Thanks a lot for the info, once my Mac Pro 7,1 arrives next week I'll double check which version of MacOS is installed on it
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MP 7,1 Mac Pro 2019 NVME RAID drives failing to mount
- Thread starter LukeMacPro
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Thanks a lot for the info, once my Mac Pro 7,1 arrives next week I'll double check which version of MacOS is installed on it
Does this issue only appear to happen on NVMe SSDs that are installed on PCIe cards mounted internally on the Mac Pro?
Has anyone heard of this happening to drives connected to the internal SATA ports or the internal USB port?
Has anyone heard of this happening to drives connected to the internal SATA ports or the internal USB port?
Correct, only to NVMe drives mounted to PCIe cards for multiple NVMes with PCIe switch chips onboard since the Mac Pro does not support PCIe Bifurcation. USB and SATA ports are fine, even the 3rd party PCIe SATA controller cards.
Anyway it will soon be 2 months without sinle mount issue on Sequoia since Beta 1 relased on 30th of May.
Awesome, thank you for the details. It is also great to hear that you haven't encountered any mount issues on Sequoia for such a long time. Keep us posted on how things are going!
That's not entirely correct, given the number of higher quality switch cards (eg Highpoint) that don't require Bifurcation support.
Several of us here don't experience mounting issues.
Zero cards thar require Bifurcation work with Mac Pro because the machine itself does not support it. Only the first drive will be recognized from those cards. Thats why Mac Pro requires cards with PEX PCIe switch so that it will do the "Bifurcation" role and comminicate between PCIe bus and all NVMe drives separately.
My guess is that most of the problems are due to misscommunication between MP PCIe bus and the card with those chips.
Sure, there are RAID cards which don't use PCIe switch, but those are MUCH more expensive than OWC or Sonnet, but must users in this thread have OWC/Sonnet combination or HighPont with PCIe switch.
Which HighPoint cards are you using which do not result in the mounting issues on the Mac Pro?
Is it the SSD7540 / SSD7505 ?
I'm using an 1104f, I'm also using Ventura, not booting into Windows, always boot in verbose mode, and have the system's access to the power schedule disabled.
Thanks @flowrider @mattspace, it is great to hear that these cards do not have any of the SSD mounting issues.
Is the 1104 meant to have up to 4x M.2 SSDs set up with OS RAID or as JBODs?
And is the SSD7103 a RAID controller that offers additional options to have a RAID setup (or JBODs) for the 4x M.2 SSDs that can be installed on it?
Is the 1104 meant to have up to 4x M.2 SSDs set up with OS RAID or as JBODs?
And is the SSD7103 a RAID controller that offers additional options to have a RAID setup (or JBODs) for the 4x M.2 SSDs that can be installed on it?
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In my case. What contribution the Verbose booting, Ventura OS, and Power schedule locks may have on it, I can't say.
Correct.
macOS Sequoia 15.0 Beta 5 (24A5309e) upgraded the firmware versions:
FROM:
System Firmware Version: 2068.0.0.0.0 (iBridge: 22.16.10328.5.1,0)
OS Loader Version: 582~532
TO:
System Firmware Version: 2069.0.0.0.0 (iBridge: 22.16.10339.5.2,0)
OS Loader Version: 582~883
And still no sign of the mount issues 🥳
FROM:
System Firmware Version: 2068.0.0.0.0 (iBridge: 22.16.10328.5.1,0)
OS Loader Version: 582~532
TO:
System Firmware Version: 2069.0.0.0.0 (iBridge: 22.16.10339.5.2,0)
OS Loader Version: 582~883
And still no sign of the mount issues 🥳
Yesterday I updated to Sonoma 14.6.1 and after the update completed there were no drives. After the cold boot still no drives.
Today I updated to Sequoia 15.0 Public Beta 3 and after the restart and cold boot the drives mounted!
Maybe a coincident, but fingers crossed!
I recently bought a Mac Pro 7,1 to replace a 5, 1, and I got the Sonnet M.2 NVMe SSD 4x4 PCIe Card (Silent) card for it. There are 4 drives in it, not RAIDed. After a few weeks, I began to frequently see the issue of none of the four drives mounting, both booting when it's hot and when it's cold. Usually an immediate restart will get me three of the four drives. Lucky for me the fourth drive is a scratch drive that I'm not using! Just now I got all four drives after a restart.
I had emailed Sonnet about the card not coming with enough extra thermal pads for single-sided drives 3 & 4, and they said that the documentation needed updating and extra thermal pads were no longer needed for the single-sided drives. "and oh, by the say, system updates may prevent your card from working". Come to think of it, I think the mounting issue started up after I installed the Sonoma 14.6 update. I bought the 7,1 so that I could install the latest OS and keep it current - I'm definitely not going to stop installing updates. I am a heavy user of OCLP, but I don't really want to run my main machine using that. So keeping the 5,1 now that Monterey is going out of support is no longer an option.
I may cannibalize one of the 5,1s and grab a Highpoint 7104 to see how that does.
I had emailed Sonnet about the card not coming with enough extra thermal pads for single-sided drives 3 & 4, and they said that the documentation needed updating and extra thermal pads were no longer needed for the single-sided drives. "and oh, by the say, system updates may prevent your card from working". Come to think of it, I think the mounting issue started up after I installed the Sonoma 14.6 update. I bought the 7,1 so that I could install the latest OS and keep it current - I'm definitely not going to stop installing updates. I am a heavy user of OCLP, but I don't really want to run my main machine using that. So keeping the 5,1 now that Monterey is going out of support is no longer an option.
I may cannibalize one of the 5,1s and grab a Highpoint 7104 to see how that does.
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If they are upgrading the Mac Pro firmware with os15, maybe the bug is not in the os itself but in the firmware… so maybe we will be able to run previous os versions without problems 🤔
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I wonder if this issue of the NVMe drives on the PCIe card not mounting has something to do with the fact that the system treats them as external drives. I never had this problem on my 5,1 with a Highpoint 7104 card. I was using Martin LO opencore on that machine, starting with Catalina, which allows you to install OS X without any patching needed (up to Monterey). His version of OpenCore came with a tweak that caused all NVMe drives mounted on PCIe cards to show up as internal rather than external drives. I never had a not-mounting issue, not in many years of daily use. I've also seen several posts in this thread that indicate that SoftRaid likely solves this issue as well.
And this problem I only saw with Sonoma.
So Apple caused this. At least they have solved it in macOS 15 - but unfortunately they have broken other things so far.
I'm on 14.6. Only one boot-mount misfire since I updated, which I'm willing to consider a fluke for the moment. The issue appears to be solved there too. At least until they break it again.
One restart from Windows and all drives mounted, at last!
let's see how it will go during this week...
It seems that the problems with disconnecting PCIe drives are solved. I upgraded to 14.6.1 and everything runs smoothly. Unfortunately, other minor bugs MacOS Sonoma have cropped up.🤦♂️