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MP 1,1-5,1 M2 sata3 ssd problem with Macpro5.1

K

Krisz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 11, 2018
110
9
Hungary
Hello!
I have a problem with the SSD mentioned in the title
I bought a Silicon Power M2 2280 SATA3 A55 SSD
And an Axagon SATA2.5/Sata M2 SSD adapter
The problem is that I installed the Monterey system on this SSD and the computer froze several times during the installation
Then I managed to finish the installation with great difficulty
It loads the system but after a certain time the system freezes
For example, when I start a movie with VLC player, the image stops after a while and starts after a few seconds or there are times when the whole system freezes and I have to restart the computer
The interesting thing is that this problem did not occur during YouTube
I used YouTube for several hours without any problems
It's like the write/read process freezes or the SSD disconnects
The ssd and adapter are both brand new
Is it possible that the Mac Pro is not compatible
with the m2 ssd or the adapter?
Or would there be a problem with the open core setting?

If anyone knows a solution to this problem, please write it

thanks in advance
 
In the Mac Pro world, it is like running on an empty High Way. If you stay inside the boundaries, you will never ever find any problems. Outside those boundaries you will experience pain. When it comes to SSD and adapters, there are the usual suspects (Sonnet, OWC, Calldigit, Startech, HighPoint ...) that are 100% known to work as mentioned in the sticky thread about SSD,HDD and Pcie Adapters.
In your case, you have chosen "less known" China brands that are, .. kind of unknown. The reason those no-name brands can offer lower price points is missing certifications, missing compatibility, missing drivers, and dirt cheap components, nailed together in some Chinese sweat shops in the middle of nowhere, far away from law and justice.
On top of that, you have picked a SSD M2 SATA format that has never been used in any Mac. In the SSD world, there was only SATA and AHCI blades at first that used SATA drivers, till Apple decided to unlock the NVME capabilities.
Apple proprietary solutions are just versions mentioned above with changed connector. (Because Apple messed up the MP6.1 and the 7.1 took too long to introduce to the market, it forced them to enhance the old girl 5.1) After the AHCI blades the new NVME blades have been introduced. Your SATA M2 version was introduced somewhat later, because of some odd legacy tech that demanded SATA compatibility but could not work with AHCI controllers or NVME. So apart from the china no name thing, this could als be the culprit as well, because SATA M2 is the weirdo tech in a sense. Most likely your Mac Pro has some problems with the SATA driver stack because it works great with AHCI and NVME. The M2 SATA blade is somehow an in-between tech artifact for a special niche market, that on top has never been approved or blessed by Apple to function properly on the Mac Pro platform. Can you send it back or trade it in for something like a Samsung NVMI blade with Pcie adapter?

So, how to diagnose the Black Sheep component?

I assume, the SSD is the higher probability to be the trouble maker. You first would need to swap parts and see how the system behaves after swiping. It would be best to have several different M2 SATA SSD brands on hand to compare. Problem is, you most likely do not have any different components to do a proper comparison test or multiple adapters?
Check out the internet to read about this problem and find someone who has a similar Mac with a similar M2 SATA upgrade experience. Maybe I am wrong and Apple used the M2 SATA short blade in some kind of Apple laptop or Mac mini in some slightly changed fashion. Blogs about those components may hint at the drivers you would need to have a hassle free experience. Sorry that I can not help you further with this problem.
 
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AlexMaximus said:
In the Mac Pro world, it is like running on an empty High Way. If you stay inside the boundaries, you will never ever find any problems. Outside those boundaries you will experience pain. When it comes to SSD and adapters, there are the usual suspects (Sonnet, OWC, Calldigit, Startech, HighPoint ...) that are 100% known to work as mentioned in the sticky thread about SSD,HDD and Pcie Adapters.
In your case, you have chosen "less known" China brands that are, .. kind of unknown. The reason those no-name brands can offer lower price points is missing certifications, missing compatibility, missing drivers, and dirt cheap components, nailed together in some Chinese sweat shops in the middle of nowhere, far away from law and justice.
On top of that, you have picked a SSD M2 SATA format that has never been used in any Mac. In the SSD world, there was only SATA and AHCI blades at first that used SATA drivers, till Apple decided to unlock the NVME capabilities.
Apple proprietary solutions are just versions mentioned above with changed connector. (Because Apple messed up the MP6.1 and the 7.1 took too long to introduce to the market, it forced them to enhance the old girl 5.1) After the AHCI blades the new NVME blades have been introduced. Your SATA M2 version was introduced somewhat later, because of some odd legacy tech that demanded SATA compatibility but could not work with AHCI controllers or NVME. So apart from the china no name thing, this could als be the culprit as well, because SATA M2 is the weirdo tech in a sense. Most likely your Mac Pro has some problems with the SATA driver stack because it works great with AHCI and NVME. The M2 SATA blade is somehow an in-between tech artifact for a special niche market, that on top has never been approved or blessed by Apple to function properly on the Mac Pro platform. Can you send it back or trade it in for something like a Samsung NVMI blade with Pcie adapter?

