Resolved Dual boot CONFIRMED for new Apricorn Velocity DUO X2!!!

[DJGK]

One thing you want to do while you are booting Windows from a drive bay, be sure the DUO card is installed in a slot so that Windows can detect it and load any required drivers for the card. Then, it should be a simple move of the SSD from the drive tray to the DUO card and boot it up (at least it was for mine).

Hey mate. Yes, I've already done that with no success. I have been in dialogue with Eric from Apricorn who do his own system tests for days with Mac Pro 3,1 and Duo with Win 7 and Win 10 and could not get a consistent successful result. However he had no issues with the Mac Pro 5,1 booting correctly. He also said that other are still having issues booting from this card on 3,1's.

I don't know what you guys are doing on your Mac Pro 3,1's to get it to boot. I'd love to know.

My intention is to have 2 x SSD's on the DUO. One with OSX Mavericks or Sierra, and the other with Windows 10 or 7...whatever will boot and work reliably every time. On a 3,1 system. Any takers who have done this successfully on this exact system model ??

 

[Auggie]

Hey mate. Yes, I've already done that with no success. I have been in dialogue with Eric from Apricorn who do his own system tests for days with Mac Pro 3,1 and Duo with Win 7 and Win 10 and could not get a consistent successful result. However he had no issues with the Mac Pro 5,1 booting correctly. He also said that other are still having issues booting from this card on 3,1's.

I don't know what you guys are doing on your Mac Pro 3,1's to get it to boot. I'd love to know.

My intention is to have 2 x SSD's on the DUO. One with OSX Mavericks or Sierra, and the other with Windows 10 or 7...whatever will boot and work reliably every time. On a 3,1 system. Any takers who have done this successfully on this exact system model ??

This may not be timely for you, but I be will getting Duo in a month or so. I can test it in my 3,1 with El Cap (supported Apple OS on 3,1) or High Sierra (unsupported) and Win 7 if you haven't been able to get such a setup functioning.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Hey mate. Yes, I've already done that with no success. I have been in dialogue with Eric from Apricorn who do his own system tests for days with Mac Pro 3,1 and Duo with Win 7 and Win 10 and could not get a consistent successful result. However he had no issues with the Mac Pro 5,1 booting correctly. He also said that other are still having issues booting from this card on 3,1's.

Yes, the Apricorn service is great.

I don't know what you guys are doing on your Mac Pro 3,1's to get it to boot. I'd love to know.

Just right before typing this post I swapped the SOLO x2 (MAC OS X 10.10.5) SSD in my cMP 3.1 on my cMP 5.1 DUO x2. Removed the SOLO and installed the DUO (cMP 5.1) in my cMP 3.1. Booted just fine!

My intention is to have 2 x SSD's on the DUO. One with OSX Mavericks or Sierra, and the other with Windows 10 or 7...whatever will boot and work reliably every time. On a 3,1 system. Any takers who have done this successfully on this exact system model ??

Booting Mac OS X 10.10 and Windows 8/10 has always been my setup on the DUO, both in my cMP 3.1 and cMP 5.1 without any issues. I do hope Apricorn will be able to tackle your boot issues.

Cheers

 

[Auggie]

I finally got all the necessary components for a Duo x2 with a pair of 850 EVO 2TBs for a RAID 0 dual-booting H.S. and Win10. I needed this route to expand my existing 2TB capacity without having to completely replace the 2TB SSD with a $1,600 4TB SSD (EVO), while I only needed a max of 1TB for a Windows install.

A couple findings and notes:

