NVME Bootable Support without modding ANYTHING sort of....

[calmasacow]

Ok so after looking at all of the voodoo that was being required to make NVME bootable I found a work around and it is super easy with High Sierra. the solution as it turns out is actually pretty cool!

I bought the LT whatever it is call PCI-e NVME adapter card on amazon and got a Samsung EVO 960 500GB SSD. I couldn't get it to boot I could install to it but I never could get it to boot. After doing some research I found that it wasn't bootable without a lot fo firmware hacking stuff that was WAY more complicated than I was comfortable with. Anyway one of the comments thought sparked an idea. it was about using a SATA SSD to boot because those systems started earlier in the Boot rom before the NVME was active. I Though about it and wondered if I used coreStorage and created a Fusion Drive would it force the loading of the NVME. Well it works!
I have a 1.5TB fusion drive that is booting and running at the full advertise speeds of the NVME when I test it with BlackMagic Speed Tester

Just when you boot your USB installer open the terminal and follow the instructions

https://www.macworld.com/article/2014011/storage-drives/how-to-make-your-own-fusion-drive.html

Once you have the Fusion drive created click "install new copy of OSX" and select the fusion drive!

Now I have space and speed!

 

[tsialex]

Yep, Fusion drives will work if you don't want to inject NVMe. It's a know workaround.

 

[JedNZ]

So I'm guessing that a small SSD, like a Samsung 860 Pro 256GB paired with a Samsung 960 EVO NVMe 500Gb would work? If so then that would give me a bit more room for my boot drive.

Would a generic PCIe M.2 adapter work okay for the NVMe blade (that's what I've currently got), or would I have to go for something more exotic like the LT thing?

 

[tsialex]

So I'm guessing that a small SSD, like a Samsung 860 Pro 256GB paired with a Samsung 960 EVO NVMe 500Gb would work? If so then that would give me a bit more room for my boot drive.

Would a generic PCIe M.2 adapter work okay for the NVMe blade (that's what I've currently got), or would I have to go for something more exotic like the LT thing?

Any supported AHCI drive, even an old hard drive, will work to provide boot with a NVMe SSD.

Remember that with a Fusion drive setup you will double your chances of failure. It's not a secret that even Macs originally configured from factory with Fusion drives fail an leave people in dire straits. So, have a backup.

 

[MIKX]

Fusion is Fusion = two drives. . . . . . . NVMe M.2 or SSD booting is NVMe booting = one drive.

I had Sierra FUSION booting with my NVMe M.2 960 EVO with a USB 3.0 stick doing the ACTUAL BOOTING = TWO drives.

Now I boot from the same M.2 blade ONLY in High Sierra. = one tiny, very cool, very fast NVMe blade !

Plus now I have one extra USB port free.

No pain = no gain.

 

[Aiwi]

Sounds great! So if I understand you correctly, we just make a

Fusion Drive consisting of:
- Simple SATA SSD
- NVMe M2 SSD

Install macOS on this and you get both a bootable drive and NVMe speeds (except on a small part of the fusion drive). Plus something that isn't sensitive to EFI/System updates.

The increased chance of failure surely isn't a big one. It's not mechanical drives we're talking about anyway.

I can't believe I haven't seen this advice in the Mac Pro Upgrade Sticky..

Great find!

 

[MIKX]

Aiwi
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/boot-osx-on-a-nvme-card.1967790/

 

[FredF67]

I tried it with my Toshiba 1 TB NVMe drive and I couldn't get it to boot. I married it just like the instructions said and when I look at it in Disk Utility , It says it's not bootable. Any suggestions? Help.

 

[tsialex]

I tried it with my Toshiba 1 TB NVMe drive and I couldn't get it to boot. I married it just like the instructions said and when I look at it in Disk Utility , It says it's not bootable. Any suggestions? Help.

Install BootROM 140.0.0.0.0, it has native NVMe support.

Read posts #1554 and #1569, or wait until Apple releases 10.14.1 this week.