NVMe for Mac Pro 5,1

[alexey_gaptar]

hi! sorry for my bad english..
but i need your help

i buy for our company 2 drive - intel ssd p3600

but only after see - dont support macos..

macos dont see drive(
intel support says go to apple support, apple support says go to intel support

you have idea???

Mac Pro (Late 2013) (new)
3 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon E5
AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB
macos 10.12 Sierra (latest update) (i can install any OS version)

thank you

 

[Fl0r!an]

How exactly did you plan to install those PCIE cards into your tube? No need to talk about software support as you can't even fit it in physically...

 

[alexey_gaptar]

How exactly did you plan to install those PCIE cards into your tube? No need to talk about software support as you can't even fit it in physically...

i connect to PCIe expansion
i have six item from nestor
http://www.netstor.com.tw/_03/03_02.php?MTEy

early i connect - http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossdproplus.html to Nestor
but now i need more speed..

 

[Ulmo]

hi! sorry for my bad english..
but i need your help

i buy for our company 2 drive - intel ssd p3600

but only after see - dont support macos..

macos dont see drive(
intel support says go to apple support, apple support says go to intel support

you have idea???

Mac Pro (Late 2013) (new)
3 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon E5
AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB
macos 10.12 Sierra (latest update) (i can install any OS version)

thank you

Here's my workaround:

1. Downgrade to OS X El Capitan or below (Mac OS X version 10.11.6 or below).
2. Use http://www.macvidcards.com/nvme-driver.html

That driver does not work with MacOS 10.12, Sierra.

The above driver has one other drawback: it does not allow hot-unplug. Hopefully you don't need that. Of course, all you have to do is shutdown, unplug, and restart, so it's not impossible to unplug.

All the other third party SSD drivers for MacOS Sierra are being built by very cheap folk who want to use cheap Samsung SSD cards on cheap non-Apple motherboards to run Apple's Mac OS, in order to save money, and you can see tons of evidence of this because they're dripping with support for booting into those cheap Samsung SSD's (!), and none of them support top-shelf Intel products like you and I bought (who generally are going for quality, and also generally don't care about booting on them, because we have our main Apple product with its main built-in Apple SSD disc already booting as expected, so we wouldn't care about booting on our Intel SSD's). I am using my Intel SSD 750 in a PCIe expansion box hooked into Thunderbolt, and that Intel 750 SSD is amazingly fast (I never ran tests, but it's within half an order of magnitude of specs, at the very least, if not at spec; hard to tell now, since I also run all drives under software encryption). I upgraded the expansion bay fan to a very quiet version and put the box on a piece of thick cloth behind a shelf under the computer, and all is very well.

I'm thinking sometime in the future Intel will solve this somehow, offering their top-shelf products in Apple compatible products. No reason they can't release a Thunderbolt or USB-C version of their products, if they wanted to; they just haven't, yet, despite the protocols on the wires being very compatible. I feel like they're trying to withhold technology from the masses, for whatever purpose they are trying to achieve. (LaCie stopped this lineup; I'm expecting them to come out with something new, for instance, but haven't seen anything as of the last time I looked -- perhaps they were also asked not to sell this? Who cares?)

 

[Draeconis]

I very much doubt it. The 750 series (and the enterprise PCIe SSD storage it's based on) is a full PCIe form-factor.

M.2 is designed for more compact units, which is exactly what the Mac Pro is now.

Any future Mac Pro will certainly use an M.2 form-factor, most likely made by Samsung.

I'm not sure what all the hate is about? Sure, mine wasn't expensive, but it performs well.

I also own Intel SSDs; a 320, 330 and 2x 335s. They're very good, but can't hold a candle to Samsung these days,

 

[Ulmo]

I very much doubt it. The 750 series (and the enterprise PCIe SSD storage it's based on) is a full PCIe form-factor.

M.2 is designed for more compact units, which is exactly what the Mac Pro is now.

Any future Mac Pro will certainly use an M.2 form-factor, most likely made by Samsung.

