Problems with booting Apple SSUBX SSD on PCIe adapter

[MisterAndrew]

Hello,

I'm having some issues with booting my Mac Pro 5,1 from an Apple SSUBX SSD installed in a PCIe adapter. The SSD is Apple part # MZ-JPV2560/0A4 (655-1858H) and the PCIe adapter is this one: http://r.ebay.com/klbBjL.

I have it installed in slot 4. When I boot after the chime is goes to the white/gray screen and hangs there for about 1 minute. Then it proceeds to boot as normal. When it's up and running it works fine and the speed test is good. But the hang up at the boot is annoying.

I put it in slot 3 and when it's done hanging it just flashes the missing folder symbol. If I restart it holding the option key to select the boot drive that will come up and I can select it and it boots normally. I went into system preferences and made sure the drive is selected as the start up disk. But when I restart it does the same thing with the missing folder symbol. So that seems really strange. I put it back in slot 4 and it just has the hang up and boots normally again. I haven't tried putting it in slot 2.

I've reset the PRAM, even 3 times in a row and it didn't change anything. But the computer wouldn't boot after I did the reset. It just had a black screen. I had to turn it off and unplug everything before it would boot again. Is that normal?

Is there a way to tell if the SSD is good? I did a SMART test and that checks out without errors. I've also ran the Apple Hardware Test and it found no errors. Without purchasing another SSD, is there a way to tell if the adapter isn't good? I would prefer not to send the SSD back if it's good.
[doublepost=1494805521][/doublepost]I put it in slot 2 and it does not hang on boot. Is it normal for PCIe SSDs to act up in slots 3 and 4?
[doublepost=1494805774][/doublepost]So now I have a different problem. The speed test shows it's operating at half speed in slot 2.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I'm pretty sure it's an issue with the adapter, but what can you expect for $4?

If I was able to install a driver for the adapter chipset would that help it run in PCIe 2.0 mode in slot 2? Or it would it need some kind of EFI modification?

 

[h9826790]

There is no chip set on the adaptor. It is pretty much really just an adaptor, not a convertor. No chipset required to convert anything, but allow some direct connection between the PCIe slots and the PCIe SSD's connector.

Anyway, that half speed issue is a known bug. No fix yet.

 

[MisterAndrew]

There is no chip set on the adaptor. It is pretty much really just an adaptor, not a convertor. No chipset required to convert anything, but allow some direct connection between the PCIe slots and the PCIe SSD's connector.

Anyway, that half speed issue is a known bug. No fix yet.

Hmm, okay. Thank you. Hopefully there'll be a fix soon.

 

[psaintemarie]

Jumping on this thread. I'm interested in knowing what's the best way to boot from a SSD installed a on PCIe adapter.
I've seen info on the LyCom DT-120/DT-129 but could not find real info on the boot topic.

@MisterAnd can you tell me more about your setup ? Are you able to boot on the SSD on your PCIe card ?

Thank

 

[MIKX]

Perhaps it should be in Slot 4.
My Samsung 960 EVO M.2 showed the same behavior in slot 2. Boots OK now in slot 4 and at full speed

What OS X version are you running? that always helps us to help you.

 

[psaintemarie]

I'm on 10.13.4, but I'll have to check the slot number. (don't have the Mac with me right now)
I'll try slot 4 and see what happens !

Thanks

 

[psaintemarie]

Perhaps it should be in Slot 4.
My Samsung 960 EVO M.2 showed the same behavior in slot 2. Boots OK now in slot 4 and at full speed

What OS X version are you running? that always helps us to help you.

Just tried this morning. I can see/erase/format the disk just fine, but it seems I can't boot from it.
I launch the macOS HS install, but it won't reboot on that ssd. I'm using slot 4 for the LyCom DT-129 PCI adapter.

 

[psaintemarie]

I also tried a restore after booting from a USB key, restoring the OS from a SATA drive. I can then select it as boot drive but it won't boot. And boot selector (with "alt") won't show me the drive.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Which SSD are you trying to boot from? It has to be an AHCI, not NVMe. The SM951 and Apple proprietary version are the best for the cMP (Except the Lycom won’t accept the Apple one.)

As an update to this thread I have mine in slot 3 and it works good. I force enabled trim for all drives and it no longer hangs on boot. That seems weird since the Apple SSD supports trim natively, but whatever the issue is it fixed it.

 

[psaintemarie]

Which SSD are you trying to boot from? It has to be an AHCI, not NVMe. The SM951 and Apple proprietary version are the best for the cMP (Except the Lycom won’t accept the Apple one.)

