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

can anyone please help me?
I have installed a sata III bootable pcie card ( as recommend on this thread) into my mac pro upgraded 5.1 firmware running 2x samsung 850 evo 1tb High Sierra OS
the card is shows up in (system info SATA) generic AHCI controller link speed 6 Gigabit / Negotiated link speed 6 Gigabit
(system info PCI) AHCI Controller Link width 1 Link speed 5.0 GT/s
the problem is I'm only getting a max 387 MB/s on blackmagic speed test
 
gatd said:
can anyone please help me?
I have installed a sata III bootable pcie card ( as recommend on this thread) into my mac pro upgraded 5.1 firmware running 2x samsung 850 evo 1tb High Sierra OS
the card is shows up in (system info SATA) generic AHCI controller link speed 6 Gigabit / Negotiated link speed 6 Gigabit
(system info PCI) AHCI Controller Link width 1 Link speed 5.0 GT/s
the problem is I'm only getting a max 387 MB/s on blackmagic speed test
Click to expand...

387MB/s read or write? If write, I suspect you didn't enable TRIM yet.
 
can't remember it has 2 internal sata ports and 2 external
 
Last edited:
Hi,

I just upgraded my 2013 retina MBP and i want to put the old ssd (Apple/samsung SSUAX 256 GB) in my Mac Pro using a generic adapter bought on eBay.

I want it to be my Windows 7/BootCamp drive, but no matter what i do i just can’t get BootCamp Assistant to recognize the ssd. I have tried to boot from the installation disk/DVD, but it won’t install to the PCIe ssd.
It says something about the changing the bios, which macs doesn't have.

I have tried to format it as MBR/Fat32 in Disk Utility, i have tried to delete the partition, create new and format it using the Windows installation disk, but it won’t install to the PCIe ssd no matter what i do and i have also removed all drives before booting into the installation disk.

I have tried to follow the guide in post #1031, but it fails in step 1 as the BCA doesn’t recognize the ssd.


My setup
Mac Pro 2009 (4.1 --> 5.1)
Dual X5677 (3.46 GHz/8-core)
Sata slot 1: MacOS Fusion Drive (SSD 256 GB)
Sata slot 2: MacOS Fusion Drive (HDD 650GB)
Sata slot 3 (2 partitions - both NTFS): Windows 7 BootCamp/Data (HDD 1 TB)

(The plan is to resize the data partition in SATA slot 3, so it uses the entire HDD and use the PCIe ssd as BootCamp drive)

Configuration 1 (Unable to install windows to ssd)
PCIe slot 1: HD 7970 - EFI flashed 5.0 GT/s (blocks PCIe slot 2)
PCIe slot 3: SSUAX 256 GB


Configuration 2 (Unable to install windows to ssd)
PCIe slot 1: SSUAX 256 GB
PCIe slot 2: HD 7970 - EFI flashed 5.0 GT/s

I hope someone will be able to help, and feel free to ask if I forgot to mention something important
 
Last edited:
SomeFruitGuy said:
Hi,

I just upgraded my 2013 retina MBP and i want to put the old ssd (Apple/samsung SSUAX 256 GB) in my Mac Pro using a generic adapter bought on eBay.

I want it to be my Windows 7/BootCamp drive, but no matter what i do i just can’t get BootCamp Assistant to recognize the ssd. I have tried to boot from the installation disk/DVD, but it won’t install to the PCIe ssd.
It says something about the changing the bios, which macs doesn't have.

I have tried to format it as MBR/Fat32 in Disk Utility, i have tried to delete the partition, create new and format it using the Windows installation disk, but it won’t install to the PCIe ssd no matter what i do and i have also removed all drives before booting into the installation disk.

I have tried to follow the guide in post #1031, but it fails in step 1 as the BCA doesn’t recognize the ssd.


My setup
Mac Pro 2009 (4.1 --> 5.1)
Dual X5677 (3.46 GHz/8-core)
Sata slot 1: MacOS Fusion Drive (SSD 256 GB)
Sata slot 2: MacOS Fusion Drive (HDD 650GB)
Sata slot 3 (2 partitions - both NTFS): Windows 7 BootCamp/Data (HDD 1 TB)

(The plan is to resize the data partition in SATA slot 3, so it uses the entire HDD and use the PCIe ssd as BootCamp drive)

Configuration 1 (Unable to install windows to ssd)
PCIe slot 1: HD 7970 - EFI flashed 5.0 GT/s (blocks PCIe slot 2)
PCIe slot 3: SSUAX 256 GB


Configuration 2 (Unable to install windows to ssd)
PCIe slot 1: SSUAX 256 GB
PCIe slot 2: HD 7970 - EFI flashed 5.0 GT/s

I hope someone will be able to help, and feel free to ask if I forgot to mention something important
Click to expand...
That's normal. You can't install Windows onto an "External" drive (natively).

Google the solution for this matter may able to fix your problem.
 
h9826790 said:
That's normal. You can't install Windows onto an "External" drive (natively).

Google the solution for this matter may able to fix your problem.
Click to expand...
Thanks... Maybe you could point me in the right direction and provide a link? I have already googled it, but my google-fu might not be as strong as yours because i haven't found anything useful. According to the post that I linked to, it should be doable with the SM951/Lycom DT-120 and i would think that the Apple drive would be even more compatible. Maybe i'm wrong?
 
Depends on the test suite, but with Black Magic tests I think you should get more write speeds if trim is enabled, something like Read ~1300MBps / Write ~1100MBps, at least with 480GB version of HyperX Xtreme Predator.

Please check the numbers in this thread: Forum member gjarolds sanity check
Continuous speed varies a little between different size of capacities.

Nevertheless, it's the access times and IOPS for most of us that matter more. Not every time though.
 
mikas said:
Depends on the test suite, but with Black Magic tests I think you should get more write speeds if trim is enabled, something like Read ~1300MBps / Write ~1100MBps, at least with 480GB version of HyperX Xtreme Predator.

Please check the numbers in this thread: Forum member gjarolds sanity check
Continuous speed varies a little between different size of capacities.

Nevertheless, it's the access times and IOPS for most of us that matter more. Not every time though.
Click to expand...

The 240GB version's sequential write speed is 600MB/s, not as fast as the 480GB version's 910MB/s.
 
h9826790 said:
Do you experience any slow boot in High Sierra?
Click to expand...

Yeah the boot is slow, but maybe its because of the custom boot for apfs.

http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/

- Please note that if you use APFS, you will not have a bootable Recovery partition.
-- It is recommended that you only use APFS if the target drive is an SSD.
-- If you decide to use APFS, a custom booting method will be installed by the post-install tool, as the firmware of these unsupported machines does not natively support booting from APFS volumes. It is not quite as clean as native booting, but will not cause any issues while running High Sierra.
 
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