Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Norbert Mikołajczyk

macrumors 6502
May 26, 2016
323
144
Hi,

I use OWC Accelsior, I have two different nvme sticks, I didn't set RAID at all, just using those drives for storage and sometimes, randomly the drives do not appear on reboot from Windows, after macOS update and when hitting Option key on cold boot.
 

randomname01

macrumors newbie
Nov 12, 2023
4
0
Hi,

I've got a nearly identical setup ... Sonnet with dual Samsun 970 EVO's that are done RAID 0 (**** Apple's SSD pricing) ... and also experience this exact behavior (RAID not mounting until reboot/power cycle/unplug) on Sonoma as well ... does anyone have any new information or advice?

I'm trying to decide if the issue is the PCI-E storage or RAID ... i.e. ... if I break the RAID and just toss in some 4 TB SSDs which are now reasonably cheap does that solve the problem? Or is using PCI-E mounted storage just a lost cause?

Thanks in advance.
 

randomname01

macrumors newbie
Nov 12, 2023
4
0
Hi,

I've got a nearly identical setup ... Sonnet with dual Samsun 970 EVO's that are done RAID 0 (**** Apple's SSD pricing) ... and also experience this exact behavior (RAID not mounting until reboot/power cycle/unplug) on Sonoma as well ... does anyone have any new information or advice?

I'm trying to decide if the issue is the PCI-E storage or RAID ... i.e. ... if I break the RAID and just toss in some 4 TB SSDs which are now reasonably cheap does that solve the problem? Or is using PCI-E mounted storage just a lost cause?

Thanks in advance.
I should point out that for me the most reliable way to get the RAID back is to unplug the machine from the power source which resets PRAM or something and that seems to work 100% of the time. Just rebooting *might* work but YMMV.
 

cobra521

macrumors 6502
Dec 14, 2016
388
134
FL
Since this thread seems to be active still, it's sad to report that Sonnet hasn't come back with any helpful information despite my sending in system reports for both visible and non-visible SSD occurrences. I wrote them again yesterday but my optimism is diminishing...

The Sonnet 4 SSD fanless card flakiness continues with a new symptom: sometimes all 4 SSDs on one card will show up, plus one SSD on the other card. At one point, 2 SSDs showed on the 2nd card just after a reboot, then one of them disappeared after about 10 seconds. Bizarre!

Tom
 

CanPhantom

macrumors member
Oct 21, 2014
40
21
Since this thread seems to be active still, it's sad to report that Sonnet hasn't come back with any helpful information despite my sending in system reports for both visible and non-visible SSD occurrences. I wrote them again yesterday but my optimism is diminishing...

The Sonnet 4 SSD fanless card flakiness continues with a new symptom: sometimes all 4 SSDs on one card will show up, plus one SSD on the other card. At one point, 2 SSDs showed on the 2nd card just after a reboot, then one of them disappeared after about 10 seconds. Bizarre!

Tom
I had assumed that this was a RAID issue. Seems not to be; rather, a PCIe issue with the machine/OS. After months of having no problems on the last few versions of Ventura, the upgrade to Sonoma has made the problem significantly worse - about every second or third boot the drive just isn't there, and I have to reboot again to fix the problem.

In frustration, I broke my RAID array apart and just put a single NVME drive into the machine (not one of the ones from the array), and still the same intermittent problem.
 

H. Flower

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2008
740
824
Same issue with sonnet cards and 4 Samsung on 2 separate workstations. Raid 0s were created in Mac OS.

Resetting pram fixes issue but this is very annoying and needs to be fixed ! What can we do ?
 

cobra521

macrumors 6502
Dec 14, 2016
388
134
FL
Can,

My usage of these Sonnet cards/Samsung NVME SSDs is strictly JBOD. No RAID involved.

It seemed to begin some months ago after an Apple MacOS upgrade and has persisted. Since it started, it has varied a little; i.e., it got better after one MacOS update and is now worse after the latest update.

So I agree wholeheartedly that it appears related to MacOS.

Tom
 

CanPhantom

macrumors member
Oct 21, 2014
40
21
Same issue with sonnet cards and 4 Samsung on 2 separate workstations. Raid 0s were created in Mac OS.

Resetting pram fixes issue but this is very annoying and needs to be fixed ! What can we do ?

Not sure there's much to be done. It's been a problem at least as far back as Big Sur, so it doesn't seem like Apple's got any great interest in fixing it. The options seem to be, just live with it as best as possible, or start hanging thunderbolt drives off the back of the thing.
 

randomname01

macrumors newbie
Nov 12, 2023
4
0
Not sure there's much to be done. It's been a problem at least as far back as Big Sur, so it doesn't seem like Apple's got any great interest in fixing it. The options seem to be, just live with it as best as possible, or start hanging thunderbolt drives off the back of the thing.
I may break down and pay for Apple's 4 TB storage upgrade ... ffs.
 

choreo

macrumors 6502a
Jan 10, 2008
903
352
Midland, TX
I have had a Sonnet M.2 Silent card installed with 4 Samsung 970 EVO 1TB blades configured as Apple RAID 0 for 3 years. Never had a single instance where they have not mounted (so far). However, I am still on Monterey (thank you Intuit Quickbooks!). I did swap out the 970 blades for 990 Pro blades last month (just to upgrade) - no problems there either. My "guess" would be Ventura or Sonoma?
 
