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Apricorn velocity and Bootcamp

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Modplod

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 24, 2013
24
0
Northern California
I have searched the forums and have not found a scenario that matches mine....or I am just an idiot and deserve your sympathy and not your contempt

Anyway

I have a Mac Pro 3.1, Octo core 2.8. 16 gb and 2 74 gb raptors in raid 0

I want to get an ssd.....and would like to get the apricorn velocity x1 so I can get sata 3 speeds....first of all is it worth the money?

And. I have win 7 on another drive boot camped with snow leopard

Will I have problems booting win 7 with the apricorn product?

Thx for any help
 
R

riggles

macrumors 6502
Dec 2, 2013
301
14
I went thru this over the weekend. Boot Camp Assistant wouldn't create a partition on my Solo x1 SSD. I had to get an old backup HDD before I had success. Both of my optical bays are filled, otherwise I would have connected the SSD there, and I'm pretty sure it would've gone thru fine.
 
J

jenzjen

macrumors 68000
Aug 20, 2010
1,734
6
riggles said:
I went thru this over the weekend. Boot Camp Assistant wouldn't create a partition on my Solo x1 SSD. I had to get an old backup HDD before I had success. Both of my optical bays are filled, otherwise I would have connected the SSD there, and I'm pretty sure it would've gone thru fine.
Click to expand...

You have to boot camp while the SSD is connected to a normal drive bay, and once Windows is installed, boot into Windows with an empty solo installed in the machine. Then, you can move the SSD onto the PCI but you'll need a video card that gives you boot screens because upon restart, your machine will not be able to find the boot disk.
 
B

bin90a

macrumors member
Jun 10, 2014
37
1
Melbourne, Australia
Some similar experiences here with a Solo X1 card. Have been having fun mucking around upgrading a 5.1 MP now dual 2.93GHz hex core, 36GB ram, USB3 that sort of stuff.

I now have a cheap Apricorn Velocity Solo X1 PCIe card and a 500GB Samsung EVO SSD, so I am trying to see what I can achieve with SSD. Firstly, no problems with the drive in a sled, cloned the boot drive, so its boots OSX fine as you would expect. Transferred it the the Solo card and it boots there as well. All good, with speeds around the high 300 MB/s mark. So tried Bootcamp and Bootcamp doesn't even see the SSD drive for the purposes of partitioning. So, back in a sled and installed Bootcamp and W7 there and it boots ok, again as you would expect, but not as fast as SATAIII. Installed it back in the Solo card as is and both boot partitions are available at power on, boots into OSX ok, but BSOD with W7.

So, might be an AHCI thing, might need to try W8.1 even. Maybe I keep a single OSX boot SSD in the SOLO and go to another SSD in a sled as a single Bootcamp partition as I don't want to use Windows that much. Maybe I wait for a DUO :) :)
 
hfg

hfg

macrumors 68040
Dec 1, 2006
3,621
312
Cedar Rapids, IA. USA
bin90a said:
Some similar experiences here with a Solo X1 card. Have been having fun mucking around upgrading a 5.1 MP now dual 2.93GHz hex core, 36GB ram, USB3 that sort of stuff.

I now have a cheap Apricorn Velocity Solo X1 PCIe card and a 500GB Samsung EVO SSD, so I am trying to see what I can achieve with SSD. Firstly, no problems with the drive in a sled, cloned the boot drive, so its boots OSX fine as you would expect. Transferred it the the Solo card and it boots there as well. All good, with speeds around the high 300 MB/s mark. So tried Bootcamp and Bootcamp doesn't even see the SSD drive for the purposes of partitioning. So, back in a sled and installed Bootcamp and W7 there and it boots ok, again as you would expect, but not as fast as SATAIII. Installed it back in the Solo card as is and both boot partitions are available at power on, boots into OSX ok, but BSOD with W7.

So, might be an AHCI thing, might need to try W8.1 even. Maybe I keep a single OSX boot SSD in the SOLO and go to another SSD in a sled as a single Bootcamp partition as I don't want to use Windows that much. Maybe I wait for a DUO :) :)
Click to expand...

While you had your BootCamp installation running in a sled, did you also have the Solo card installed in one of the PCIe slots? That may be necessary for Windows to install a driver needed for the card, and once the driver is in place, you might be able to successfully move the SSD over to the Solo card and have it boot. I think even the bare card is all it takes for Windows to see "new hardware" and load the drivers.

What other PCI cards do you have installed?

