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Cannot Boot Windows from SYBA PCI-E Card

Artric76

Artric76

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 11, 2018
22
16
Hello,

I am running a 2010 Mac Pro 2x2.66 12 core.

I recently added a Samsung 850 1TB drive where I installed Windows 10. It worked fine connected to the SATA2 connector, next to a Samsung 850 500GB drive where Mac OS is installed. In that configuration (utilizing the optical drive's connection for one of them), everything was working fine.

Now I have added the Syba SD-PEX40054 PCI-E card and connected both drives. Mac OS boots just fine. It can also read the data on the Windows 10 drive with no problems, but Windows will not boot. It simply hangs on the white screen with the Apple logo. I've waited 10+ minutes with no luck.

The drive does show when I hold down the ALT key to select the startup drive, or if I go into the Startup Disk area in Mac OS. Telling it to boot to it from either way doesn't work.

What can I do to fix this problem? PLEASE HELP!! :)
 
Last edited:
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I think most of the PCIe SATA 3 cards can't boot Windows on the cMP. In fact, the only card that I know can boot Windows are the Apricorn Velocity cards.
 
I don't have a direct link, but I read on here specifically that this card could boot Windows.
 
I might have misread. I'll have to find the post and link it here.
 
Ugh, for the life of me, I can't find the thread about it. Does it work on only 4,1 or something like that? Or older?
 
I believe so... I work with DCP files, encoding and creating playlists using a program called QubeMaster to create preshow entertainment (the ads and trivia, etc) seen before the movies.

The program can get really bogged down with all of the playlists for so many locations, and I'm hoping that this might be a bottleneck that would help me speed up my very slow process.
 
I have two Apricorn PCIe cards in my system right now - Velocity Solo X2 and Velocity Duo X2. I'm not sure if the Solo X1 has limitations over the Solo X2. Currently booting macOS (10.13.3) off the Solo X2 with an SSD. I have booted Windows in the past off Solo X2 card, but am not using Windows at all on this 5,1 machine currently. (Do not know if it STILL works with latest Windows.)
 
In my case, it doesn't seem to be booting an old Win 8 Partition that is on the 500GB drive shared with OSX either.

Isn't the Solo X2 limited to 400MB/s as it is PCIE x1? I could live with that if I had to. Is the Duo so limited in this case?
 
Artric76 said:
In my case, it doesn't seem to be booting an old Win 8 Partition that is on the 500GB drive shared with OSX either.

Isn't the Solo X2 limited to 400MB/s as it is PCIE x1? I could live with that if I had to. Is the Duo so limited in this case?
Click to expand...

These two charts may help a bit. The Solo X2 is a faster card than the X1. Uses a different chip and HAD limited compatibility when used at the same time as the Duo X2 until a firmware flash/update was made available. (Need to send in for service.) Originally I believe some went with a Solo X1 and Duo X2 to get around that?
 

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So looks like the Solo X2 will only run one of the two drives for me (only runs two drives in RAID, correct?) and I'd need to keep the SYBA card for Mac OS. The only issue is that I believe I'm out of PCI-E slots with my USB3 card, video card and the APPLE RAID card. I really need to archive the data and pull that thing out along with the old drives anyway.

Alternatively, the DUO X2 card would allow for both of my drives, right? But we're looking at around $90-$100 for the Solo and $150 for the Duo, ugh. It's a pain to get these kinds of things approved and from the outside (where they don't understand any of it) probably starting to look like a cash black hole. I am the type too where I just hate to keep asking for things, ugh ugh ugh.
 
The Apricorn DUO X2 can run two independent drives in macOS 10.13.3. Currently have that setup two Samsung EVO 850 1TB SSDs installed, each drive is independent (no RAID) and HFS+ format. Each drive gets about 470MB/s write & 490MB/s read when testing.

I cannot 100% confirm the DUO X2 is bootable with macOS 10.13.3 at the moment. It SHOULD be bootable and has been bootable in the past. Just not currently setup that way within my system. Booting off of the Apricorn SOLO X2 currently. That SSD gets around 465MB/s write & 480MB/s read when testing. (Minor speed difference is because it's the system drive.)
[doublepost=1516920222][/doublepost]Sorry, missed the SOLO X2 question at the top. You would need to supply power to a 2nd drive seperately. There probably is a way to get them to show up as seperate drives. (It's been a very long time since I've messed with that on the SOLO X2 card.)

This PDF is quite old, but probably helpful for the Solo X2:
https://www.apricorn.com/media/document/file/VelocitySolo_X2_QSG.pdf
https://www.apricorn.com/media/document/file/Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 Datasheet.pdf

Same ones for the Duo X2:
https://www.apricorn.com/media/document/file/velocity_duo_qsg.pdf
https://www.apricorn.com/media/document/file/Apricorn Velocity duo x2 Datasheet.pdf
 
Artric76 said:
I believe so... I work with DCP files, encoding and creating playlists using a program called QubeMaster to create preshow entertainment (the ads and trivia, etc) seen before the movies.

The program can get really bogged down with all of the playlists for so many locations, and I'm hoping that this might be a bottleneck that would help me speed up my very slow process.
Click to expand...

That's easy to know, monitor the SSD usage when you doing that operation. If it stick to ~250MB/s, then it is bottleneck by the SATA 2 speed.

