a stretch for me to imagine the disk access code buried inside MacOS may be a factor in these disappearances. Thank goodness there's no rebooting involved...

I'll post Sonnet's response if/when it arrives.

Tom

 

[pollycat]

Just to add another data point that I'm also using a Sonnet card with 8 x 2TB SSDs and I also get the problem of the drives (Raid 0) not showing up when booting into Mac OS Ventura on a Mac Pro 7,1. Reboots usually fix things but it's noticeable and annoying.

Thanks, cobra521, for troubleshooting this with Sonnet.