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SATA Express meets the '09 Mac Pro - Bootable NGFF PCIE SSD

handheldgames said:
I had a similar issue with the 1st install of the snitch adapter. Reseating the Apple Blade SSD resolved the issue. I have a couple 2 lane sticks and a pile of Sintech cards and will give ti a try over the weekend. Aside from the initial install hiccup, the sintech solution has been rock solid.
Click to expand...

Thanks for looking into it.

I have a 128 GB Sandisk blade pulled from an iMac with Fusion drive and a second generation Sintec card with heatsink in pci slot 2 right over the original Radeon 5870.

Besides the cold boot issue the set-up seems stable. It is annoying though to sacrifice a SATA port just for the cold boot (and reboot) system volume.

Another theory: It could be a disk utility bug related to cloning system drives.
I cloned the volume via Recovery HD 10.10.1 and renamed the volume, repairing permissions, PRAM reset, etc, after...

Somehow the two system volumes seem still connected. The Spotlight privacy settings are still shared for example. If I set a volume to be ignored on the blade ssd etc...

I have Bootcamp volume in Bay 4 with latest Bootcamp drivers (5.1)

Best regards,
 
Foamsoup said:
Thanks for looking into it.

I have a 128 GB Sandisk blade pulled from an iMac with Fusion drive and a second generation Sintec card with heatsink in pci slot 2 right over the original Radeon 5870.

Besides the cold boot issue the set-up seems stable. It is annoying though to sacrifice a SATA port just for the cold boot (and reboot) system volume.

Another theory: It could be a disk utility bug related to cloning system drives.
I cloned the volume via Recovery HD 10.10.1 and renamed the volume, repairing permissions, PRAM reset, etc, after...

Somehow the two system volumes seem still connected. The Spotlight privacy settings are still shared for example. If I set a volume to be ignored on the blade ssd etc...

I have Bootcamp volume in Bay 4 with latest Bootcamp drivers (5.1)

Best regards,
Click to expand...

Interesting details. Before I tear my system down and open a can of worms, I should clarify my current configuration and the experiences I've run into, that are similar to yours:

Current System Configuration
2009 MacPro - Flashed to 2010 Firmware - i7 990x, 32GB ram,
Slot 1- 680GTX.
Slot 2 - SATA3 Adapter
Slot 3 - Sintech / Apple 1TB
Slot 4 - Lycom DT-120 / Samsung XP941

What I've run into:
Samsung XP941 128GB / Lycom DT-128. - PCIe to M.2/NGFF DT-128.
PCIe Slot #2 Device disconnects after long sleep. (reproduced by Barefeats)
PCIe Slot #3 / #4 - No Issues

2013 Apple/Samsung PCIe SSD 1TB / Sintech PCIe to Apple 2013 SSD.
PCIe Slot #2 - Difficult to install card in this slot. Initial install, drive appeared but was gone on subsequent reboot. Reseated SSD corrected issue. Sintech/Apple install has caused the PCIe Fan to run at high speed until SMC reset. Once working, no issues. After pull and reinstall, fan issue reoccured. If you can get it working here, I highly recommend not to move the card unless you want to re-experience issues.
PCIe Slot #3 / #4 - No Issues

Bandwith in Slot 2 VS Slot 3/4
If only accessing one device at a time in slot 3/4, the benchmark speeds I attained were identical to slot #2. If running in a raid 0 in slots 3/4, a performance hit will be seen in 2 x4 devices, not likely in 2 x2 devices.
 
Just did this mod and am very happy with it. Here are my notes.

Purchased the gen 1 ($10) sintech card. Took 8 days from eBay to Los Angeles.
Purchased the 1tb Card from eBay user mcko10. contacted him directly and got it for $530 shipped. One week from purchase to my door with a fully traceable package.

Install is easy. No problems with the card in slot 2. Fast speeds and easy boot. It's shockingly small. Interestingly the card had a full as new system install pre loaded. The sintech card has a SUPER bright green LED. It lights the wall behind my tower. I'll put a dab of paint on there to stop it.

