MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 5,1 Wont boot from Sata

[AdamDonner]

I have a 5,1 MP that will only boot from a USB drive and will not boot from SATA. When the usb drive is inserted it will recognize the the drive as a bootable SSD via Sata, however when I setup as boot drive and reboot it goes to the folder with the question mark. What can I be missing?

 

[KeesMacPro]

It may be helpful to provide more info like:
- what brand/model SSD
- Which OS version
- in what way was the OS installed on the SSD
- BootROM version of your 5,1 MP

 

[AdamDonner]

It may be helpful to provide more info like:
- what brand/model SSD
- Which OS version
- in what way was the OS installed on the SSD
- BootROM version of your 5,1 MP

I have tried a crucial and Samsung ssd. I have tried Catalina and last supported OS. I am not sure about BootROM I cannot get it to boot into an os. Just bootable installers. It should also be noted I did pull an ssd on a pcie card and put it in Mac. Still no dice will not boot from that either.

 

[KeesMacPro]

That's not a lot of data provided.
Please elaborate a bit more .
For example there are Samsung SSDs that work, others known for issues.
Catalina is not supported on a MP5,1 and can only be installed with patches, OpenCore etc.
Mojave is the last supported OS and should be installed "by the book" to get the latest BootROM version.
How did you install the OS on the SSD (by cloning, by installing on another Mac etc etc)?

 

[AdamDonner]

That's not a lot of data provided.
Please elaborate a bit more .
For example there are Samsung SSDs that work, others known for issues.
Catalina is not supported on a MP5,1 and can only be installed with patches, OpenCore etc.
Mojave is the last supported OS and should be installed "by the book" to get the latest BootROM version.
How did you install the OS on the SSD (by cloning, by installing on another Mac etc etc)?

I used the dosdude installers for both. I am sorry I find have a ton of information. I am pretty new at this. I am doing my best to get as much information as possible.

 

[KeesMacPro]

OK, now I understand a bit better (but try to avoid editing posts that are already answered to , to avoid misunderstanding
Since you cant get it to boot an OS at all, I'd start with a bootable installer USB with an OS supported in all cases : El Capitan.
DosDude is a patched install , thus I wouldnt recommend to start with this .
An NVME drive is only bootable with the BootROM version that comes with a native Mojave install.

Boot from a El Capitan USB installer made with createinstallmedia and install El Capitan on a clean internal SATA drive.
Once your MP is up and running fine, you can go from there and see what's the scenario.

El Capitan official installer:

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

Download and install current or previous versions of the Mac operating system on compatible Mac computers.

support.apple.com

EDIT: for createinstallmedia:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

You can use a USB flash drive or other secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install the Mac operating system.

support.apple.com