Just some sharing. I did that exactly quite a few time, and that's the easiest way to install Windows 10 for me. I can never get the EFI work (seems not working well with the 7950 Mac EFI, and I didn't try the stock UEFI ROM yet).
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SSD in 3.5" HDD Sled
- Thread starter barry.pearson
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Just some sharing. I did that exactly quite a few time, and that's the easiest way to install Windows 10 for me. I can never get the EFI work (seems not working well with the 7950 Mac EFI, and I didn't try the stock UEFI ROM yet).
My bad, I quoted the wrong part of his post. I meant getting Windows to boot from the SM951 which nobody seems to have tried or confirmed yet.
Uh-oh. Never mind booting from it, it doesn't even want to install onto it.
That Win10 installer is a burned ISO of v1607 which I tried booting as both legacy and EFI.
The SM951 is on a Lycom DT-120 adapter board, just like its twin that contains a working OS X installation. The error happens when its in either PCIe slot 3 or 4 (with no other PCIe or SATA drives in the MP-5,1 apart from the optical).
Plan B: I want to try cloning a disk with an existing Win10 installation onto the SM951. Annoyingly, the program I use to do full disk clones ("Reflect") is bailing with some "VSS" error (which I don't think is related to the SM951 because it happens while the program is still inspecting the *source* disk).
First of all, thank you for trying this and also for actually posting about it. I've asked 2-3 times in the big thread and nobody ever answered.
Secondly, about VSS, the Boot Camp 5 driver package includes an HFS+ file system driver for read-only access in Windows. This driver is only compatible up to Windows 8.1. If you use it in Windows 10, it prevents VSS from working. I suspect this is what is happening to you. You can either uninstall the HFS+ driver and live without read-only HFS+ access, OR install the HFS+ driver from Boot Camp 6, which does work with Windows 10 and therefore does not break VSS. You can download that driver from this thread.
Lastly, I think you are on the right track. Windows doesn't "like" to be installed on an external drive, but that limitation can be overcome with various workarounds that can be found on the net. (I have not tried any of them so I have no recommendations.)
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Purging the Apple FS driver in Windows allowed me to make a nice clone of the SATA drive onto the SM951. Promisingly, it now shows in the "hold Alt" boot screen as "Windows" with the silver drive icon. However, selecting it to boot advances to nothing but a black screen with a blinking underscore.
Here are instructions for installing Windows 10 to an "external" drive:
http://www.partition-tool.com/resou...nstall-windows-10-on-external-hard-drive.html
It seems oddly easy to me, but I guess step 4 is where the installation is occurring. I.E. the ".wim" file isn't just copied or moved as a file to the destination drive, it is actually imaged to the drive as a Windows installation. There doesn't seem to be enough partitions set up (Windows, EFI Boot, and Recovery) so the imaging must handle all that too?
The following instructions seem to corroborate the process, although they use a third party tool for the imaging:
http://superuser.com/questions/982577/how-to-run-windows-10-from-an-external-hard-drive
I have not tried either of these procedures, so I cannot vouch for them.
http://www.partition-tool.com/resou...nstall-windows-10-on-external-hard-drive.html
It seems oddly easy to me, but I guess step 4 is where the installation is occurring. I.E. the ".wim" file isn't just copied or moved as a file to the destination drive, it is actually imaged to the drive as a Windows installation. There doesn't seem to be enough partitions set up (Windows, EFI Boot, and Recovery) so the imaging must handle all that too?
The following instructions seem to corroborate the process, although they use a third party tool for the imaging:
http://superuser.com/questions/982577/how-to-run-windows-10-from-an-external-hard-drive
I have not tried either of these procedures, so I cannot vouch for them.
Actually no tricks, it was a simple EFI installation.
EFI booting from a USB, then i prepared the Drive with diskpart and installed Windows. That's it...
This was the Guide i followed but without creating the "Windows Boot Partition" in OS X.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/2fy3be/by_popular_demand_my_better_than_bootcamp_guide/
Got around to attempting this again...
All of those commands go smoothly (btw the big ".wim" file is inside the official ISO that can be downloaded from Microsoft). But, the resultant Windows installation ends up just like the one I mentioned in my previous post: after the drive is selected on the Mac's boot screen, all that happens is a black screen with a blinking underscore cursor.
I can confirm that this works on a MP5,1 with SM951 (AHCI 128GB). That reddit submission has a fair bit of irrelevant stuff, so here's my rewritten version for MacRumors consumption:
All of those commands go smoothly (btw the big ".wim" file is inside the official ISO that can be downloaded from Microsoft). But, the resultant Windows installation ends up just like the one I mentioned in my previous post: after the drive is selected on the Mac's boot screen, all that happens is a black screen with a blinking underscore cursor.