Other than that great upgrade. Noticeably quicker than my SSD and great to have media files on it. Navigating my 250gb photo library is massively faster. Overall a very good upgrade.
 
Yeah the LED is a bit too much isn't it. I was going to look at somehow fixing that too. It makes the Mac Pro look like a cheap gamer PC. I done pretty much the same as you - SSD from mcko10 and Sintech $10 card (in fact I got two just in case). Couldn't be happier.
 
Okay. Here's a bit of annoying weirdness. My bootcamp won't start up anymore. I have bootcamp on a separate drive and I get some sort of file read errors when it goes to boot. It also won't boot from the windows install cd. Remove the SSD and everything goes back to normal. I didn't get around to switching slots, will try that tomorrow. Anybody else run into this?
 
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whackit said:
Okay. Here's a bit of annoying weirdness. My bootcamp won't start up anymore. I have bootcamp on a separate drive and I get some sort of file read errors when it goes to boot. It also won't boot from the windows install cd. Remove the SSD and everything goes back to normal. I didn't get around to switching slots, will try that tomorrow. Anybody else run into this?
Click to expand...

I had the same issues with my bootcamp drives after the first install in Slot 3. (See my previous posts) I reformatted the drive and cloned again, and now its kind of working ... (besides the cold boot thing)
 
hi guys.
do you know if the combo sintech+apple ssd 1tb works as a bootcamp startup disk?
i mean, i would like to have 1tb ssd for OS X and 1tb ssd for windows.
thank you
 
Yes, you can boot from the sintech + Apple SSD. Though I only have the 500GB version. But it should be the same with the 1TB version.

Denis

PS: the sintech adapter is physically not perfect. I only used one screw to put not too much pressure on the pci-slot.
 
So my weird bootcamp issue is specific to a single machine. I tried it in an identical 5,1 (2009 4,1 upgrade) and everything works fine. Which leads me to believe it is something with the boot section of the EFI on the one machine. I'm going to they reflashing the firmware and see if that fixes it.
 
whackit said:
So my weird bootcamp issue is specific to a single machine. I tried it in an identical 5,1 (2009 4,1 upgrade) and everything works fine. Which leads me to believe it is something with the boot section of the EFI on the one machine. I'm going to they reflashing the firmware and see if that fixes it.
Click to expand...

Might also try a PRAM reset.

Also, be careful flashing the firmware back to 4,1 as new CPUs might not be bootable with older firmware.
 
It looks like it is something particular to the processor... If I use a board with a standard issue 4,1 processor in a 5,1 flashed machine. No problems. If I use an upgraded processor (either a single or double hex board) it's a no go. I'm currently cloning to a bootcamp partition on the SSD to se if that makes a difference. Weird.
 
The sintech is bootable for windows and OSX

I posted this before but as I covers some Q's I will repeat.

I have a flashed 4.1 to 5.1 with 2 apple 1TB PCIe SSD's and the sintech adapters in slots 3 & 4. As I am only ever using one at once no problems with the shared bus controller. Apart from the expense this seemed like the perfect set up for me. They both back themselves up to traditional HD's in the normal bays.

The one has my OS10.10 set up the other has a UEFI install of windows 8.1 for gaming and other bits and bobs that I can't do in OSX. The performance of each is near identical. The windows install was a royal pain in the ass but I should of expected that. The gaming performance is fantastic after a session playing Bioshock Infinite it was only afterwards I realised that I had not noticed any waiting for loading etc. It seemed like an unbroken experience

https://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=514482&d=1416261409
 
Oneballs said:
Some awesome info in this thread. Couldn't resist ditching my Sata 2 boot drive after seeing these benchmarks.

I recently received the Sintech adapter and a 256gb apple blade on a 4,1. Works as advertised at first, but I've noticed I "lose" the ability to boot into the PCIe ssd on cold boots after I have shutdown. Upon powering up, I get stuck on the gray screen until the comp finds my old boot drive minutes later. When I boot back in my original boot drive (Samsung 830), the apple blade shows back up as an available start disk and I can start the process over again.

