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Mac Pro (early 2008 3,1) not booting Velocity Solo x1

M

mordzy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 6, 2010
17
0
Hi All,

Just bought a Velocity solo and a Kingston hyperX 480gb disk for my old 3.1 early 2008 pro.

All is fine apart from it won't boot off of that disk. I checked that the card is bootable on 3,1 which it is. The card is in slot 2.

At the moment I'm holding option to select the boot disk which is no major hardship. would just be nice if i could get it to boot off of the disk.

Any ideas?
 
Be sure to set the SSD as "Boot Disk" in SystemPreferences/StartUpDisk once you get it up in OS X.

Also, you might do a PRAM Reset which seems to solve a lot of booting problems.
 
Have you tried going into "System Preferences" and selecting it as the StartUp Disk in "Startup Disk"?

Lou
 
mordzy said:
Hi All,

Just bought a Velocity solo and a Kingston hyperX 480gb disk for my old 3.1 early 2008 pro.

All is fine apart from it won't boot off of that disk. I checked that the card is bootable on 3,1 which it is. The card is in slot 2.

At the moment I'm holding option to select the boot disk which is no major hardship. would just be nice if i could get it to boot off of the disk.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Did you clone the system to the card?
Have you tried booting SSD while connected to the SATA II ports?
Some have had to install or clone while using SATA II ports (some early Sonnet Tempo SSD cards) and then could boot from the PCIe controller.
I would think the Duo would be more reliable too.
 
^^^^IMO, you're way over the top here. I have had both Velocity Solo and Duo - Both are super reliable. If you only want one SSD, the Solo fits the bill.

Lou
 
I just came here because I have the same problem:

MacPro3,1 (Early 2008), Apricorn Velocity Solo x1 with a SSD Samsung 850 EVO 1TB. I had previously installed and running 10.10.5 on the SSD - when it's connected to any of the 6 SATA ports of the Mac's mainboard, I can boot OSX from it. But when the disk is on the Velocity Solo card, then booting does not work:

• Holding down the option key at boot time will not show any bootable partitions from the disk (neither the normal OS X system nor the recovery partition that's also on that disk).

• Once I've booted the same 10.10.5 or 10.11.1 from another disk, I can select the SSD's system in System Prefs as the boot drive - but once I restart the Mac, it still won't boot from it. Why exactly determines if a disk is ejectable? So far, I thought it was purely depending on the hardware connection, i.e. any disk on a USB or Firewire port is ejectable, while any SATA port is internal. But that's obviously not the case here. Is there perhaps a flag on the disk, e.g. in the boot sector or in the GUID partition table for that?

Another odd thing is that the disk appears as ejectable. I wonder if that's the problem: The system sees this as an ejectable disk and therefore won't boot off it.

I've also tried putting the PCI card into Slots 2, 3 and 4, and removed any other PCI cards bar the ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card.

Apricorn's website for this card simply suggests that this should work, and gives no hints that one needs to "fix" anything. Also, I can find many user reports on this forum and on the web that claim that they can boot from this card, so why can't I?

Any more ideas?

Update: I just realize that my situation is actually not the same as the original poster's: He can boot off the card by holding the option key at start, while I cannot.
 
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I remember when I had the Velocity Solo X1 and my Mac Pro 3,1, booting was always weird. It was also never able to boot a bootcamp drive. When I used to encounter problems, a PRAM reset would usually make it bootable again.

This compatibility issue was only with the 3,1. 4,1 and 5,1s didn't have this issue.
 
I had totally forgotten about PRAM reset, but that didn't help, either (did do it long enough to get three startup chimes).

I now even tried erasing the entire disk using Disk Utility, then copied my bootable system from my old SSD back to it using DU, all while the new SSD was plugged into the Velocity card. But still, it would not show up in the boot menu, but would boot if I connected it to one of the on-board SATAs.

And OSX still believes that the disk on the Velocity card is "external", not internal.

Is there anyone here with a Velocity card in their Mac and could do a quick check for me, please?

Please open Disk Utility and check if the disk's Location is Internal or External.
If it's internal, some more info, such as the card's IDs etc. from the System Profiler would be nice, too.