So, how to diagnose the Black Sheep component?

I assume, the SSD is the higher probability to be the trouble maker. You first would need to swap parts and see how the system behaves after swiping. It would be best to have several different M2 SATA SSD brands on hand to compare. Problem is, you most likely do not have any different components to do a proper comparison test or multiple adapters?
Check out the internet to read about this problem and find someone who has a similar Mac with a similar M2 SATA upgrade experience. Maybe I am wrong and Apple used the M2 SATA short blade in some kind of Apple laptop or Mac mini in some slightly changed fashion. Blogs about those components may hint at the drivers you would need to have a hassle free experience. Sorry that I can not help you further with this problem.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the help!

Unfortunately I got this for cheap and since the MacPro5.1 is becoming less and less usable, it's not really worth spending a lot on it anymore
I'm going to try to sell the m2 ssd and buy a Samsung 870 evo SSD instead, I'm sure there won't be any problems with that
Unfortunately, since the Monterey+ system can no longer be installed on the MacPro 5.1 with an rx6600xt card, and Windows 11 can no longer be used, it is no longer worth spending any more money on this machine.
If I manage to save up the money, I'll buy a 2019 MacPro and there won't be any problems installing Windows 11 and the newer OSX whithout opencore
Unfortunately, Microsoft and Apple killed the MacPro5.1, which is a shame because it is still a very powerful machine.
 
One way to lengthen your life of the MP5.1 one more time would be to sell your AMD RX6600XT card and get a used VEGA VII card together with Pixlas mod cable. It's really simple to install and you can run Sonoma as well as Sequoia on it. All of a sudden your 5.1 has 3 more years left in it. That's what I did about a year ago. I used to have a very nice and unique AMD RX6800XT dual slot card in my 5.1 (from an Alienware Aurora Tower). Unfortunately I experienced the same problem as you do right now, so I was forced as you to sell this baby off to France. :):)
But I got lucky as I always do with this computer, and got a shiny new Vega VII Pro Workstation card from East Europe, brand new and still wrapped for 350. Outstanding card for Sonoma. I had the same thought regarding the 7.1 but I will indeed skip the 2019 tower.

By the way, this guy here down below is looking for exactly a card like you have:

 
AlexMaximus said:
One way to lengthen your life of the MP5.1 one more time would be to sell your AMD RX6600XT card and get a used VEGA VII card together with Pixlas mod cable. It's really simple to install and you can run Sonoma as well as Sequoia on it. All of a sudden your 5.1 has 3 more years left in it. That's what I did about a year ago. I used to have a very nice and unique AMD RX6800XT dual slot card in my 5.1 (from an Alienware Aurora Tower). Unfortunately I experienced the same problem as you do right now, so I was forced as you to sell this baby off to France. :):)
But I got lucky as I always do with this computer, and got a shiny new Vega VII Pro Workstation card from East Europe, brand new and still wrapped for 350. Outstanding card for Sonoma. I had the same thought regarding the 7.1 but I will indeed skip the 2019 tower.

By the way, this guy here down below is looking for exactly a card like you have:

Click to expand...
The problem is that VegaVII would be a very big drop in performance compared to the rx6600xt
The Sonoma isn't worth enough for me to part with the 6600.
There's a game I'd like to start somehow, supposedly there's a fix for it, but I haven't been able to do it yet(Until Dawn Remake)
If I have time I'll give it another try and that game requires the rx 6600xt
There were games for which even the rx6600xt was a bit weak.
A few years ago, the Vega VII was a very powerful card, but unfortunately, if you sometimes want to play new games, the performance of the Vega VII is no longer enough.
I also use video editing programs and that requires the rx6600xt.
 
Krisz said:
The problem is that VegaVII would be a very big drop in performance compared to the rx6600xt
The Sonoma isn't worth enough for me to part with the 6600.
There's a game I'd like to start somehow, supposedly there's a fix for it, but I haven't been able to do it yet(Until Dawn Remake)
If I have time I'll give it another try and that game requires the rx 6600xt
There were games for which even the rx6600xt was a bit weak.
A few years ago, the Vega VII was a very powerful card, but unfortunately, if you sometimes want to play new games, the performance of the Vega VII is no longer enough.
I also use video editing programs and that requires the rx6600xt.
Click to expand...
It’s of course your decision. Of course my past RX6800xt was faster, but I am really very happy with my VegaVII. The only card that runs Sonoma and Sequoa is a slower Vega56/64 or the old rx580. And compared to that the VegaVII with 16GB VRAM is real great. I doubt that the difference in reality is so big between the 6600 and a VegaVII.
 