Have tried the normal trouble shooting fixed (SMC, PRAM, switching PCI slots). Any other thoughts on this?
Click to expand...

Foamsoup said:
Hi,
I'm having the same problem after migrating my boot drive to the 128 Apple blade on a Sintech adapter in slot 3 on a 5,1 Mac Pro. Happens after every cold boot.

Did you find a solution yet?

Could someone help to troubleshoot the issue?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Just saw a similar issue to what some have posted. I have 2 Sintechs with XP941 and one with Apple 1TB.

All have worked beautifully until yesterday.

While running 10.10.2 update on 4,1 while testing GTX980 Mac Edition I ran into a black screen. After this I had more trouble with GTX980. Did a few PRAM and SMC resets, then....

I switched out my:

Mouse
Keyboard
CPU Tray & RAM

I finally realized that the issue seemed to have been triggered by update but is in fact related to SIntech in slot 4. With a GT640 with EFI I would see a folder with question mark for a few seconds before boot. The GTX980 Mac Edition wasn't as patient and would not allow booting.

The 4,1 I am using has had hundreds of GPUs tested in it so possible that more worn or suffering from internal issue. In any case, I saw a few posts here that sounded similar so I thought I would put word out. I have never had similar issue in 3,1 but then so far the released versions of Mac Edition GTX980 have been 4,1/5,1 only.

If anyone else notes a flashing question mark during boot or a delayed boot I would be interested to know if another slot fixed it.My problem wasn't exactly like the above posters but similar.
 
I'm starting to think that the only reliable place for the Sintec/Apple SSD's configuration is slot 3. Some people are reporting issues with slot 2, now it seems there are issues with slot 4. I've got the Sintec card on the way and was planning on shopping around for a month or so to find a good deal on the SSD, but now I'm hesitant to shell out that much for the SSD until some of these oddities get sorted out. Are they just rare anomalies or something to be reasonably expected?
 
Same here, no problems in slot 2. (1 TB Apple PCIE SSD) with OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks. But not yet updated to Yosemite.
 
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10.10.2 Issue

Hey guys,

I banned myself a couple of years ago from the MacRumors forums, but I just re-registered as I've been following this and a couple of other threads recently.

I recently got a hold of a 3,1 Mac Pro for about $150 that was randomly shutting down. Luckily for me is was a couple of bad RAM sticks so I got a bargain.


Anyways back to the topic.

I had an issue today with booting up with my Sintech card and a 256GB Apple blade I grabbed off eBay - all after my update to 10.10.2. It was installed in slot 2.

I tried zapping the PRAM (NVRAM) a few times, tried setting the boot drive using "Startup Disk" in recovery and even tried to set the startup disk using the terminal "bless" command.

In the end I shutdown the machine and swapped my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT) into slot 2 and putting the Sintech card with the ssd blade into slot 1 - since I have a 3,1 I was limited to those 2 slots - and now it works.

I hope this helps, but it could have just worked by fluke. If anything changes I'll post my results.
 
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timo8eos said:
Hey guys,

I banned myself a couple of years ago from the MacRumors forums, but I just re-registered as I've been following this and a couple of other threads recently.

I recently got a hold of a 3,1 Mac Pro for about $150 that was randomly shutting down. Luckily for me is was a couple of bad RAM sticks so I got a bargain.


Anyways back to the topic.

I had an issue today with booting up with my Sintech card and a 256GB Apple blade I grabbed off eBay - all after my update to 10.10.2. It was installed in slot 2.

I tried zapping the PRAM (NVRAM) a few times, tried setting the boot drive using "Startup Disk" in recovery and even tried to set the startup disk using the terminal "bless" command.

In the end I shutdown the machine and swapped my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT) into slot 2 and putting the Sintech card with the ssd blade into slot 1 - since I have a 3,1 I was limited to those 2 slots - and now it works.

I hope this helps, but it could have just worked by fluke. If anything changes I'll post my results.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this. I'm running a 4,1 modded and using the Sintech card with the Apple SSD blade, and had no such issues with the 10.10.2 update. It may be something exclusive to 3,1 machines only.
 
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