Can't Install OSX/Boot on Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro

[scottrichardson]

Hi all,

Some of you may have seen my thread about my Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro PCI Card with dual Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB drives in a RAID 0 array last week.

Well it WAS working fine. Then I had some issues (leave it at that for now as it digresses from the main issue).

I have reformatted and rebuilt the RAID 0 stripe.

But I cannot install OSX Mountain Lion on it. I load the installer from the saved 'InstallESD.dmg' and select the drive. It installs the necessary files into the RAID and then reboots. But sadly it simply reboots back into the existing boot volume and not the Sonnet/Samsung RAID.

I am stuck - this is my main workstation and I'm running out of ideas here (aside from just working on my existing old SSD).

Do I need to do something differently now that I am installing on a RAID?

Note, I previously had it working by doing a Carbon Copy Clone to the device. This time I wanted a fresh install as I feel CCC caused some corruption.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

UPDATED - RESOLVED!! After discussing my issue with Sonnet tech - they suggested to connect my 2 SSDs into the SATA 2 backplane of my mac pro, install OSX, then move the drives back to the PCI Card. Seems OSX Does NOT like installing on drives that are mounted on the PCI card. Sonnet Tech did say that you could just use CCC to clone the OS to the PCI mounted drives, although I was hesitant to do so as I'd experienced corruption previously using CCC.

Scott

 

[deconstruct60]

But I cannot install OSX Mountain Lion on it. I load the installer from the saved 'InstallESD.dmg' and select the drive. It installs the necessary files into the RAID and then reboots. But sadly it simply reboots back into the existing boot volume and not the Sonnet/Samsung RAID.

Is the existing boot drive marked as the start up drive? Or this is failing back over to the boot drive?

 

[scottrichardson]

Is the existing boot drive marked as the start up drive? Or this is failing back over to the boot drive?

The existing boot drive IS marked as the startup drive, AND it is failing back to itself as the RAID doesn't show up in Startup Disks as a selectable volume - which makes sense since it doesn't have OSX on it yet.

But the RAID is perfectly useable as a storage volume, ie: it's mounted and can be transferred to and from. It just feels like it's lost its 'bootability'? For lack of a better word.

 

[deconstruct60]

The existing boot drive IS marked as the startup drive, AND it is failing back to itself as the RAID doesn't show up in Startup Disks as a selectable volume - which makes sense since it doesn't have OSX on it yet.

You are not doing some kind of low level CCC copy? The system volume on the RAID drive may not be "blessed". ( Not sure but I don't think "blessed" is quite the same on a RAID versus single partition on single drive. )

The normal cloning process should mark it as a start up drive ("bless" it) at the end. (well SuperDuper does. I imagine CCC would too. ). if you did a normal ML install it would probably work.

 

[scottrichardson]

You are not doing some kind of low level CCC copy? The system volume on the RAID drive may not be "blessed". ( Not sure but I don't think "blessed" is quite the same on a RAID versus single partition on single drive. )

The normal cloning process should mark it as a start up drive ("bless" it) at the end. (well SuperDuper does. I imagine CCC would too. ). if you did a normal ML install it would probably work.

I'm not doing any cloning. I'm using Mountain Lion's installer to install a fresh copy of OSX onto the drive. While booted into my old SSD, I'm opening the InstallESD.dmg for mountain lion, and launching the installer and following the steps.

 

[justperry]

Hi all,

Some of you may have seen my thread about my Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro PCI Card with dual Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB drives in a RAID 0 array last week.

Well it WAS working fine. Then I had some issues (leave it at that for now as it digresses from the main issue).

I have reformatted and rebuilt the RAID 0 stripe.

But I cannot install OSX Mountain Lion on it. I load the installer from the saved 'InstallESD.dmg' and select the drive. It installs the necessary files into the RAID and then reboots. But sadly it simply reboots back into the existing boot volume and not the Sonnet/Samsung RAID.

I am stuck - this is my main workstation and I'm running out of ideas here (aside from just working on my existing old SSD).

Do I need to do something differently now that I am installing on a RAID?

