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Will Windows Boot from any internal drive on Mac Pro?
- Thread starter steffi
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It will depend on the actual MP.
The 2008 models will not boot a Windows installation on the ODD_SATA ports (they will boot OS X, but not Windows or Linux).
But the 2006/7 models will (also have ODD_SATA ports, as the board design is similar). IDE/PATA is what's used for the optical disks installed at the factory (2006 - 2008). The reason it doesn't run on the 2008 systems is the firmware (it was the first MP to use EFI64, and full boot support for this pair of SATA ports was either lost in the coding, or dictated from on high to "go away").
The 2009/10's only use SATA for the optical bays, and these will boot Windows or Linux just fine.
Seems to boot from Tray 1 fine. My OWC SSD is in Optical bay 2 and the SSD updater tool does find it in the scan just cannot reliably upload the firmware to it.
It will depend on the actual MP.
The 2008 models will not boot a Windows installation on the ODD_SATA ports (they will boot OS X, but not Windows or Linux).
But the 2006/7 models will (also have ODD_SATA ports, as the board design is similar). IDE/PATA is what's used for the optical disks installed at the factory (2006 - 2008). The reason it doesn't run on the 2008 systems is the firmware (it was the first MP to use EFI64, and full boot support for this pair of SATA ports was either lost in the coding, or dictated from on high to "go away").
The 2009/10's only use SATA for the optical bays, and these will boot Windows or Linux just fine.
What MP do you have?
What you could try, is temporarily move the SSD to an HDD bay, then give it a go for the Flash proceedure (seem to recall others have run into this, but can't recall what systems/firmware revisions they were using).
BTW, low level actions like flashing are more difficult to impossible with Macs (try remapping a mechanical disk to repair bad sectors), so may only be possible on a PC.
That's odd. But again, it really may depend on your specific MP model.
A 2009 and later model shouldn't have any difficulties in applying a new firmware to that SSD.
I've got an Intel SSD in the lower ODD bay and Windows did just fine updating the drives firmware back in the days. Of course Windows was not installed on the SDD, rather than on a single mechanical drive located in one of the stock bays.