Trouble with external PCIe NVMe SSD. Is it a compatibility issue?

[thecanasian]

Update: In digging I found this chart in a different thread about U.2 PCIe cards for Mac Pros. Turns out WD doesn’t make a drive compatible with Macs.



I’m a video editor and have been trying to find the best solution for high speed external storage. I thought I hit the mark when I stumbled onto the OWC Helios 3S. It's an external thunderbolt 3 PCIe card adapter that they sell with a caddy to mount U.2 enterprise SSDs.

So I get a 7.68TB WD SN640 U.2 SSD, stick it in the Helios and the machine sees the drive, I initialize it and try to format it. Couldn't do it between AFPS, MacOS Journaled, EXFAT, FAT, but I was able to do it on one of my machines into NTFS.

On that same machine it allowed me to reformat that into a MacOS Journaled drive and I thought I was good to go.

Tried to copy a file, system hangs and then them the drive is disconnected. Try to run a disk speed test, system hangs, and drive is disconnected. Then I tried to reformat it to something else, hang and then disconnect on both my machines.

I have no idea how to troubleshoot next. I read some stuff about compatibility issues with some drive manufacturers and Apple because of NVMe protocols, but WD seems to use the same one as Apple.

Any ideas?

MacBook Pro M1Max
iMac (2019) Core i9

 

[complaxneoda]

i dont have apple silicon machine. in my experience, if a ssd works on windows, but it does not work on macos, it is a compatibility problem. you can change to another model or try to use it in USB way.

samsung PM1733, intel P3XXX and P48XX is ok on macos.

 

[thecanasian]

I was able to format it in my iMac, but it's seeming more and more like a fluke now.

 

[Fishrrman]

Could be the drive.
Could be the enclosure.
Could be a combination of factors (between the two).

 

[thecanasian]

So it ended up being the drive. I found a Sonnet U.2 NVMe compatibility chart and sure enough none of the WD drives are compatible. I ended up going with an 8TB slightly used KIOXIA drive off of eBay and now my whole setup screams.

 

[gglpxl]

samsung PM1733, intel P3XXX and P48XX is ok on macos.

I am with my macbook air m1 and tried to connect the samsung via thunderbolt cable it showed up but drive DX always shows me i/o Problems and i tested the SSD with Blackmagic disk speed tester and it showed me write up to 3GB/s but the read is only 200MB/s, so I tried to let the ssd connected from the boot up and i even installed mac os onto it but my mac wont let me boot from this device.

I have an Thunderbolt dock from aliexpress which converts my thunderbolt to pcie x4 and in this slot i got the pcie to u.3/u.2 adapter in it.

whereas on my Windows machine everything works out of the box, I use a nvme m.2 to u.2 adapter and extra psu


I'm Curious how did you managed to get the ssd to work on macos? I would like to rebuild this setup then.