Anyway, If you need some really fast storage, you may consider PCIe SSD. They are not natively bootable for Windows, but have work around (I didn't do that myself. I simply keep the SSD with the native SATA 2 port for best compatibility). You may search for the relevant thread, read that though, and decide if you want to go for it.

In order to reduce PCIe slot requirement, may be you can remove the RAID card, and use software RAID get you some high speed storage. So that, you may only need 4 PCIe slots.

4) USB 3.0
3) PCIe SSD
2) SATA 3
1) GPU

Or, you may try the same work around for your SATA 3 card. May be because your SSD now is consider external, therefore, it can't boot Windows. Use the Windows PE method may work.
 
h9826790 said:
That's easy to know, monitor the SSD usage when you doing that operation. If it stick to ~250MB/s, then it is bottleneck by the SATA 2 speed.

Anyway, If you need some really fast storage, you may consider PCIe SSD. They are not natively bootable for Windows, but have work around (I didn't do that myself. I simply keep the SSD with the native SATA 2 port for best compatibility). You may search for the relevant thread, read that though, and decide if you want to go for it.

In order to reduce PCIe slot requirement, may be you can remove the RAID card, and use software RAID get you some high speed storage. So that, you may only need 4 PCIe slots.

4) USB 3.0
3) PCIe SSD
2) SATA 3
1) GPU

Or, you may try the same work around for your SATA 3 card. May be because your SSD now is consider external, therefore, it can't boot Windows. Use the Windows PE method may work.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

Dumb question - how do I monitor the SSD usage in Windows 10?

Alternatively, if that doesn’t end up the bottleneck, what should I look at next to find the bottleneck? Obviously I can look at task manager for CPU or RAM.

Ugh this old program uses .NET and it sucks!
 
Artric76 said:
Thank you!

Dumb question - how do I monitor the SSD usage in Windows 10?

Alternatively, if that doesn’t end up the bottleneck, what should I look at next to find the bottleneck? Obviously I can look at task manager for CPU or RAM.

Ugh this old program uses .NET and it sucks!
Click to expand...

Task manager -> Performance -> disk
 
h9826790 said:
Task manager -> Performance -> disk
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for pointing this out to me!

I feel dumb and a little bit lazy for not figuring it out myself, but it turns out that the Disk speed has absolutely nothing to do with the huge wait time when the program loads all of my content (which is several minutes normally).

I'm seeing a single core (CPU2) being maxed out while the playlists and content load.

Ironically, they have this in their system requirements (which hasn't been updated in at least half a decade):

  • Intel Core i7 Processor 2.3 GHz or faster CPU (16-core Workstation with Dual Intel Xeon Processor E7s preferred)
Well, what are the other 15 cores needed for? It's just SAD!
 
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Artric76 said:
Thank you very much for pointing this out to me!

I feel dumb and a little bit lazy for not figuring it out myself, but it turns out that the Disk speed has absolutely nothing to do with the huge wait time when the program loads all of my content (which is several minutes normally).

I'm seeing a single core (CPU2) being maxed out while the playlists and content load.

Ironically, they have this in their system requirements (which hasn't been updated in at least half a decade):

  • Intel Core i7 Processor 2.3 GHz or faster CPU (16-core Workstation with Dual Intel Xeon Processor E7s preferred)
Well, what are the other 15 cores needed for? It's just SAD!
Click to expand...

The software may able to use multicores for some other operation, but seems not during the loading phase.
 
It's a common problem with many applications. Not enough were/are written to support dual CPUs (or GPUs) properly. Single processor with ultimate clock speed is (still) unfortunately what works best for many applications, regardless of what the OS supports. Load times are usually very CPU-based. I run into that bottleneck with video applications launching numerous plugins everytime they start.

The bandwith limitations of MacPro's with SSD speeds are (usually) the least of the bottleneck at the moment. If I could swap in a faster, more modern CPU tray into my MacPro5,1 the machine would absolutely get me through another 5+ years of use. (I know some upgrades are out there, but nothing that would give a drastic improvement over what is in there currently.)
 
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Very good info!

It looks like for me upgrading the two 2.66 to 3.46 will be priority. Additionally, a newer video card should help with Motion (I work in a lot of templates, etc and they can take FOREVER to even just edit text).
 
Artric76 said:
Hello,

I am running a 2010 Mac Pro 2x2.66 12 core.

I recently added a Samsung 850 1TB drive where I installed Windows 10. It worked fine connected to the SATA2 connector, next to a Samsung 850 500GB drive where Mac OS is installed. In that configuration (utilizing the optical drive's connection for one of them), everything was working fine.

Now I have added the Syba SD-PEX40054 PCI-E card and connected both drives. Mac OS boots just fine. It can also read the data on the Windows 10 drive with no problems, but Windows will not boot. It simply hangs on the white screen with the Apple logo. I've waited 10+ minutes with no luck.

The drive does show when I hold down the ALT key to select the startup drive, or if I go into the Startup Disk area in Mac OS. Telling it to boot to it from either way doesn't work.

What can I do to fix this problem? PLEASE HELP!! :)
Click to expand...
The card has to have the proper EFI support to emulate BIOS boot.
CalDigit FASTA Cards work for me botting Windows 10.
 
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