1. Software RAID via Apple is not recognized under Windows so I had to enable hardware RAID through BIOS. This requires first mounting both SSDs (without which prevents access to the card's BIOS), installing into a "real" BIOS PC (I used my unRAID NAS box with a SuperMicro mobo) and holding Control-C during POST.
2. After installing it into the MP, I partitioned the drive into two: because of the Windows addressing limits of the hybrid GPT/MBR system which dictates keeping a Windows install within the first 2.2TB of hard drive, I set the first partition to 1TB NTFS and the second to 3TB GPT. Bootcamp does not recognize nor list the RAID so I had to use Disk Utility for partitioning.
3. After powering down and removing all other drives, I booted off a Win10 DVD installer and installed x64 into the first partition. Reinstalled all the drives and cloned a copy of my original boot SSD to the second partition.
4. All works perfectly; I am able to boot either into OS X or Win10, through System Preferences or through the Option key method during startup, and under Windows the SATA interface runs in AHCI mode which is noticeably more responsive than ATA/IDE mode.
5. As I stated, I installed a fresh copy of Win10 so there was no need to pre-install the card while booting a source Windows install in order to download drivers.
6. I used Carbon Copy Cloner but it failed attempting to copy over the H.S. Recovery partition (it did appear to create the actual recovery partition on the RAID but I haven't confirmed it's presence). Perhaps if I did a clean install a recovery system would have been successfully installed. Since all my testing took all day, I'm not inclined to test this hypothesis as everything else is working to my satisfaction. I will get a proper recovery partition install performed on one of the regular drives.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

I finally got all the necessary components for a Duo x2 with a pair of 850 EVO 2TBs for a RAID 0 dual-booting H.S. and Win10. I needed this route to expand my existing 2TB capacity without having to completely replace the 2TB SSD with a $1,600 4TB SSD (EVO), while I only needed a max of 1TB for a Windows install.

A couple findings and notes:

1. Software RAID via Apple is not recognized under Windows so I had to enable hardware RAID through BIOS. This requires first mounting both SSDs (without which prevents access to the card's BIOS), installing into a "real" BIOS PC (I used my unRAID NAS box with a SuperMicro mobo) and holding Control-C during POST.
2. After installing it into the MP, I partitioned the drive into two: because of the Windows addressing limits of the hybrid GPT/MBR system which dictates keeping a Windows install within the first 2.2TB of hard drive, I set the first partition to 1TB NTFS and the second to 3TB GPT. Bootcamp does not recognize nor list the RAID so I had to use Disk Utility for partitioning.
3. After powering down and removing all other drives, I booted off a Win10 DVD installer and installed x64 into the first partition. Reinstalled all the drives and cloned a copy of my original boot SSD to the second partition.
4. All works perfectly; I am able to boot either into OS X or Win10, through System Preferences or through the Option key method during startup, and under Windows the SATA interface runs in AHCI mode which is noticeably more responsive than ATA/IDE mode.
5. As I stated, I installed a fresh copy of Win10 so there was no need to pre-install the card while booting a source Windows install in order to download drivers.
6. I used Carbon Copy Cloner but it failed attempting to copy over the H.S. Recovery partition (it did appear to create the actual recovery partition on the RAID but I haven't confirmed it's presence). Perhaps if I did a clean install a recovery system would have been successfully installed. Since all my testing took all day, I'm not inclined to test this hypothesis as everything else is working to my satisfaction. I will get a proper recovery partition install performed on one of the regular drives.

Hi Auggie,

Thanks a bunch for this very valuable additional information and sharing your workflow! I have to admit that due to the fact I lack a PC I never had the chance to test this for myself.

Please keep us posted in case any issue arises with your net Apricorn set-up. Enjoy!

Cheers

 

[Auggie]

I wanted to add one more finding in this setup:

Neither VMWare Fusion nor Parallels Desktop recognize this partition as a Boot Camp eligible Windows for a virtual machine.

Not a big deal as performance is severely lacking when using Windows 10 (and 7 and 8 for that matter) under virtualization. I have a separate 2TB drive that has been partitioned with Windows 7 and Windows XP, which the former is recognized both both Fusion and Parallels.

 

[jdryyz]

Anyone brave enough to install High Sierra on this setup?

 

[Auggie]

Anyone brave enough to install High Sierra on this setup?

I installed High Sierra first thing after RAIDing and partitioning into two partitions (NTFS + HFS); no problems specific to High Sierra so far, and now I'm on 10.13.1 beta...

 

[m4v3r1ck]

I installed High Sierra first thing after RAIDing and partitioning into two partitions (NTFS + HFS); no problems specific to High Sierra so far, and now I'm on 10.13.1 beta...