I can confirm that this works on a MP5,1 with SM951 (AHCI 128GB). That reddit submission has a fair bit of irrelevant stuff, so here's my rewritten version for MacRumors consumption:
- Download official Win10 v1607 ISO from Microsoft and burn it to a DVD.
- Take all drives (SATA & PCIe) out of the Mac Pro except the SM951 intended for the Windows installation.
- Use the Mac's boot screen (hold Alt immediately when turning machine on) to boot off the DVD. Select the optical disc icon labelled EFI.
- On the initial screen of the Windows installer, press Shift+F10 to open a Command Prompt. Do the following commands:
- diskpart
- select disk 0
- clean
- convert gpt
- create partition efi size=200
- format fs=fat32
- create partition msr size=128
- create partition primary
- format fs=ntfs quick label=Windows
- exit
- Continue with the Windows installer and select a clean install (Custom) onto the partition labelled Windows that just got created.
- When the machine reboots a few times during install, hold Alt and use the Mac's boot screen to select the drive (rather than optical). << This may be unnecessary.
- After the installation is finished, again use the Mac's boot screen to check that it is bootable.
- Shut down the Mac Pro and put the other SATA & PCIe drives back in.
I have a Samsung Evo 850 1TB SSD mounted on an OWC Mount Pro adapter and installed in drive Bay 1. The SSD boot time is faster than a spinning hard drive and speeds are close to 3.0GT/s but much slower than the 6.0GT/s SSD native speed due to the SATA speed limitations in drive Bay 1. It's not an ideal setup but I plan to move the Samsung to a PCIe SSD adapter soon.
frou's post on getting Windows 10 to boot on a SM951 SSD blade on a Mac Pro 5,1 really works!
And without Boot Camp, yet!
Well done, if I may say so...
I would underline the need frou has indicated, however, before the Windows 10 install attempt, to remove all other hard drives (SSD or otherwise) so that the Windows Installer sees only the SM951 during the early part of its install process.
As to frou's reason (borne out in my own experience), if any other hard drives are present during the Windows install launch, the Windows Installer cannot get past its step where it must make the SM951 reboot when it needs to to get through the entire install process.
If any other hard drives are present at that point in its install process, I've found that the Windows Installer always fails with a message to that effect.
If the SM951 is the only drive present, the install process finally concludes successfully.
During the setup process, however, I found that there were other things that needed my attention...
For starters, although my Mac Pro 5,1 is setup for WiFi 802.11ac, the Windows Installer can't seem to get the Broadcom 802.11ac Network Driver installed, so I had to make sure I had an Ethernet connection to my Mac Pro to enable any networking to be available so the entire setup part of the install could work.
There are other Windows 10 install fine tuning issues to deal with for the SM951, in my experience, but I do know that Windows 10 Pro can be installed to boot just fine in our Mac Pro towers 3,1 4,1 5,1 2009 through 2012.
And this is fantastic!
Cheers,
tyvol
PS. This good news is true, however, only if the SM951 blade is without the NVMe capability, as any Mac Pro 3,1 4,1 or 5,1 MOBOs wern't built to handle booting from any NVMe blade.
And without Boot Camp, yet!
Well done, if I may say so...
I would underline the need frou has indicated, however, before the Windows 10 install attempt, to remove all other hard drives (SSD or otherwise) so that the Windows Installer sees only the SM951 during the early part of its install process.
As to frou's reason (borne out in my own experience), if any other hard drives are present during the Windows install launch, the Windows Installer cannot get past its step where it must make the SM951 reboot when it needs to to get through the entire install process.
If any other hard drives are present at that point in its install process, I've found that the Windows Installer always fails with a message to that effect.
If the SM951 is the only drive present, the install process finally concludes successfully.
During the setup process, however, I found that there were other things that needed my attention...
For starters, although my Mac Pro 5,1 is setup for WiFi 802.11ac, the Windows Installer can't seem to get the Broadcom 802.11ac Network Driver installed, so I had to make sure I had an Ethernet connection to my Mac Pro to enable any networking to be available so the entire setup part of the install could work.
There are other Windows 10 install fine tuning issues to deal with for the SM951, in my experience, but I do know that Windows 10 Pro can be installed to boot just fine in our Mac Pro towers 3,1 4,1 5,1 2009 through 2012.
And this is fantastic!
Cheers,
tyvol
PS. This good news is true, however, only if the SM951 blade is without the NVMe capability, as any Mac Pro 3,1 4,1 or 5,1 MOBOs wern't built to handle booting from any NVMe blade.