Note, I previously had it working by doing a Carbon Copy Clone to the device. This time I wanted a fresh install as I feel CCC caused some corruption.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Scott

Where did you get the Installer, did you download ML from the Appstore, if so there is a high chance this will not work, many Mac's have custom OS installs, if you want yours to work you need to download it with Recovery and then force quit the installer.

You can read more about it here:

Create a bootable Lion install drive for newer Macs

Also works on ML.

 

[scottrichardson]

Where did you get the Installer, did you download ML from the Appstore, if so there is a high chance this will not work, many Mac's have custom OS installs, if you want yours to work you need to download it with Recovery and then force quit the installer.

I just downloaded it via the Mac App Store a few hours ago, yeah.

 

[justperry]

I just downloaded it via the Mac App Store a few hours ago, yeah.

You could check where it hangs if you boot verbose mode by holding the Command and V Keys.
This only works if you set the boot Volume first in startup disk, it won't work if you hold option first and choose the disk from there.

 

[deconstruct60]

I'm not doing any cloning. I'm using Mountain Lion's installer to install a fresh copy of OSX onto the drive. While booted into my old SSD, I'm opening the InstallESD.dmg for mountain lion, and launching the installer and following the steps.

And this "hosting" boot disk is latest version of OS X ? Re-Composing the software RAID set up with the latest Drive Utility may clean up an issue.

If the OS and system files are all on the drive but it just won't boot then open terminal and type

man bless

 

[Tesselator]

Place the installer on a thumb drive in the USB2 port and remove the interfering boot drive from the system till you're done.

After ML is installed then replace the boot drive and fire up the Migration.

No?

 

[scottrichardson]

You could check where it hangs if you boot verbose mode by holding the Command and V Keys.
This only works if you set the boot Volume first in startup disk, it won't work if you hold option first and choose the disk from there.

Can't - I can't select anything but the existing boot drive. The raid array is not an option.

----------

And this "hosting" boot disk is latest version of OS X ? Re-Composing the software RAID set up with the latest Drive Utility may clean up an issue.

If the OS and system files are all on the drive but it just won't boot then open terminal and type

man bless

OK well right now I am back in recovery mode downloading it again and installing specifically on the Raid - which is showed as an available installation location. Worth nothing I HAVE ALREADY done this once, which resulted it my Mac shutting down every time it attempted to boot using the RAID.

I'll try the man bless method if it fails. Many thanks for your advice!

----------

Place the installer on a thumb drive in the USB2 port and remove the interfering boot drive from the system till you're done.

After ML is installed then replace the boot drive and fire up the Migration.

No?

I'm currently using recovery mode to download/install onto the RAID directly. As noted above, it's my 2nd attempt at this. So we'll see. Last time the MP would just shut down after it finished the grey boot screen

 

[justperry]

I'll try the man bless method if it fails. Many thanks for your advice!

Bless Man is OK if you understand all the mumbo jumbo, here is the command to use:

bless --folder=/System/Library/CoreServices --file=/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi --setBoot

But, this for the boot Volume, if you want to bless the Raid and are booted from a different Volume you have to add the Volume name first.

So

bless --folder=/volumes/****/System/Library/CoreServices --file=/volumes/****/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi --setBoot

(All in one command, it shows as two lines here but it's 1 line)

**** = the disk name, example backupdrive.

 

[scottrichardson]

Bless Man is OK if you understand all the mumbo jumbo, here is the command to use:

bless --folder=/System/Library/CoreServices --file=/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi --setBoot

But, this for the boot Volume, if you want to bless the Raid and are booted from a different Volume you have to add the Volume name first.

So

bless --folder=/volumes/****/System/Library/CoreServices --file=/volumes/****/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi --setBoot

(All in one command, it shows as two lines here but it's 1 line)

**** = the disk name, example backupdrive.

OK - this is very useful. Thank you so much. Let's see how I go once the installer finishes downloading/installing in about 2 hours. I'll try this in terminal if it installs but won't bless it or add it as a selectable startup disk.

 

[justperry]

OK - this is very useful. Thank you so much. Let's see how I go once the installer finishes downloading/installing in about 2 hours. I'll try this in terminal if it installs but won't bless it or add it as a selectable startup disk.

Just let it finish and if all is OK you don't need any command, by default it should be OK and boot into the new Install.

