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jvlfilms

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 11, 2007
269
231
Staten Island, NY
Hello guys! I recently acquired a Mac Pro 4,1 for which I made some upgrades - a USB 3 card and a PCIe 250gb SSD which has El Capitan installed.

I was looking to install Windows 10 on the SSD and dual boot between OS X and Windows: here's what I did

  1. I heard bootable USB drives don't work so I made a DVD image of Windows 10
  2. I partitioned my SSD with FAT32 and labeled it Boot Camp
  3. Restarted while holding ALT/option and running the DVD installer
  4. Formatted my BOOTCAMP partition to NTFS
  5. I now get this error message
"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."

Any ideas? Should I try installing Windows 7 and then upgrading to 10?
 
You partition your PCIe SSD into 2 partitions, and want to install Windows on one of them?

Yes.

I purchased an OWC Accelsior S which apparently does not support dual booting using Boot Camp or otherwise. If this is true or not, I'm not sure but based on my initial trials, it doesn't.

Right now, I have a few options but I don't know what is best:
  • Use a 3.5" 7200 RPM drive (not ideal but would be the cheapest option)
  • Buy a cheaper SSD and put it in the SATA II bay - would bottleneck the drive but still be faster than a mechanical drive.
  • SSD + another PCIe option but I don't know what can boot into Windows 10 - has anyone tried and use the Velocity Solo X1 adapter with Windows 10?
 
If you can, return the OWC. There isn't much love for them in these forums!

Really? I've been using the adapter with the SSD for a few days now on my recently acquired Mac Pro and everything is running extremely smoothly.

The comparable in price Velocity Solo X1 has slower R/W speeds, which I'd rather not have for my main boot OS X drive. For Windows, it's not as important.
 
The easiest, cheapest, safest way is to buy the cheapest 120G SATA SSD, and plug that into the optical bay for Windows 10. So, only install Windows and the application on it.

For OS operation, there is almost no performance difference with SATA 2 or sATA 3 connection.

For large files operation / high band width required, use your PCIe SSD (data drive).

So, you now have 2 SSD, one for data, one for OS, the total bandwidth is higher than single SSD, and the installation process will be much much easier (you can simply run Bootcamp to finish everything).

I bought a $30 120G SSD for purely Windows gaming. Works very well. Easy installation, no need to deal with any extra hardware trouble.

Install Windows on HDD will be my very very last option, if just $30 can make the experience much much better, why chose the HDD route?

I personally won't buy a PCIe SATA 3 card to boot Windows now, there is no real world benefit. I prefer to spend the money on buying the really fast PCIe SSD and cheap adaptor, but not the relatively slow SATA SSD but expensive PCIe SATA 3 card. It was a good option to get high performance storage before the PCIe SSD is widely available / affordable, but now, real PCIe SSD sure is a better option for high performance storage. Since small files read / write basically can't even saturate the SATA 2 bandwidth, there is not much benefit to boot from the PCIe SSD (in term of performance).

Of course, some user prefer single SSD for everything. However, if you want to boot Windows in cMP and you want very high performance SSD as well, split them into 2 SSDs should be a cheaper and easier way to achieve what you want.
 
The easiest, cheapest, safest way is to buy the cheapest 120G SATA SSD, and plug that into the optical bay for Windows 10. So, only install Windows and the application on it.

For OS operation, there is almost no performance difference with SATA 2 or sATA 3 connection.

For large files operation / high band width required, use your PCIe SSD (data drive).

So, you now have 2 SSD, one for data, one for OS, the total bandwidth is higher than single SSD, and the installation process will be much much easier (you can simply run Bootcamp to finish everything).

I bought a $30 120G SSD for purely Windows gaming. Works very well. Easy installation, no need to deal with any extra hardware trouble.

Install Windows on HDD will be my very very last option, if just $30 can make the experience much much better, why chose the HDD route?