AlexMaximus said:
It’s of course your decision. Of course my past RX6800xt was faster, but I am really very happy with my VegaVII. The only card that runs Sonoma and Sequoa is a slower Vega56/64 or the old rx580. And compared to that the VegaVII with 16GB VRAM is real great. I doubt that the difference in reality is so big between the 6600 and a VegaVII.
Click to expand...
I don't know how much sense it makes to force a newer system than Monterey to 5.1
unfortunately future applications will no longer run on old xeon processors
Until they made AVX a requirement, I was thinking about getting an RX6800XT card
but unfortunately it doesn't make sense anymore and I don't think there's much chance that they'll somehow fix the MacPro's AVX deficiency in the future
so I'll use 5.1 as long as I can and then either get a 2019 MacPro or be forced to use a PC
The rx6600xt beats the radeonVII by 10 fps on average
This isn't that much when a game reaches 60 fps with the rx6600xt, but when the 6600 barely reaches playable speeds, the radeonVII proves to be insufficient.
Anyway, the RadeonVII is not a bad card and if someone doesn't want to use it for serious games, it can still be used very well today.
 
Krisz said:
)

Thanks for the help!

Unfortunately I got this for cheap and since the MacPro5.1 is becoming less and less usable, it's not really worth spending a lot on it anymore
I'm going to try to sell the m2 ssd and buy a Samsung 870 evo SSD instead, I'm sure there won't be any problems with that
Unfortunately, since the Monterey+ system can no longer be installed on the MacPro 5.1 with an rx6600xt card, and Windows 11 can no longer be used, it is no longer worth spending any more money on this machine.
If I manage to save up the money, I'll buy a 2019 MacPro and there won't be any problems installing Windows 11 and the newer OSX whithout opencore
Unfortunately, Microsoft and Apple killed the MacPro5.1, which is a shame because it is still a very powerful machine.
Click to expand...
870 is a problem for mac pro 5,1 what you want is the 860 evo. The 870 will save normally but as a main macos drive you will have problems cold booting into it. take that under critical advisement.
 
Krisz said:
Hello!
I have a problem with the SSD mentioned in the title
I bought a Silicon Power M2 2280 SATA3 A55 SSD
And an Axagon SATA2.5/Sata M2 SSD adapter
The problem is that I installed the Monterey system on this SSD and the computer froze several times during the installation
Then I managed to finish the installation with great difficulty
It loads the system but after a certain time the system freezes
For example, when I start a movie with VLC player, the image stops after a while and starts after a few seconds or there are times when the whole system freezes and I have to restart the computer
The interesting thing is that this problem did not occur during YouTube
I used YouTube for several hours without any problems
It's like the write/read process freezes or the SSD disconnects
Click to expand...
Before buying more hardware, you might check your SSD adapter's silicon heatsink pad(s). See if you forgot to remove a plastic film.

It sounds like a heat problem. YouTube streams from the internet, so it wouldn't stress your storage. If your movie was a file stored on your SSD, playback requires steady file access. And an OS installation requires sustained random writes.

So while it could be your SSD type, it could also be a single missed step during the install process. Worth checking before spending more money.
 
MrScratchHook said:
870 is a problem for mac pro 5,1 what you want is the 860 evo. The 870 will save normally but as a main macos drive you will have problems cold booting into it. take that under critical advisement.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing this with me
Then I will avoid the 870 Evo SSD
 
reader50 said:
Before buying more hardware, you might check your SSD adapter's silicon heatsink pad(s). See if you forgot to remove a plastic film.

It sounds like a heat problem. YouTube streams from the internet, so it wouldn't stress your storage. If your movie was a file stored on your SSD, playback requires steady file access. And an OS installation requires sustained random writes.

So while it could be your SSD type, it could also be a single missed step during the install process. Worth checking before spending more money.
Click to expand...
Thanks
I didn't know that SSDs also needed cooling
I thought you only needed it for the nvme ssd
I've managed to sell it and now I want a 2.5 SSD instead
 
A 2.5" SATA SSD does not need specific cooling. I've never seen one with a heatsink.

Any kind of M.2 stick needs cooling. Some come with an attached heatsink, most depend on the adapter they're installed into. Without cooling, it will operate at very slow speeds to prevent overheating. I could see crashing happening here.
 
reader50 said:
A 2.5" SATA SSD does not need specific cooling. I've never seen one with a heatsink.

Any kind of M.2 stick needs cooling. Some come with an attached heatsink, most depend on the adapter they're installed into. Without cooling, it will operate at very slow speeds to prevent overheating. I could see crashing happening here.
Click to expand...
I won't experiment with the M2.SSD anymore! It wouldn't have much advantage over a normal SSD anyway, maybe the Trim
but who knows if Mac5.1 and MacOS can use it?
 
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