Here are my values from Disk Utility (with my old SSD on the Velocity card):

Disk-Utility-Info.PNG


And from System Profiler's PCI view:

System-Profiler-1.PNG


System-Profiler-2.PNG
 
mac65 said:
And OSX still believes that the disk on the Velocity card is "external", not internal.

Is there anyone here with a Velocity card in their Mac and could do a quick check for me, please?

Please open Disk Utility and check if the disk's Location is Internal or External.
If it's internal, some more info, such as the card's IDs etc. from the System Profiler would be nice, too.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, any drive not connected to the Mac Pro's built-in SATA ports will appear as external.
 
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I just watched the installation video and noticed that it, too, showed the Card's SSD as External. Okay, so that's not the issue here.

BUT: I just wanted to play a little with my Pip-Boy and bootet into Bootcamp / Windows, while I still had the card with my old SSD installed. So, when Windows tried to boot, I saw this text on the screen:

Apricorn Velocity Solo --- BIOS Version 1.0.0.1027.
Initializing...

And it never changed. Waited a few minutes.

So, it seems there's something wrong with that card.

I had bought it used from someone that had it in his PC (I'm in Germany, and there was no option to buy this new here, and buying from the U.S. is always a big pain with customs, especially in Munich where I am). So now I wonder if he bricked the ROM on it somehow. Plus, now I have to argue with that guy taking it back (it was a private sale, he sold the entire PC in parts, apparently). Damn...
 
mac65 said:
BUT: I just wanted to play a little with my Pip-Boy and bootet into Bootcamp / Windows, while I still had the card with my old SSD installed.
Click to expand...

Windows won't normally boot from an external drive, and an SSD on this card is considered an external drive.
 
Again, the Velocity Solo X1 was always very flaky on my old 3,1. I even emailed Apricorn and they acknowledged that the firmware of the 3,1 gave them issues as well. It is another reason I tend to recommend people to buy 4,1s or 5,1s instead.
 
crjackson2134 said:
Does that included Win10 on a Velocity X2 card?

I currently have it on an HDD mounted in one of my HD Bays and was considering cloning it to a X2 with an SSD.
Click to expand...

I don't have experience with that specific scenario, so I cannot say. But generally if you install Windows as an internal drive and just move the drive to an "external" solution, it won't boot.

Windows also won't normally install to an external drive. There are ways around that, and once installed to an external drive it will boot from that external drive. If you are willing to install fresh instead of just moving the drive, you could follow an existing guide on the Internet for doing that.

However, my experience is limited to up to about Windows 8 or maybe 8.1, I cannot remember. So Windows 10 might have added external boot drive support. Mikeboss posted that he installed Windows 10 in the Bootable PCIe SSD thread without any trickery needed, which implies that it has worked for at least one person. But when I asked him to confirm that he installed W10 specifically on the bootable PCIe SSD, he didn't answer me.
 
mac65 said:
I just watched the installation video and noticed that it, too, showed the Card's SSD as External. Okay, so that's not the issue here.

BUT: I just wanted to play a little with my Pip-Boy and bootet into Bootcamp / Windows, while I still had the card with my old SSD installed. So, when Windows tried to boot, I saw this text on the screen:

Apricorn Velocity Solo --- BIOS Version 1.0.0.1027.
Initializing...

And it never changed. Waited a few minutes.

So, it seems there's something wrong with that card.

I had bought it used from someone that had it in his PC (I'm in Germany, and there was no option to buy this new here, and buying from the U.S. is always a big pain with customs, especially in Munich where I am). So now I wonder if he bricked the ROM on it somehow. Plus, now I have to argue with that guy taking it back (it was a private sale, he sold the entire PC in parts, apparently). Damn...
Click to expand...

Hey mac65, do you have any other PCI-E cards installed? I ran into this with the solo on my 3,1, and it was caused by a conflict with a RAID controller I also had installed. If I pulled the RAID card, the solo would boot, but not if both were installed.

ActionableMango said:
Windows won't normally boot from an external drive, and an SSD on this card is considered an external drive.
Click to expand...
That's under OS X, though. Windows would determine the drive's status itself. I've had no problems installing Windows onto SSD's installed on PCI-E cards in a Mac.
 
crjackson2134 said:
Does that included Win10 on a Velocity X2 card?

I currently have it on an HDD mounted in one of my HD Bays and was considering cloning it to a X2 with an SSD.
Click to expand...