Thanks for your feedback on macOS High Sierra!

Cheers

 

[jdryyz]

Good to hear. My concern, of course, was the conversion of my RAID to APFS.

I may wait until the whole Bootcamp partition problem has been solved....that is, if Apple intends to. Maybe they just want us to use the Option key on boot from now on??

 

[jdryyz]

Ok the wait for Apple to update Bootcamp might take longer than expected (or may not happen at all) so I will install High Sierra but I will do it on a separate (empty) SSD drive. I did not realize a firmware update will be needed for my Mac Pro 2009 (which has the 2010 FW update).

Some questions:

1) Will this High Sierra firmware update work on this Mac Pro (which in truth is a 2009 model)?

2) Will I still be able to boot back into an older OS (sierra in this case) after this latest FW is applied?

3) If I decide to stick with High Sierra, are there existing software tools that can clone a High Sierra APFS partition to my Apricorn RAID HFS partition? I have not checked Carbon Copy Clone in a while.

 

[h9826790]

Ok the wait for Apple to update Bootcamp might take longer than expected (or may not happen at all) so I will install High Sierra but I will do it on a separate (empty) SSD drive. I did not realize a firmware update will be needed for my Mac Pro 2009 (which has the 2010 FW update).

Some questions:

1) Will this High Sierra firmware update work on this Mac Pro (which in truth is a 2009 model)?

2) Will I still be able to boot back into an older OS (sierra in this case) after this latest FW is applied?

3) If I decide to stick with High Sierra, are there existing software tools that can clone a High Sierra APFS partition to my Apricorn RAID HFS partition? I have not checked Carbon Copy Clone in a while.

1) Yes

2) Yes

3) Yes, latest CCC can do it

 

[jdryyz]

Thanks!!

I've read about FW update problems but perhaps I won't be affected since I am doing a fresh install in this case.

1) Yes

2) Yes

3) Yes, latest CCC can do it

 

[h9826790]

Thanks!!

I've read about FW update problems but perhaps I won't be affected since I am doing a fresh install in this case.

three main problems I've seen

1) the installer is damaged during download. In this case, re-download it can fix the issue

2) Lack of Mac EFI GPU. From our signature, I assume your 680 is either the Mac Edition card, or flashed card.

3) HDD problem. For an unknown reason, some HDD will cause the FW upgrade fail (just won't upgrade, zero damage report). In this case, try another HDD / SSD should able to fix it (the best candidate of course is the stock HDD)

But "Fresh installation" seems not a factor.

 

[JaySCT]

Has Install of production High Sierra (or upgrade from an existing HFS+ Sierra or El Capitan) work? Does High Sierra get past the hardware check on the Velocity card? Currently have the Sonnet Tempo Pro and High Sierra will not install. Beta versions did, but production level doesn't. Thanks!

 

[h9826790]

Has Install of production High Sierra (or upgrade from an existing HFS+ Sierra or El Capitan) work? Does High Sierra get past the hardware check on the Velocity card? Currently have the Sonnet Tempo Pro and High Sierra will not install. Beta versions did, but production level doesn't. Thanks!

Are you using RAID? My SSD also mounted on the Tempo Card (non pro), it can install / upgrade to HS without any issue.

AFAIK, all Tempo SSD Pro, Tempo SSD, Tempo SATA share the same firmware.

 

[bsbeamer]

Have Velocity Duo x2 and Solo x2 cards installed in my 5,1 and use for SSD drives (storage and media playback). Both work fine in 10.13.2 (17C205) as of right now. Had to send the Solo x2 in for a firmware update (free) after picking up the Duo x2 since both cards could not be recognized in the machine at the same time, but that was addressed at least 2-3 years ago.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Have Velocity Duo x2 and Solo x2 cards installed in my 5,1 and use for SSD drives (storage and media playback). Both work fine in 10.13.2 (17C205) as of right now. Had to send the Solo x2 in for a firmware update (free) after picking up the Duo x2 since both cards could not be recognized in the machine at the same time, but that was addressed at least 2-3 years ago.

Thank you for your feedback!

Indeed, this issue was first addressed by Lou - Flowrider - as he returned his too and got an updated version!