I personally won't buy a PCIe SATA 3 card to boot Windows now, there is no real world benefit. I prefer to spend the money on buying the really fast PCIe SSD and cheap adaptor, but not the relatively slow SATA SSD but expensive PCIe SATA 3 card. It was a good option to get high performance storage before the PCIe SSD is widely available / affordable, but now, real PCIe SSD sure is a better option for high performance storage. Since small files read / write basically can't even saturate the SATA 2 bandwidth, there is not much benefit to boot from the PCIe SSD (in term of performance).

Of course, some user prefer single SSD for everything. However, if you want to boot Windows in cMP and you want very high performance SSD as well, split them into 2 SSDs should be a cheaper and easier way to achieve what you want.

Thank you, I think I'm going to go this route!

I go to film school and my teacher had a 4,1 Mac Pro that they weren't using (they have the nMP now) and sold it to me for only $50! So far I've made some upgrades like USB 3 and the SSD PCIe but I think for what I want to do in Windows (basic stuff and light gaming) I'll be fine with the limitations of SATA II - plus keeping everything separate from my OS X install is a good idea.

To be clear, I have two drives in there currently: a PCIe SSD and a 1TB WD drive that I'm keeping in there for additional storage.
 
Thank you, I think I'm going to go this route!

I go to film school and my teacher had a 4,1 Mac Pro that they weren't using (they have the nMP now) and sold it to me for only $50! So far I've made some upgrades like USB 3 and the SSD PCIe but I think for what I want to do in Windows (basic stuff and light gaming) I'll be fine with the limitations of SATA II - plus keeping everything separate from my OS X install is a good idea.

To be clear, I have two drives in there currently: a PCIe SSD and a 1TB WD drive that I'm keeping in there for additional storage.

In your case, I will use the PCIe SSD for OSX.

1TB HDD for storage.

And buy a new low cost SSD for Windows. If you really want some high speed storage in Windows, you can still partition your PCIe SSD, and use that as Windows high speed data drive. Paragon provide free driver to read / write HFS+ partition, however, generally t's not a good idea to let Windows able to mess around the OSX boot drive. So, better keep them separate.
 
In your case, I will use the PCIe SSD for OSX.

1TB HDD for storage.

And buy a new low cost SSD for Windows. If you really want some high speed storage in Windows, you can still partition your PCIe SSD, and use that as Windows high speed data drive. Paragon provide free driver to read / write HFS+ partition, however, generally t's not a good idea to let Windows able to mess around the OSX boot drive. So, better keep them separate.

That seems like the best option - I see an ADATA 120GB SSD on Amazon for $38. That plus a bracket or mounting kit would be around $45, which is almost nothing to get superior speeds over a HDD.

I did try using Disk Utility to partition the PCIe SSD I have installed already and it seems that since OS X views the drive as "external" even though it's really inside, Windows cannot install on it.
 
That seems like the best option - I see an ADATA 120GB SSD on Amazon for $38. That plus a bracket or mounting kit would be around $45, which is almost nothing to get superior speeds over a HDD.

I did try using Disk Utility to partition the PCIe SSD I have installed already and it seems that since OS X views the drive as "external" even though it's really inside, Windows cannot install on it.

You can partition it, but only use as data drive, not as boot drive (can't install Windows)

Be careful the mounting kit may not fit the Mac Pro, you need the kit that make your 2.5" SSD become a 3.5" drive with all the port and mounting point at the standard location.

Normal mounting kit only good for PC because most PC use cables, the SATA port location is not important.

The easiest way to install the SATA SSD is just plug that in the lower optical bay. No adaptor required. Just leave it there.
 
You can partition it, but only use as data drive, not as boot drive (can't install Windows)

Be careful the mounting kit may not fit the Mac Pro, you need the kit that make your 2.5" SSD become a 3.5" drive with all the port and mounting point at the standard location.

Normal mounting kit only good for PC because most PC use cables, the SATA port location is not important.

The easiest way to install the SATA SSD is just plug that in the lower optical bay. No adaptor required. Just leave it there.

Great! Going to get shopping and reading reviews - thanks for the help! :)
 
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