Okay, thanks. I don't really use it much anyway. Just thought I'd put it on an SSD since I have one that's currently just sitting there doing nothing. :)
 
I boot Windows 10 and OS X (Yosemite) from SSDs on a Velocity DUO card mounted in slot 3 of cMacPro 5.1 without issues. Previously I did have Windows 8.1 on a Solo X2 card also along with my bootable Apple PCIe SSD OS X (El Capitan) card in slot 2.
 
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elvisizer said:
That's under OS X, though. Windows would determine the drive's status itself. I've had no problems installing Windows onto SSD's installed on PCI-E cards in a Mac.
Click to expand...

Ah, okay, that makes sense. My experience is with Windows and USB drives.

So would Windows 10 boot on a Lycom DT-120 M.2 Adapter/Samsung XP941 combo? Because despite 55 pages of posts and dozens of people using that or a similar combo, I couldn't get a single person to confirm that they did it with Windows.
 
hfg said:
I boot Windows 10 and OS X (Yosemite) from SSDs on a Velocity DUO card mounted in slot 3 of cMacPro 5.1 without issues. Previously I did have Windows 8.1 on a Solo X2 card also along with my bootable Apple PCIe SSD OS X (El Capitan) card in slot 2.
Click to expand...

In your experience, can I clone a win10 HDD install (drive bay of Mac) to an X2 SSD?
 
ActionableMango said:
Windows won't normally boot from an external drive, and an SSD on this card is considered an external drive.
Click to expand...
You misunderstood. I was not booting off the SSD on the Velocity card (remember I said it can't boot off it at all?). But when Windows starts up, its BIOS attempts to initialize videos cards and disk cards so that it can use them for the boot process. So it invokes the BIOS of the Velocity card because it sees it, and that's where it hangs.

elvisizer said:
Hey mac65, do you have any other PCI-E cards installed? I ran into this with the solo on my 3,1, and it was caused by a conflict with a RAID controller I also had installed. If I pulled the RAID card, the solo would boot, but not if both were installed.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I already thought of that and pulled out any other things that could be interfering. I only left the ATI Radeon in, and the RAM, of course :) Didn't help.

I contacted Apricorn and they replied just now, saying that I tried already anything they could think of and suggest replacing it - which will be difficult for me from Germany, though (customs troubles and high shipping fees).
 
I don't know if replacing the card will help you. I eventually removed the card and went back to using the built-in SATA ports. I didn't use the Velocity Solo X1 again until I upgraded to a Mac Pro 5,1 where it worked as it should.
 
crjackson2134 said:
In your experience, can I clone a win10 HDD install (drive bay of Mac) to an X2 SSD?
Click to expand...
I have always tried to get the target drive working on an internal sled first ... then install the Velocity card without any drive attached and boot the interna-sled windows so it will see the card and install the card's driver ... then remount the Windows SSD from the internal sled to the Velocity card and boot. So far, that has worked for me.

I would use WinClone to initially clone your hard disk installation to the SSD using the internal sleds and get the SSD working fully in place of the hard disk installation. I did all this prior to SIP in El Capitan ... so you might have to boot Yosemite temporarily to get it all to work. I keep a bootable SSD of Yosemite available on the DUO card "just in case", while normally booting OS X El Capitan from a Apple PCI 1TB SSD in slot #2.

EDIT: sorry, that was SIP (System Integrity Protection) in El Capitan ... not SID
 
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pastrychef said:
I don't know if replacing the card will help you. I eventually removed the card and went back to using the built-in SATA ports. I didn't use the Velocity Solo X1 again until I upgraded to a Mac Pro 5,1 where it worked as it should.
Click to expand...
Did you have the same issues that I described on your your macpro3,1, or were they different? The odd thing is that it works just fine as long as I don't try to boot from it. (Well, and that Bootcamp/Win7 won't start up if this card is present.)
Apricorn support thought that a replacement might help, which suggests to me they have different versions of the card or firmware.

BTW, I just saw this thread that confirms that the boot problem with Win7 is more of a Mac problem, not the card's fault, and can be worked around: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/velocity-solo-x1-and-bootcamp.1681583/

So, the only mistery remaining for me is that this card can't be booted from as it should.

(And I like to thank everyone here for their helpful comments - I'm pleasantly surprised about the level of expertise here.)
 
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