Wish I could download and finish in 2-3 hours, it will take 4-5 days on my currently throttled connection.

 

[scottrichardson]

Just let it finish and if all is OK you don't need any command, by default it should be OK and boot into the new Install.

Wish I could download and finish in 2-3 hours, it will take 4-5 days on my currently throttled connection.

And here I was complaining to my DSL provider that my link had dropped from 12 to 8MBit/sec.

Thanks again. I'll report my results when I wake up in the morning (Australia here).

 

[scottrichardson]

Ergh. So. It's not good.

I just woke up (couldn't sleep as I was worried about this), to find that the installation had failed.

It offered me a restart button, but when I did, it started the installer again - which failed again.

I went into disk utility (via the installer) and verified the slices AND the main raid stripe volume and all was green and OK. BUT if I still went and repaired the raid volume, it came up saying it could not be repaired/corrupted.

STRANGELY, ifI reboot into my old SSD and run disk utility repair on the RAID, it's all fine.

Out of interest - could it be because I have flashed my mac's firmware from a 4.1 to a 5.1? (is a 2009 model flashed to behave like a 2010 model).

I have uploaded a screen shot, along with an installer log I was able to find - maybe someone smarter than me me be able to see what the issue is?

Scott

 

[scottrichardson]

UPDATE!!

Just got off the phone to Sonnet Tech.

He said that they also encountered the issue.

Instead - either use CCC to move the bootable OS to the RAID.

OR - connect both drives to the SATA2 backplane - do the RAID... and run the installer while they're connected to the native backplane. Once installed, move them to the PCI card.

Gonna try now!

UPDATE 2 - SUCCESS - I have done a fresh OSX install on the RAID while the 2 x samsungs were connected to my SATA2 backplane. Now going to power down and put the SSDs back onto the sonnet card

 

[mokeiko]

UPDATE!!

Just got off the phone to Sonnet Tech.

He said that they also encountered the issue.

Instead - either use CCC to move the bootable OS to the RAID.

OR - connect both drives to the SATA2 backplane - do the RAID... and run the installer while they're connected to the native backplane. Once installed, move them to the PCI card.

Gonna try now!

UPDATE 2 - SUCCESS - I have done a fresh OSX install on the RAID while the 2 x samsungs were connected to my SATA2 backplane. Now going to power down and put the SSDs back onto the sonnet card

The tension is killing me, post back the results asap and good luck

mokeiko

 

[scottrichardson]

UPDATE 3 - MORE SUCCESS!! - I placed the Samsung SSDs back onto the Sonnet PCI Card, rebooted, and voila! All working perfectly.

Humming along perfectly at the moment - fresh OS X install, RAID 0, on the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro PCI Card.

So Sonnet's technique worked. Seems OS X does NOT like installing onto drives while seated in the PCI Card.

 

[justperry]

UPDATE 3 - MORE SUCCESS!! - I placed the Samsung SSDs back onto the Sonnet PCI Card, rebooted, and voila! All working perfectly.

Humming along perfectly at the moment - fresh OS X install, RAID 0, on the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro PCI Card.

So Sonnet's technique worked. Seems OS X does NOT like installing onto drives while seated in the PCI Card.

Good you solved it, so essentially you connected them to the SATA connectors, installed OS X and then put them back on the PCI card.
It's a shame it isn't as easy as a couple of years ago, lots of problems with their latest OS. (10.8.3)

 

[scottrichardson]

Good you solved it, so essentially you connected them to the SATA connectors, installed OS X and then put them back on the PCI card. It's a shame it isn't as easy as a couple of years ago, lots of problems with their latest OS. (10.8.3)

Yep that's it. To be honest the first time I attempted to install OSX onto the RAID, even while it was on the SATA2 backplane, it rebooted back into the normal SSD drive without actually installing. 2nd attempt it worked. Go figure.

Also, it appears this fresh install has fixed some issues I was having, namely:

- wake from sleep wasn't working with my GeForce GTX 660Ti 2GB GPU
- hot corner activate screen saver wasn't working
- time machine was failing every time

Those problems are now fixed and the system seems to be flying nicely now.

