MP All Models PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

[Barklay]

The first step to diagnose a M.2 blade that we don't know about it's compatibility is from a totally clean start.

You can always try to repair it, but this is the prime example of the situation that you have to much unknowns.

I choose it from pdf file compability list somewhere in this thread. So, after destroying i must do fresh install? Or what?

 

[tsialex]

I choose it from pdf file compability list somewhere in this thread.

Sonnet single/double sided document? That PDF don't represent macOS compatibility at all. Always refer to the first post of the thread.

So, after destroying i must do fresh install? Or what?

Yes, clean install.

 

[Barklay]

Sonnet single/double sided document? That PDF don't represent macOS compatibility at all. Always refer to the first post of the thread.

Yes, clean install.

i've got it.
What would be better, install from mac os old ssd, like yesterday, or do it from usb stick without other drives installed inside mac?

 

[tsialex]

i've got it.
What would be better, install from mac os old ssd, like yesterday, or do it from usb stick without other drives installed inside mac?

Destroy the partitioning of the M.2 blade, make a createinstallmedia USB key, shutdown, remove all other drives besides the createinstallmedia USB key and the WD Blue SN550, power on and install.

Good luck.

 

[Barklay]

Tsialex, What numbers I should write instead of XX in destroy command? disk0 or disk1?

 

[tsialex]

View attachment 896427
Tsialex, What numbers I should write instead of XX in destroy command? disk0 or disk1?

If you are sure that disk0 is your SN550; unmount the volume of the APFS container, unmount the physical disk, then destroy the GPT:

diskutil unmountdisk disk1
diskutil unmountdisk disk0
sudo gpt destroy disk0

 

[Barklay]

If you are sure that disk0 is your SN550; unmount the volume of the APFS container, unmount the physical disk, then destroy the GPT:

diskutil unmountdisk disk1
diskutil unmountdisk disk0
sudo gpt destroy disk0

Thanks, done. Next one stupid question, under installation in disk utility i must choose apfs and guid partitioning?

 

[tsialex]

Thanks, done. Next one stupid question, under installation in disk utility i must choose apfs and guid partitioning?

Always prepare as a just one HFS+ partition and GPT/GUID, macOS installer will correctly create a volume with an APFS container after it reboots.

Questions are not stupid, but it's stupid to ask things here that you can find with a search.

 

[Barklay]

Always prepare as a just one HFS+ partition and GPT/GUID, macOS installer will correctly create a volume with an APFS container after it reboots.

Questions are not stupid, but it's stupid to ask things here that you can find with a search.

I don’t know how to correctly ask my question in search. Thank you very much, btw yesterday i did it in apfs

 

[Barklay]

Another problem now.

 

[tsialex]

Another problem now.

Please open a thread about your problem, you are probably formatting the blade incorrectly. This is a reference thread and I shouldn't have answered your doubts about unrelated questions to the main topic here.

 

[Barklay]

Sorry... i thought it’s all about m.2 blades

 

[H. Flower]

If you buy the 970 direct from Samsung online you will get the latest firmware, no update needed.

Looks like one of my blades is old firmware...

Stupid question : Can I update it AFTER it's been striped together with three correct blades into a RAID 0? Or do I have to erase disk, update firmware, and then create a new RAID O?

 

[AidenShaw]

Looks like one of my blades is old firmware...

Stupid question : Can I update it AFTER it's been striped together with three correct blades into a RAID 0? Or do I have to erase disk, update firmware, and then create a new RAID O?

Magician can update the firmware while the drive is online and active. (I have some 4x1TB 850 EVO RAID-0 volumes.)

 

[SteveZee]

Magician can update the firmware while the drive is online and active. (I have some 4x1TB 850 EVO RAID-0 volumes.)

Magician can update the firmware while the drive is online and active. (I have some 4x1TB 850 EVO RAID-0 volumes.)

I only saw magician for windows??

 

[Barklay]

Can anybody tell, if the blade is not good with mac os, an adapter will be shown in system report or not? I have kryom.2 with heatsink

 

[H. Flower]

I only saw magician for windows??

Yeah, I'm seeing magician only for windows.

I was going to download the firmware and install on USB, boot from USB...that whole thing. But not sure if I should try while current RAID is active.

 

[Barklay]

Hello to all again. After all tests i’ve done seems that my blade is not seen in os after shutdowns. After nvram resets it’s shown and works fine! After reboots - ok too. 20 or 30 reboots one after one. Then, one shutdown and i don’t see it again. Doesn’t matter, if it is boot disk or just second with os on other ssd.
can anybody say something? if it would be pc, i would say that bios is resetting.
system is mac pro 4.1/5.1, bootroom 144, latest mojave, kryom.2, wd sn550.

 

[tsialex]

Hello to all again. After all tests i’ve done seems that my blade is not seen in os after shutdowns. After nvram resets it’s show and works fine! After reboots - ok too. 20 or 30 reboots one after one. Then, one shutdown and i don’t see it again. Doesn’t matter, if it is boot disk or just second with os on other ssd.
can anybody say something? if it would be pc, i would say that bios is resetting.
system is mac pro 4.1/5.1, bootroom 144, latest mojave, kryom.2, wd sn550.

You have to much unknowns, starting from a M.2 blade that no one tested before.

First step is to confirm that you hardware works correctly with a known compatible M.2 blade (check the tested blades on the first post of this thread), only after you are sure that your Mac Pro works correctly, then you check compatibility of the WD Blue SN550.

 

[Barklay]

You have to much unknowns, starting from a M.2 blade that no one tested before.

