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SONNET CARD is NOT BOOTABLE

rantingrich

rantingrich

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 10, 2009
190
5
Southern Illinois
First off I have a MACPRO 5,1 running OS 10.5 64 gigs ram, HAd my Mercury extreme 6G as my boot disk for two years in the drive bay I also have the stock Mac HD 1T 7200 HD.

I just installed my new Sonnet Temp SDD card in PCI slot number 4.

I have updated the firmware just now from sonnet and zapped the pram 3 times

I CAN NOT START UP from the PIC card SDD…..

WHAT CAN I DO! :mad:
 
OS 10.5 is pretty old, thinking that might be the issue here.

Lou
 
Last edited:
Upgrade the OS to 10.6.8 or later. This is a requirement and clearly stated in the manual.

Or switch to the Apricorn Velocity which can boot from 10.5.8 or later.
 
Did you succefully flash your card? I only did that once few months ago, from memory, that should be done in something like DOS mode after restart from OSX.
 
Not sure

h9826790 said:
Did you succefully flash your card? I only did that once few months ago, from memory, that should be done in something like DOS mode after restart from OSX.
Click to expand...

I am not sure.. I did UPDATE the card using SONNETs Firm ware updater but Did nothing with anything in the TERMINAL/DOS
 
Hi, I ran into the same problem with Sonnet TSATA6-SSDPS-E2
Installed card in slot3
MP 5,1 2010
OSX 10.8.5

I was just checking to see if this card was bootable since I planned to use this card set with 2 'Samsung EVO' RAID0 as a work area leaving my original Samsung pro as the boot in Bay1.
I installed my previous installed Boot disk on the Tempo card and attempted to boot from it with no luck. I had already flashed the card with the firmware & double checked through the steps?
Then when the EVO drives arrived I installed them on the card went through Disk Utility set them up in RAID0 and cloned my original Boot drive onto the new Raid set and then it would boot. Weird! I also noticed that the icon for this card comes up as a "Orange coloured icon" that usually refers as a External drive??. At that point I was satisfied it could boot and moved on to delete the boot off the RAID set and installed the work load onto it.

Hope that helps.

PS. I did speak to the Sonnet tech dept at one point and they were very helpful.
 
rantingrich said:
I am not sure.. I did UPDATE the card using SONNETs Firm ware updater but Did nothing with anything in the TERMINAL/DOS
Click to expand...

I've seen a case that the user didn't realise that he fail to upgrade the firmware.

You don't need to do anything in terminal. From memory, the firmware updater will ask you to restart the computer, and then run into dos mode to update the firmware.
 
Card...

h9826790 said:
I've seen a case that the user didn't realise that he fail to upgrade the firmware.

You don't need to do anything in terminal. From memory, the firmware updater will ask you to restart the computer, and then run into dos mode to update the firmware.
Click to expand...

I did exactly that. Still no booting
 
JavaTheHut said:
I installed my previous installed Boot disk on the Tempo card and attempted to boot from it with no luck. I had already flashed the card with the firmware & double checked through the steps?

Then when the EVO drives arrived I installed them on the card went through Disk Utility set them up in RAID0 and cloned my original Boot drive onto the new Raid set and then it would boot. Weird!
Click to expand...

So, your non-bootable disk is also the Mercury extreme 6G SSD?
 
Defective

Sorry heres what I got.. MACPRO 5,1 12 core, 64 gigs, one 240 Mercury Extreme 6G is my start up disk running OS 10.9.5, with the stock MAC 1 TB 7200 drive as another startup disk and storage. running OS 10.8.4.

the SSD has been my BOOT for the last 2 years but was in the DRIVE bay.

Also the disk is viewable but CAN NOT BOOT from it…

I have UPDATED the firmware via the sonnet sight. AND zap the pram numerous times.

I talked to OWC and they suggested taking my SSD off the card and putting back in the HD Bay. If its NOT DAMAGED!!!!! WTF? and if it again boots its the card….

I also find it interesting that SONNET now has a link you can hit to generate a (RA) or return Authorization Number to send their defective products back.

Seems like Sonnet has a LOT of defective items, so much they have streamlined and automated the RETURNS process!

If this happen I am guinea return it to OWC and use another card This is ridiculous…
 
^^^^I can vouch that the Apricorn Solo x2 is giving me flawless performance on my 5,1 in Mountain Lion, Mavericks and Yosemite, I have two of them with Samsung SSDs. They now have a Duo x2 (for mounting 2 drives in either Raid or separate configuration) that I suspect will give similar performance.

BTW, I have only bought a Aura SSD for my MBA from OWC, and yep, it was defective - piece of junk. I'm now running a Transcend SSD in my MBA with no issues.

JavaTheHut said:
I also noticed that the icon for this card comes up as a "Orange coloured icon" that usually refers as a External drive??.
Click to expand...

Yes, internal drives mounted on PCIe interface cards do show up as external drives.

Lou
 
Here is/was SONNETs Responce to my Issues

Rich;

Thank you for contacting Sonnet Technologies.

As you have observed your MacPro 5,1 is does have problems booting to external drives (which is how Apple has programmed a hard drive anywhere but on the back plane). The problem stems from somewhere within the Apple engineering software for that device.

My guess is that it is the EFI boot problem - the device MUST be selected in system profiler->startup disk. You can’t boot to option boot, nor have an unselected boot drive.

So, it should be:

- remove Tempo SSD

- select boot drive (it won’t be the Tempo SSD)

- install Tempo SSD

- select tempo SSD as boot drive

- boot

As a side note, here in our lab using the SSD card and the Mac Pro 5,1 we found a work around by downloading a lite booting free software program from the internet called rEFIT.
I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Don
support@sonnettech.com


:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
 
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You need to select it as the boot drive in System Preferences: Startup Disk, is what he is saying.

You don't need to remove/reinstall anything, as long as you have one working boot drive currently.

Also, and this should be obvious but I'm just checking: you need to have installed OS X onto the SSD for any of this to work.
 
rantingrich said:
YEA that's what I said! HUH????

:confused:

----------

SELECTED in the SYSTEM PROFILER? Is this guy huffing paint on the SONNET loading dock or waht
Click to expand...

That is a strange response from Sonnet tech support ... The Mac Pro can boot from PCIe "external" drives just fine.

I am booting OS X with a Sonnet Tempo Pro SSD with a pair of Crucial 512GB SSDs in RAID-0 with no problems on a 2012 5,1 Mac Pro in PCIe slot 3. Although I did at one time have a problem with the "option-key" boot manager not working, that somehow resolved itself (possibly PRAM resets with no drives on the installed Sonnet card). Mine has been booting and working fine for well over a year now (I also have a Solo X2 card with Windows 8 on a SSD installed in PCIe slot 2).
 
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cannot seem to get new firmware on Sonnet pro plus

Hi all,

got OS X to load on the RAID0 for the sonnet. I cannot seem to get the firmware updated (burned disk image,but holding down option or C on startup does not kick off the firmware updater).

I am looking to take this to a buddy's house and try and update the firmware from a windows workstation, then transfer to my 5,1 Mac Pro.

Drive is fast, can read/write to it, and appears otherwise functional, sys pref does not see it though to target as boot disk.

Any idea if updating the firmware on a PC and associated transfer will be OK?
 
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