NVMe and 10.9.?

[schlapparazzi]

Hi there,
I am planning to upgrade my 4,1 MacPro.
I have a question I could not find answers here in the Forum:

- when "upgrading" to Mojave and installing Bootrom 144.0.0.0 is it still possible to keep the 10.9. installed and boot on one of the harddrives? I would do a clean install on another drive of course and keep my 10.9. installation untouched.

with the 144 bootrom I should be able to boot from a PCI NVMe (I ordered a Samsung 970 evo and an IcyDock PCIe Adapter)
If I clone my 10.9. system drive to the NVMe Drive, would 10.9. boot from the NVMe?

I love my 10.9. system, everything works smoothly and yet I want to explore High Sierra or Mojave I do not want to loose the ability to stay on 10.9.


Thanks for your help


(I already did the 5,1 patch and watched tons of YT Tutorials etc. )

 

[schlapparazzi]

my bad, did some more research and found my answers:

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions thread)

Please fully read this first post, you will probably find that you have one or more problems described into the various notes below. Mojave will only install if you have upgraded your BootROM to the current release and your Mac Pro have a Metal capable GPU*. If you are trying to install Mojave...

forums.macrumors.com

- 144.0.0.0.0 and previous macOS releases note:

Yes, BootROM 144.0.0.0.0 can boot even 10.6.4 (10F2521), the first ever macOS release that supports a MP5,1, but you are limited to GPU driver support since you can't boot a macOS version that don't have drivers for your GPU. For example, with AMD RX 4xx/5xx GPUs, you are limited to 10.12.6/10.13/10.14.

It's the distribution file inside the macOS installer that defines what Macs are supported. Earlier releases than 10.6.4 (10F2521) don't have MP5,1 support and are not bootable with a MP5,1. Several people on MacRumors checked 10.6.8 and it runs without any problems with 144.0.0.0.0.

Other limitation is NVMe support if you have a NVMe drive, NVMe only works since High Sierra (Sierra for 4KB/sector drives), read the first post of the PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI thread to know more. SATA support is not affected by NVMe support requirements.