First step is to confirm that you hardware works correctly with a known compatible M.2 blade (check the tested blades on the first post of this thread), only after you are sure that your Mac Pro works correctly, then you check compatibility of the WD Blue SN550.

Tsialex, so what should i do? Buy 970evo/pro? I do not have any friends with blade ssd’s. It seems to be very expensive here in russia for an experiment, but it is possible. But, what if samsung would not work too? What other steps you can tell to me after first step, so i would not ask every with one message? Thank you for your help

 

[tsialex]

Tsialex, so what should i do? Buy 970evo/pro? I do not have any friends with blade ssd’s. It seems to be very expensive here in russia for an experiment, but it is possible. But, what if samsung would not work too? What other steps you can tell to me after first step, so i would not ask every with one message? Thank you for your help

You have to much unknowns that you need to debug:

1. WD Blue SN550 hardware or firmware could be incompatible with MP5.1 or macOS, no one tested one before,
2. Your WD Blue SN550 could be defective, test with a PC if you have one,
3. KryoM.2 is compatible with MP5,1, but you could have a defective unit,
4. You could have a problematic Mac Pro, your problem could have numerous causes like defective PCIe slots, defective backplane, NVRAM problems, PSU out of spec, etc…

If I was in your place, I'd start with debugging with a know compatible M.2 blade from the first post of the thread.

Please, open a new thread about your problem. Thread hijacking a sticky/reference thread is not the correct way to get help. If everyone does what you are doing, no one that can help will follow this thread.

 

[MTBnBeer]

Thanks for your AWESOME recommendations. We bought a Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe (MZ-V7S1T0B/AM) and a Aquacomputer KryoM.2 Evo PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter to replace our 1TB Sansung 850 Pro SSD on an Apricom PCIe card. We installed them in our 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 flashed to 5.1 dual 6-core 3.33Ghz 32GB RAM with a MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5 DirectX 12 VR Ready CFX Graphcis Card (RX 560 AERO ITX 4G OC) running Mojave. EASY super simple installation since we booted off the 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD then used SuperDuper! to clone this drive the the Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe m.2 flash drive.

Black Magic Speed Test went from 470 MBps (850 Pro on Apricom PCIe card) to 1400+ MBps (970 EVO Plus on Aquacomputer KryoM.2 Evo PCIe card)... yes a 3X speed increase for ~ $300 total.

AWESOME !!!

Yes we know we could have gotten 3,000 MBps using a much more expensive OWC Excelsior PCIe card but were concerned that it could be problematic if we upgrade to Catalina (or newer) macOS using DosDude1's patchers. Aquacomputer KryoM.2 Evo PCIe is a "dumb" card which shouldn't be an issue moving forward with newer versions of macOS.

 

[eVasilis]

Thanks for your AWESOME recommendations. We bought a Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe (MZ-V7S1T0B/AM) and a Aquacomputer KryoM.2 Evo PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter to replace our 1TB Sansung 850 Pro SSD on an Apricom PCIe card. We installed them in our 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 flashed to 5.1 dual 6-core 3.33Ghz 32GB RAM with a MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5 DirectX 12 VR Ready CFX Graphcis Card (RX 560 AERO ITX 4G OC) running Mojave. EASY super simple installation since we booted off the 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD then used SuperDuper! to clone this drive the the Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe m.2 flash drive.

Black Magic Speed Test went from 470 MBps (850 Pro on Apricom PCIe card) to 1400+ MBps (970 EVO Plus on Aquacomputer KryoM.2 Evo PCIe card)... yes a 3X speed increase for ~ $300 total.

AWESOME !!!

Yes we know we could have gotten 3,000 MBps using a much more expensive OWC Excelsior PCIe card but were concerned that it could be problematic if we upgrade to Catalina (or newer) macOS using DosDude1's patchers. Aquacomputer KryoM.2 Evo PCIe is a "dumb" card which shouldn't be an issue moving forward with newer versions of macOS.

Hi MTBnBeer

Have you measured boot time with your new Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe? I want to go down that path too, mainly to see whether I would have better boot times and app launching. Additionally, are temperatures on the blade OK?

Thanks!

 

[MTBnBeer]

Hi MTBnBeer

Have you measured boot time with your new Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe? I want to go down that path too, mainly to see whether I would have better boot times and app launching. Additionally, are temperatures on the blade OK?

Thanks!

All the temperatures reported by TG Pro (Temperature Guage Pro) including the NVMe temperature are completely normal. Is there another way to check our 1TB NVMe m.2 SSD on the Aquacomputer KryoM.2 Evo PCIe 3.0 x4 PCIe Adapter and Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 SSD temperatures besides TG Pro app?

Boot time is ~ the same as starting up from the 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD on the Apricom Duo PCIe card. From what I remember, starting from a hard drive in one of the cMP's HD sleds chimed quicker... but the time to get to the splash screen and Finder stopping indexing was significantly longer. EVERY I/O access from the Samsung 970 Plus M.2 SSD is SIGNIFICANTLY faster.

 

[eVasilis]

All the temperatures reported by TG Pro (Temperature Guage Pro) including the NVMe temperature are completely normal. Is there another way to check our 1TB NVMe m.2 SSD on the Aquacomputer KryoM.2 Evo PCIe 3.0 x4 PCIe Adapter and Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 SSD temperatures besides TG Pro app?

View attachment 897107

Boot time is ~ the same as starting up from the 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD on the Apricom Duo PCIe card. From what I remember, starting from a hard drive in one of the cMP's HD sleds chimed quicker... but the time to get to the splash screen and Finder stopping indexing was significantly longer. EVERY I/O access from the Samsung 970 Plus M.2 SSD is SIGNIFICANTLY faster.

Thanks for your reply!