 

[MacProFreak]

Same thing happened to me with two 840 Pros on apricorn x2 boards. I had to install OS-X using the bay #1. I also put the other one on bay #2 and put Win 7 on it using bootcamp. After it was all done and with all updates on both OS, I moved the SSDs back to apricorns and it boots fine.

Sometimes the EFI loses its "footing" and Win 7 won't boot. But OS-X always boots fine through the apricorn x2.

 

[soccerfreakpete]

Originally Posted by scottrichardson UPDATE 3 - MORE SUCCESS!! - I placed the Samsu

Hi,

I am new to this forum, and wanted to ask anyone who has the knowledge for help. I have a Samsung SSD 256gb already as my boot up for my OSX in my HardDrive Bay 1. I also have 3 other HD internal sata drives installed as well. I just got the Sonnet Tempo Pro and bought myself the same exact Samsung SSD 256gb from another guy and wanted to mount those guys on the Sonnet Tempo Pro board....

Question I have is...If i have already been using my Samsung 256gb SSD as my bootup which is already installed in my Harddrive Bay 1...Would i need to take that out, Clone it, and then do the same procedure as ScottRichardson did? Will this mean I need to reformat my current bootup Sonnet Tempo Pro, back it up on another drive (this currently has all my softwares installed on it)...and then install both OSX onto each Samsung SSD drives I have? I was a bit lost only because I wanted to now take out my existing SSD Drive that has been performing as my Boot, only to take it out so it can be used with another 256 gb SSD (same exact one) to use for the Sonnet Tempo Pro device, what would be the best way to make this product work? Sorry for the long post, just wanted to make sure so I dont lose anything important, would greatly appreciate any help. Thank you all.

 

[scottrichardson]

Hi,

I am new to this forum, and wanted to ask anyone who has the knowledge for help. I have a Samsung SSD 256gb already as my boot up for my OSX in my HardDrive Bay 1. I also have 3 other HD internal sata drives installed as well. I just got the Sonnet Tempo Pro and bought myself the same exact Samsung SSD 256gb from another guy and wanted to mount those guys on the Sonnet Tempo Pro board....

Question I have is...If i have already been using my Samsung 256gb SSD as my bootup which is already installed in my Harddrive Bay 1...Would i need to take that out, Clone it, and then do the same procedure as ScottRichardson did? Will this mean I need to reformat my current bootup Sonnet Tempo Pro, back it up on another drive (this currently has all my softwares installed on it)...and then install both OSX onto each Samsung SSD drives I have? I was a bit lost only because I wanted to now take out my existing SSD Drive that has been performing as my Boot, only to take it out so it can be used with another 256 gb SSD (same exact one) to use for the Sonnet Tempo Pro device, what would be the best way to make this product work? Sorry for the long post, just wanted to make sure so I dont lose anything important, would greatly appreciate any help. Thank you all.

Do you want to run the 2 x SSD in RAID 0? If yes, then you need to mount both SSDs in the standard hard drive bays, RAID them together, then install OSX, THEN remount them on the Sonnet Card.

If you do NOT want RAID, and just want two separate drives on the Sonnet, then you don't need to do anything fancy. Just move the existing drive to the Sonnet and it will continue to work, and mount the new drive to it and you can format it as needed.

It's only when using RAID that you need to first do it all in the standard drive bays.

Hope this helps

 

[soccerfreakpete]

Scott,

Greatly appreciate your quick response! I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing before I end up messing things up big time and lose a lot of data...Phew...great to know you have such great knowledge on this, I am so thankful for that. Last question...when you mean RAID'ing them as a drive...is it better to use them as a RAID drive? My main purpose of getting this device was so that I can use this as my boot drive...From what I read, and heard about this product was that it doubles the standard SSD boot off the ESATA 3.5 chassis by a lot more, if using the Sonnet Tempo Pro....I am not to familiar with using any sort of RAID format, and knowing everything is based on personal choice...What is the difference formatting it like a RAID like what you did, versus using it as a bootup (like how I mentioned and you responded)?

Instead of adding more to this thread, is there a email I can contact you directly through? Or does this MacForum have a message center where i can just post this to you? Feel free to let me know when you have time.