I'm not sure what all the hate is about? Sure, mine wasn't expensive, but it performs well.

I also own Intel SSDs; a 320, 330 and 2x 335s. They're very good, but can't hold a candle to Samsung these days,

I tried ordering Samsung, and all Amazon ever sent were knockoffs that never worked. I had to return them all. Intel had the only working solution that no one was throwing substitutes in for. Basically, Samsung has built an empire of failure around itself. I don't know if someone is vandalizing their reputation or they brought it on themselves, but I haven't had that problem with Intel, and I don't have much control over it.

 

[AidenShaw]

I tried ordering Samsung, and all Amazon ever sent were knockoffs that never worked. I had to return them all. Intel had the only working solution that no one was throwing substitutes in for. Basically, Samsung has built an empire of failure around itself. I don't know if someone is vandalizing their reputation or they brought it on themselves, but I haven't had that problem with Intel, and I don't have much control over it.

Sorry, but that's basically nonsense. Samsung is the king of SSD right now, except for the cost-no-object enterprise market.

If Amazon sent you an unusable knock-off of a Samsung, how can you blame that on Samsung and not Amazon?

 

[Draeconis]

I tried ordering Samsung, and all Amazon ever sent were knockoffs that never worked. I had to return them all. Intel had the only working solution that no one was throwing substitutes in for. Basically, Samsung has built an empire of failure around itself. I don't know if someone is vandalizing their reputation or they brought it on themselves, but I haven't had that problem with Intel, and I don't have much control over it.

Personally I bought mine from Scan, but if you're buying things on Amazon and you didn't get what you expected, you need to look at who you're actually buying the product from.

Amazon also have a great returns policy even if things don't go your way.

 

[geekpersonman]

What happened to Lauwie? He said he would post the source in feb 2016 and its now oct 2016. he hasn't posted any updates on progress either.

 

[carpsafari]

Looks like the NVMe driver is broken.

I had it running beginning this year, just to try out, as the supplier accidently sent me the NVMe.

Yesterday I tried to install an SM951 NVme on a DeLock PCIe, on a El Capitan drive, but I get the 'illegal user name' issue when I execute the sudo command.
So today I tried Yosemite, and a 'fresh' Mac Pro 5.1...just in case...but exactly the same issue.

JimJ isn't active and I also can't find any answers.

 

[buli]

It's very interesting... Do you found also the CPU microcodes in the Apple EFI Firmware? I've opened the EFI-Firmware-Updater for MacPro2,1 in "IDAQ" - see a lot of Hex-Code - do you think it's possible to ad CPU microcode for other CPU's for example X5470 witch is supported by Intel 5000X Chipset. This CPU is 45nm and supports SSE4,1 so it must be possible to boot MacOS 10.12 Sierra with a modified "boot.efi" (Piker Alpha) on the MacPro1,1/2,1.

 

[Draeconis]

Looks like High Sierra will support NVMe disks OOTB, except still not for boot drives.

 

[UniqueUserName]

So can you use an NVMe drive as the "fast" part of a FusionDrive configuration without hacking in High Sierra? I just bought an NVMe drive/adapter for my Sierra-based 5,1 without realizing that it takes hacking ktexts to even get it working at all, and has no way of booting from it.

 

[Draeconis]

I would be very surprised if this worked. Since the 5,1 doesn't have the firmware to see the NVMe device at boot, the CoreStorage Logical Volume that forms a Fusion Disk could not be mounted, so the blessed partition could not boot.

Someone in a thread was talking about having some initial boot stage which would enable USB3 boot in a 5,1, for which this may allow this process to work, but without something like this, no NVMe disk could be used as any part of a boot disk.

 

[h9826790]

Fusion Drive and Boot drive are 2 different matters.

If a NVMe drive can be a part of Fusion Drive with 3rd party kext now. Then it should also work without kext mod in HS.

However, not bootable.

 

[UniqueUserName]

Fusion Drive and Boot drive are 2 different matters.

If a NVMe drive can be a part of Fusion Drive with 3rd party kext now. Then it should also work without kext mod in HS.

