Basic Mac HD organization

[tsialex]

Hm. You know I’m not planning on upgrading to Mohave any time soon, right? I upgraded the CPU to 5,1 a few years ago and updated the firmware then. This still applies?

I was planning on just going all internal SSD in the bays. But the last minute I was convinced that going the PCIe Route was vastly faster. I still have those SSD for the bays . . . I had no idea it would be such a challenge beyond what I was already considering.

You can still use High Sierra, but you need the Mojave firmware update to boot from a NVMe blade, so the Mojave firmware upgrade requirements need to be followed.

That's the motive that I told you to read both threads first posts.

 

[machenryr]

Lol. Sad face.

 

[machenryr]

Ok. I might as well do it right.

 

[machenryr]

But this Mac is early 2009.
[doublepost=1557074952][/doublepost]The list of compatible MacPros indicates mid 2010. That's my OTHER MacPro. This one is early 2009. It happens to be my main Mac. I SUPPOSE push comes to shove I can switch them, but there was a reason I chose the older one. As I said I upgraded this to 5,1 3.46.

BTW my graphics card is ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB graphics. Not compatible.

 

[tsialex]

But this Mac is early 2009.
[doublepost=1557074952][/doublepost]The list of compatible MacPros indicates mid 2010. That's my OTHER MacPro. This one is early 2009. It happens to be my main Mac. I SUPPOSE push comes to shove I can switch them, but there was a reason I chose the older one. As I said I upgraded this to 5,1 3.46.

BTW my graphics card is ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB graphics. Not compatible.

Mac Pro early 2009 firmware upgraded to MP5,1 firmware and with METAL compatible video cards can run Mojave 10.14.4 full installer and then upgrade the BootROM to 141.0.0.0.0. After the BootROM upgrade your Mac Pro will have native support for NVMe blades.

Without 141.0.0.0.0 BootROM you can’t boot from NVMe.

 

[machenryr]

You can still use High Sierra, but you need the Mojave firmware update to boot from a NVMe blade, so the Mojave firmware upgrade requirements need to be followed.

That's the motive that I told you to read both threads first posts.

OK. I have all the elements now except the video card. Your comment above still has me a little confused. I scanned over the posts you indicated. I'll go back in a few. I had said I wanted to stay on Sierra if possible. But you said I can still use HIGH Sierra. So I think regardless to use the 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD card + aquacomputer M.2 cooling adaptor I have to do the bootROM bootloader 141.0.0.0 thing to make it NVMe - whatever that is. So it says "ONLY Sierra, HS and Mojave support NVMe drives." So what do I have to do for it to get recognized? I'm pretty sure the firmware upgrade I did a couple of years ago when I upgraded to 5,1 should be good enough. No?

 

[tsialex]

OK. I have all the elements now except the video card. Your comment above still has me a little confused. I scanned over the posts you indicated. I'll go back in a few. I had said I wanted to stay on Sierra if possible. But you said I can still use Sierra. So I think regardless to use the 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD card + aquacomputer M.2 cooling adaptor I have to do the bootROM bootloader 141.0.0.0 thing to make it NVMe - whatever that is. So it says "ONLY Sierra, HS and Mojave support NVMe drives." So what do I have to do for it to get recognized?

Sierra only works with M.2 blades that have 4KiB/sector. All Samsung blades are 512bytes/sector. So, no, Sierra won't work with a Samsung 970 EVO.

To make any NVMe device to work, you have to upgrade your Mac Pro firmware to at least BootROM 140.0.0.0.0 where Apple starts to support NVMe and use Sierra (for 4KiB/sector blades) or HighSierra/Mojave (for any blade).

So, you have to upgrade to the Mojave BootROM with a supported GPU, then you can go back to High Sierra, if you need.

All this info are in the first post of these threads:

Blade SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions)

I'm pretty sure the firmware upgrade I did a couple of years ago when I upgraded to 5,1 should be good enough. No?

No.

Apple started to support NVMe with MP5,1 October last year, with 10.14.1 firmware upgrades.
[doublepost=1557522557][/doublepost]Btw, anything that I wrote is only valid to MP5,1. Other Macs got NVMe support earlier.

 

[machenryr]

Ok. I got it to work under HighSierra. Thank you. Just to be clear, Sierra won’t recognize this drive at all, even after it’s working under HS installed in another SSD? I updated a 500 gb SSD that was Sierra. Kind of a test drive. Now the PCIe SSD is formatted. I booted from the Sierra drive and can’t see it. I’m just verifying. It’s not important.

Thank you.

 

[tsialex]

Ok. I got it to work under HighSierra. Thank you. Just to be clear, Sierra won’t recognize this drive at all, even after it’s working under HS installed in another SSD? I updated a 500 gb SSD that was Sierra. Kind of a test drive. Now the PCIe SSD is formatted. I booted from the Sierra drive and can’t see it. I’m just verifying. It’s not important.

Thank you.

Again, macOS Sierra only works with PCIe drives, M.2 or U.2, that have 4KiB/sectors.

Samsung M.2 consumer blades, like Samsung 970 EVO, are 512bytes/sector.

Samsung M.2 consumer blades can’t be modified for 4KiB sectors.

So, macOS Sierra won’t see or work with a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 blade.

You only can boot from a NVMe drive AFTER you upgrade your firmware to 140.0.0.0.0 or newer BootROM version.

 

[machenryr]

Got it. Thanks. Lol.