I'm curious as to what version of Mac OS that everyone is using on their 7.1 Mac Pros. I'm currently running Sonoma but considering downgrading to Monterey or Ventura.
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MP 7,1 Poll: What Version of Mac OS Are Your Using with Your Mac Pro 2019?
- Thread starter Photios
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Doesn't account for dual boot systems, eg, I run Monterey on a second boot disk for greatest compaptibility with 3rd party pro apps and Sonoma on the primary boot until it is clearer that most of the bugs have gone and/or 3rd parties have updated as demanded by Apple. There's also the Win option of course (but that wasn't the poll Q).
Has been standard practice for me & wider scale installs of any new mac os: Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to make a copy of last, good system onto a second drive, then install the new system on that first drive; if problematic, do a clean install & migration etc to that first disk. Then can boot into either and if really necesssary, clone the second old system back over the first & start again.
The only downside is in maintaining updates for apps, plugs, VIs, drivers etc on both systems if needed. But really, the old system eventually gets left alone & continues to do what it dd last year & the year before ... And so there is really zero reason to be trapped by Apple's agressive, incessant & often unecessary upgrade surprises ... thesee days the OS updates look more like they're written for Apple & shareholders vs. for customers /owners of Apple systems.
Of course there are other cloning apps that may suit an individual's purpose, but we've been using a combination of CCC & Ghost for decades in large scale university deployment & works well: get a good system working & customised as needed on a test machine; clone that to a CCC image; deploy that to xxx machines in labs, studios etc. We had to find this kind of solution early on because Apple kept breaking things with each new OS release, or other installs would break because of that new release. Prior to CCC, was not a good experience at all to come to work to find many students queued up & complaining because machines wouldn't work; became really problematic for QA & delivery of T&L and/or Resarch content.
So in 20-odd years, not much has changed eh? Use cloning.
Has been standard practice for me & wider scale installs of any new mac os: Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to make a copy of last, good system onto a second drive, then install the new system on that first drive; if problematic, do a clean install & migration etc to that first disk. Then can boot into either and if really necesssary, clone the second old system back over the first & start again.
The only downside is in maintaining updates for apps, plugs, VIs, drivers etc on both systems if needed. But really, the old system eventually gets left alone & continues to do what it dd last year & the year before ... And so there is really zero reason to be trapped by Apple's agressive, incessant & often unecessary upgrade surprises ... thesee days the OS updates look more like they're written for Apple & shareholders vs. for customers /owners of Apple systems.
Of course there are other cloning apps that may suit an individual's purpose, but we've been using a combination of CCC & Ghost for decades in large scale university deployment & works well: get a good system working & customised as needed on a test machine; clone that to a CCC image; deploy that to xxx machines in labs, studios etc. We had to find this kind of solution early on because Apple kept breaking things with each new OS release, or other installs would break because of that new release. Prior to CCC, was not a good experience at all to come to work to find many students queued up & complaining because machines wouldn't work; became really problematic for QA & delivery of T&L and/or Resarch content.
So in 20-odd years, not much has changed eh? Use cloning.
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Honestly, I'd just vote based on which macOS you use the most/most frequently, which based on your post looks like it is Monterey. No need to complicate things, and also no need for the OP to complicate the poll above.
I am also running multiple OS' on my 7,1, but I use Ventura as my everyday environment, and hence voted as such
Take a moment, or several, to cross reference security vulnerabilities and patch content before downgrading. Fiends and thugs have surely been busy since 2019, and surely getting better at pwning MacOS.
I suggest to update to Sonoma if you haven't already. The older versions don't get all the security updates as the newest release.
From what I gather, the 'external drives not mounting/getting disconnected' bug is still very much present in 14.4.1 and even in the 14.5 betas, can you confirm it's been fixed?
That is one of the main things holding me back from updating, among a few other bugs still being present (check the Sonoma subforum)...
I have not seen that error for a long time - both my Samsung NVMEs on a Sonnet card stay connected now.
I am on 14.5 Beta 4 (23F5074a) that I installed yesterday from the normal over the air update.
It's still there.
I have had the occasional event.
Sonnet Silent with 980Pro, Corsair and Sabrent drives.
Many here claim that it has been fixed in the latest, at least since 14.4 & 14.4.1. In my corporate experience, our team found that this can vary between machine to machine. YMMV. eg, we used to do installs of a number of exactly the same macs in university deployment, say a lab full of new iMacs or studios with multiple towers .... there often was one or two that didn't behave as every thing else & this seemed to be on a hardware level becuase the systems were identical, tested MacOS clones. CCC to build the final image and then rolled out on the network.
In any case, my personal experience now with a 7,1: Mounting of a Sonnet 4xm.2 PCIe appears fine for the most part (unlike recently earlier where it would not mount on a regular basis). What also happens now though (again on a regular basis) is that with any new install or sw update that uses a driver & requires a reboot in particular, this brings back the non-mounting issue. Every time. Some of those installs often require allowing their function in the security prefs.
And every time following this non-mounting, then reset the SMC (pull out the power cable for 20secs or so) immediatey followed in the new boot by zapping the PRAM (command-option-P-R) which then forces a restart once. And every time, this brings back the mount. Also slightly odd that in fact the 7,1*always has its SMC reset because the studio is regulalry powered down at the central UPS.
So that's what happens here, reqularly and predictably. The driver install matter likely is to do with awful & overzealous Sonona security workings & that is despite the fact that Recovery has been set to boot off anything, no security and sleep /disk sleep also disabled for studio use.
As I said, YMMV given what appears to be inconsistencies with various builds, maybe the T2, possibly the BOIS ... oops ... the 'special' Apple UEFI where you need to sit there with keys held down and wonder if the black screeen on the mac is eventually going to do something ... personally, I much prefer the sanity of tapping one function button in Win11 & then be taken to a menu of choice for such things. Plus that system is very largely backwards compatible.