As an update to this thread I have mine in slot 3 and it works good. I force enabled trim for all drives and it no longer hangs on boot. That seems weird since the Apple SSD supports trim natively, but whatever the issue is it fixed it.

Yep I just finally understood that. Going to send back the NVMe one and get a AHCI. The SM951 looks like a good option.
As for the TRIM option, what was your way of enabling it on all your drives ?

 

[MisterAndrew]

Type 'sudo trimforce enable' in Terminal. Be aware that some SM951 are NVMe and the AHCI are becoming difficult to find. If you decide to go with the Apple version, the PCIe adapter for them is cheap on eBay.

 

[NerdLocRasta1]

Type 'sudo trimforce enable' in Terminal. Be aware that some SM951 are NVMe and the AHCI are becoming difficult to find. If you decide to go with the Apple version, the PCIe adapter for them is cheap on eBay.

Few Questions on this. Since sm951s are way expensive these days, What pcie nvme ssd is the best for performance boost in games and apps like final cut? Is it a solution to use sata ssd in raid format with pcie ssd to get performance boost? I do understand that you cannot boot from nvme but I will be booting from samsung sata ssd. If they are arranged in raid format, will that increase speeds? And if so, which nvme is the best to buy? I'm assuming that would be the 960 samsung 1tb pcie nvme ssd, but we know those are over 500$ bucks so.... I found a Silicon Power 512gb pcie ssd for a fraction! Boasting speeds of 1600mb/s!? Am I a pipe dreamer? Has anyone tried this? Cuz I would like to combine it with my Samsung ssd 256gb sata drive if at all possible. I am using 2009 Mac pro e5520 8 core 16gb ram with 1070ti. bootcamp and High Sierra.

 

[crjackson2134]

You guys need to read through this thread below. It will answer all those specific questions you have without reinventing the wheel.

We’ve all done a lot of testing and most of the answers are in post#1

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...he-09-mac-pro-bootable-ngff-pcie-ssd.1685821/
[doublepost=1531709467][/doublepost]

Which SSD are you trying to boot from? It has to be an AHCI, not NVMe. The SM951 and Apple proprietary version are the best for the cMP (Except the Lycom won’t accept the Apple one.)

As an update to this thread I have mine in slot 3 and it works good. I force enabled trim for all drives and it no longer hangs on boot. That seems weird since the Apple SSD supports trim natively, but whatever the issue is it fixed it.

You should read Post# 917

 

[MisterAndrew]

You guys need to read through this thread below. It will answer all those specific questions you have without reinventing the wheel.

We’ve all done a lot of testing and most of the answers are in post#1

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...he-09-mac-pro-bootable-ngff-pcie-ssd.1685821/
[doublepost=1531709467][/doublepost]

You should read Post# 917

Thanks. Mine is still hanging in slot 3, but I’ve learned to live with it. Super fast once it’s started up.

 

[h9826790]

Few Questions on this. Since sm951s are way expensive these days, What pcie nvme ssd is the best for performance boost in games and apps like final cut? Is it a solution to use sata ssd in raid format with pcie ssd to get performance boost? I do understand that you cannot boot from nvme but I will be booting from samsung sata ssd. If they are arranged in raid format, will that increase speeds? And if so, which nvme is the best to buy? I'm assuming that would be the 960 samsung 1tb pcie nvme ssd, but we know those are over 500$ bucks so.... I found a Silicon Power 512gb pcie ssd for a fraction! Boasting speeds of 1600mb/s!? Am I a pipe dreamer? Has anyone tried this? Cuz I would like to combine it with my Samsung ssd 256gb sata drive if at all possible. I am using 2009 Mac pro e5520 8 core 16gb ram with 1070ti. bootcamp and High Sierra.

For FCPX, as long as you have a SATA III connected SSD. It’s good up to 4k 60FPS ProRes 422. If you are not doing anything more demanding than that. Upgrade to a even faster SSD won’t help much, the bottleneck should be on the compute power but not storage speed.

Same on gaming. Most games are not that storage speed limiting (even when loading).

However, if any apps has very large libraries, than the PCIe SSD May able to save few seconds to load.

My understanding is, you need something really large in size to make the super speed PCIe SSD has noticeable advantage (e.g. loading the virtual machine image file). And NVMe’s improvement is mainly in multi parallel I/O. For most average user, we won’t benefit much due to rarely go beyond DQ3.

Of course, due to the high cost and relative old tech / low performance, it make much more sense to go NVMe if anyone want to go for PCIe SSD. However, the actual improvement (from SATA SSD) may be much smaller than what you expect.