Apricorn has - TMBK - a very good track record in the Customer Service department!

Cheers

 

[m4v3r1ck]

@All

Because I'm still running Mac OS X 10.10.5, I haven't answered any post 10.10.5 questions. Will clean install High Sierra in the near future though.

So big a big thank you to @h9826790 for checking your sixes in (High) Sierra!

Cheers m8!

 

[JaySCT]

Are you using RAID? My SSD also mounted on the Tempo Card (non pro), it can install / upgrade to HS without any issue.

AFAIK, all Tempo SSD Pro, Tempo SSD, Tempo SATA share the same firmware.

Yes, Sonnet Tempo Pro Dual SSD. High Sierra will not even begin to install issuing an error message about support not available for APPLERaid. This is confirmed by Apple and Sonnet. Sonnet compatibility chart for the Dual SSD RAID 0 says card is supported, but not for booting. Sierra issues a warning that recovery partition is not built when upgrading from El Capitan.
[doublepost=1515712754][/doublepost]

Have Velocity Duo x2 and Solo x2 cards installed in my 5,1 and use for SSD drives (storage and media playback). Both work fine in 10.13.2 (17C205) as of right now. Had to send the Solo x2 in for a firmware update (free) after picking up the Duo x2 since both cards could not be recognized in the machine at the same time, but that was addressed at least 2-3 years ago.

Are you booting off the Velocity DUO card, or is it just running as a data card and your boot is from the Solo card? Thanks.
[doublepost=1515713186][/doublepost]

Ok the wait for Apple to update Bootcamp might take longer than expected (or may not happen at all) so I will install High Sierra but I will do it on a separate (empty) SSD drive. I did not realize a firmware update will be needed for my Mac Pro 2009 (which has the 2010 FW update).

Some questions:

1) Will this High Sierra firmware update work on this Mac Pro (which in truth is a 2009 model)?

2) Will I still be able to boot back into an older OS (sierra in this case) after this latest FW is applied?

3) If I decide to stick with High Sierra, are there existing software tools that can clone a High Sierra APFS partition to my Apricorn RAID HFS partition? I have not checked Carbon Copy Clone in a while.

1. It should
2. Yes
3. Unlike the other poster I'm not 100% certain that even after CCC'ing the High Sierra install that it will boot. Check on the number of posts regarding both installing and trying to boot from RAID 0 drives and High Sierra (APFS or HFS+). High Sierra is (along with the firmware) doing a hardware check for Apple hardware. Apple is booting High Sierra from Raid 0 on the new iMac Pro, but chips are proprietary Apple modules.. There are issues with some of the older OWC modules for Macbook Pros as well, but there is a workaround to get to High Sierra.

 

[bsbeamer]

Are you booting off the Velocity DUO card, or is it just running as a data card and your boot is from the Solo card?

Using the three SSDs in DUO and SOLO as media drives at the moment. Not booting from either of them currently. May reconfigure when current project ends.

 

[hfg]

Are you booting off the Velocity DUO card, or is it just running as a data card and your boot is from the Solo card? Thanks.

FWIW:
I have a Velocity DUO card in my cMacPro 5.1 with 2 SSDs mounted ... one for OS X, and one for Windows 10. I can boot from either SSD.

As I recall ... my early generation Solo would not coexist with the DUO at that time in the same system.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

FWIW:
I have a Velocity DUO card in my cMacPro 5.1 with 2 SSDs mounted ... one for OS X, and one for Windows 10. I can boot from either SSD.

What OS version are your running?

As I recall ... my early generation Solo would not coexist with the DUO at that time in the same system.

Correct, as stated earlier it was resolved by later firmware update.

Cheers

 

[adam9c1]

I have a solo and it will not boot in slot other than 1. Can firmware update fix that?

 

[JaySCT]

FWIW:
I have a Velocity DUO card in my cMacPro 5.1 with 2 SSDs mounted ... one for OS X, and one for Windows 10. I can boot from either SSD.

As I recall ... my early generation Solo would not coexist with the DUO at that time in the same system.

I have the same question. Which MAC OS are you running?