However, not bootable.

Does FusionDrive figure out which drive is the fast one on its own or do you have to tell it?

Thanks to the great design of TimeMachine I really don't feel any trepidation attempting this on my own, I am just hoping to not waste a bunch of time on something that just plain won't work.

 

[h9826790]

Does FusionDrive figure out which drive is the fast one on its own or do you have to tell it?

Thanks to the great design of TimeMachine I really don't feel any trepidation attempting this on my own, I am just hoping to not waste a bunch of time on something that just plain won't work.

According to all the reports, yes, it will automatically utilise the faster drive to do all the required work.

 

[UniqueUserName]

Seeing other posts regarding the dangers of FusionDrive have led me to consider just manually putting everything I want fast onto the NVMe drive and symlinking them from their old locations. The obvious ones include:
/Users
/Applications
/Library
/dev

Does anyone know which of the / directories cannot be on a separate drive from the boot drive?

Downloading High Sierra now,,,will start with /Users.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

You're under the assumption NVME is going to make a real world difference on such an aged machine. It won't. We already went through this nonsense when people started using m2 SSDs on the cMP.

For 99.999999999% of users the m2 SSDs made no difference over a regular SATA SSD. No boot speed difference, no application difference. We posted benchmarks so many times.

So if the AHCI version made no difference for nearly everyone then the NVME isn't going to do anything either except burn a hole in the pocket. For what? Forum bragging rights? To feed consumer anxieties?

Buy what's useful. Unless you have a money tree that you want to show off to various anonymous people online.

 

[flowrider]

My test results:

Samsung SM951 on an AngelBird:




Samsung 840 Pro on an Apricorn Duo x2:




Samsung 840 Evo in SATA Bay:



Lou

 

[eksu]

How exactly are you adding new drivers to the EFI firmware? AFAIK the SMC checks the ZeroVectors' hash in the firmware modules. This can be bypassed with UEFITool or some other tool that prevents the ZeroVectors from changing, but I'm not sure how this would work when adding new drivers entirely. Again, I'm not fully sure, I've only done some small experiments with Xserve3,1 EFI to add support for Westmere CPUs (I ended up doing it, but never flashed, eventually when I get SOIC clip + other things to backup stock flash first I'll try).

Hey,

I was wondering if you could tell me more about you're experiments with the Xserve efi. I'm hoping to make some modifications to the 5,1 firmware to add support for a few rare Westmere CPU's (X5698 & X5687). Did you ever attempt to make the flash? Did you work with the firmware on your board or an image from apple and how did you modify it?

 

[MIKX]

A stupid question .. .

Will a M.2 PCI SSD adaptor with an M.2 blade work in Mavericks 10.9.5 ?

 

[h9826790]

A stupid question .. .

Will a M.2 PCI SSD adaptor with an M.2 blade work in Mavericks 10.9.5 ?

Quick answer is yes, but you better precisely state which adaptor and SSD. M.2 is just the form factor, not the type of SSD. e.g. A SATA M.2 SSD cannot work on a PCIe SSD adaptor.

But if you mean NVMe, you have to check if the 3rd party driver can work under Mavericks.

 

[MIKX]

No, not NVMe. I meant an M.2 SSD 240Gb blade on an M.2 PCIe adaptor.
What I'm asking is whether the above will be recognized in Mavericks. I'm aware that there is an NVMe driver for "NVMe" blades. M.2 systems will of course be different.

 

[h9826790]

No, not NVMe. I meant an M.2 SSD 240Gb blade on an M.2 PCIe adaptor.
What I'm asking is whether the above will be recognized in Mavericks. I'm aware that there is an NVMe driver for "NVMe" blades. M.2 systems will of course be different.

AFAIK, m.2 is the form factor, not the type. It can be m.2 SATA SSD, it can be m.2 AHCI PCIe SSD, it can be m.2 NVMe PCIe SSD.

Without knowing the exact SSD + adaptor you are taking about. It's hard to know it they can work.