I initially was unable to get Windows running on a Solo x2 card, but in retrospect I believe it was a conflict with another eSATA card in my system. I have since replaced the eSATA card with a USB 3.0 card ... and now Windows is happily booting from my Solo x2 card.
 
B

bin90a

macrumors member
Jun 10, 2014
37
1
Melbourne, Australia
hfg,

Thanks for your comments. I did notice a mention of keeping the card in the PCIe slot when booting Windows from the sled. I didn't do that but I will try later today.

I seem to be spending a bit of time installing and uninstalling PCIe cards!! :D :D

I have an Orico PME-4U 4 port USB3 card plus the original 5770 GPU. The Orico card is working fine but not sure if it affects the Apricorn.

cheers, Malcolm
 
NOTNlCE

NOTNlCE

macrumors 65816
Oct 11, 2013
1,087
476
Baltimore, MD
Back when I first bought my Solo x1, Windows 7 would immediately BSoD when I had the card in ANY PCIe lane. Even install discs would crash, so I was forced to use Windows 8. I believe there is a difference in the way that Windows handles the AHCI drivers that allows 8 to function properly with the card installed, but not 7. Man, I do miss Windows 7, but having OS X on a 6Gbps SSD is worth it.
 
B

bin90a

macrumors member
Jun 10, 2014
37
1
Melbourne, Australia
Well, put the SSD drive back in the sled and left the empty Solo X1 in the PCIe slot and rebooted. Windows loaded something called ATA Channel 1 drivers and then updated, rebooted and shutdown. Transferred the SSD drive to the Solo, and voila, it now boots in W7 and OSX. This post is coming via MS IE11!!

So, it seems I now have OSX and W7 booting from SSD in the PCIe/SATAIII space, which is pretty much what I was after. Just need to get a couple of data HDD now and we are pretty much set.

All good so far, although minor glitch as I can't seem to get the trackpad to work, it was working under W7 earlier before it downloaded a gazillion updates. :D:D

----------

ok now, trackpad is back on-line :):)
 
Last edited:
O

omvs

macrumors 6502
May 15, 2011
495
20
bin90a said:
Well, put the SSD drive back in the sled and left the empty Solo X1 in the PCIe slot and rebooted. Windows loaded something called ATA Channel 1 drivers and then updated, rebooted and shutdown. Transferred the SSD drive to the Solo, and voila, it now boots in W7 and OSX. This post is coming via MS IE11!!
...
Click to expand...

Was anything else necessary to get this to work on W7pro? I've tried this technique and when the SSD is in the Solo X1 I get a black screen and a can't-find-any-bootable-drives (or something to that effect). I do have a second PCIE sata controller for drives in the optical bay, but I'm pretty sure I removed it once as a test and it didn't help.

I had similar problems with I wincloned from my old 240G ssd to a new 480G - ended up having to redo the bootcamp install. I'm somewhat resigned to just running the drive off the motherboard's sata channels for now, but thought I'd ask incase i was being dumb....
 
B

bin90a

macrumors member
Jun 10, 2014
37
1
Melbourne, Australia
No, it was pretty much as I said. I loaded W7 on the SSD in the sled (Bootcamp could see the drive), and it booted ok from there, but initially it wasn't working when I put it back into the PCIe card. Nor could Bootcamp see the SSD drive in the PCIe card. I then kept the SSD in the sled and installed the empty PCIe card and rebooted into W7 off the SSD. I then did a setup off the drivers on the usb stick and it then recognised the (empty) PCIe card loading some new driver files. All I did then was put the SSD back in the PCIe card and could then boot into W7 from there perfectly.

Hope this helps
 
M

Modplod

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 24, 2013
24
0
Northern California
Well I eventually bought the velocity solo and a crucial 240 gb ssd

Did a fresh install and found my speeds were no faster than on the sata 2 controller....
 
h9826790

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,614
8,546
Hong Kong
Modplod said:
Well I eventually bought the velocity solo and a crucial 240 gb ssd

Did a fresh install and found my speeds were no faster than on the sata 2 controller....
Click to expand...

You mean you can't feel the difference, or the speed test shows no faster than SATA 2?
 
hfg

hfg

macrumors 68040
Dec 1, 2006
3,621
312
Cedar Rapids, IA. USA
bin90a said:
My Blackmagic speed test results are about 355MB/s read and 385MB/s write. From memory, my card is in slot 3 in my 5.1
Click to expand...

The slot doesn't matter with the 4,1 and newer Mac Pros, all of them are PCIe ver. 2.0. The 2008 3,1 Mac Pro unfortunately has a mixed bus speed which is easily forgotten when inserting cards.
 
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