Last edited:

CanPhantom

macrumors member
Oct 21, 2014
40
21
I have had a Sonnet M.2 Silent card installed with 4 Samsung 970 EVO 1TB blades configured as Apple RAID 0 for 3 years. Never had a single instance where they have not mounted (so far). However, I am still on Monterey (thank you Intuit Quickbooks!). I did swap out the 970 blades for 990 Pro blades last month (just to upgrade) - no problems there either. My "guess" would be Ventura or Sonoma?

I definitely had the problem before Ventura (said Big Sur earlier but I meant Monterey, got my versions mixed up), BUT back then it was more of an oddity, something that happened so infrequently that I didn't give it a thought.

But with Ventura it started happening with regularity (enough to be an annoyance), then got much better with the later Ventura releases. But with Sonoma, it's right in the toilet, it became every couple of days with 14.0 and with 14.1, it got EVEN worse, it's at least daily now.
 

choreo

macrumors 6502a
Jan 10, 2008
903
352
Midland, TX
...so it doesn't seem like Apple's got any great interest in fixing it.
I bought my 7,1 at the same moment Apple announced breaking away from Intel. With the issues I have had, kernel panics mostly, I got the same feeling early on that they were not very interested in tracking down the root cause. They were all about moving on to AS.

I had a couple no risk suggestions to help isolate my issues three years ago and instead of that, they just sent me a new Mac Pro at no cost five months later (exchange) - hoping the problem was just a lemon situation. I felt like only five people ever bought a 7,1 and I was one of them. Apple was very good doing what they did, but I still have been trying to isolate the root cause of my issues. I have owned several Mac towers going back 30 years. The last 2012 Mac Pro I owned for 8 years never crashed once. My 2019, probably 300 times - fortunately mostly during sleep, but that is another story.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: ZombiePhysicist

CanPhantom

macrumors member
Oct 21, 2014
40
21
I bought my 7,1 at the same moment Apple announced breaking away from Intel. With the issues I have had, kernel panics mostly, I got the same feeling early on that they were not very interested in tracking down the root cause. They were all about moving on to AS.

Bought mine around the same time, and specifically because I wanted the best Intel Mac I could get to hold me over till the arm chips would get to a usable point for me. TBH, I kind of knew what I was getting into (I remember the Intel transition pretty well), so I can't be too cranky about it. Still irritating. PCI expansion was one of the big selling points for this machine.
 

Norbert Mikołajczyk

macrumors 6502
May 26, 2016
323
144
I had assumed that this was a RAID issue. Seems not to be; rather, a PCIe issue with the machine/OS. After months of having no problems on the last few versions of Ventura, the upgrade to Sonoma has made the problem significantly worse - about every second or third boot the drive just isn't there, and I have to reboot again to fix the problem.

In frustration, I broke my RAID array apart and just put a single NVME drive into the machine (not one of the ones from the array), and still the same intermittent problem.
same here, very annoying...
 
  • Like
Reactions: cobra521

H. Flower

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2008
740
824
Was hoping Sonoma update today would fix this annoying issue, but it didn't.

Sorta ridiculous I have to reset PRAM now every time I restart computer to access my work files.

Has anyone tried reaching Apple engineers?
 

Petey pete

macrumors newbie
Dec 13, 2023
2
0
Hi everyone. I wish there was a solution to this issue. I purchased my sonnet 4x4 m.2 card with 4x 2tb drives spending close to $800 only 3 months ago and now I get nothing mounting. Sonnet seems to be aware of the possible Mac OS issue and are only offering an RMA for the card. At this point I’m just tempted to just go for the traditional sata SSDs To do my video editing off of. Seems like I wasted of money.
 

Petey pete

macrumors newbie
Dec 13, 2023
2
0
Was hoping Sonoma update today would fix this annoying issue, but it didn't.

Sorta ridiculous I have to reset PRAM now every time I restart computer to access my work files.

Has anyone tried reaching Apple engineers?
So the update didn’t do anything. I was tempted to try it but feared it would make things even worse. Even my after effects stopped working after Sonoma update. Sigh
 

Royal Raider

macrumors newbie
Mar 7, 2011
8
1
Auckland, New Zealand
Kia Ora Everyone. I had a similar issue with my Iocrest m.2 card running dual Samsung 2T 980s (not RAID). They had been running perfectly for a year then I updated to Sonoma and they became very temperamental. Sometimes they would not mount at start-up. Or one would mount and not the other. I would erase / reformat / reload backed up data. They would would work for a few days then the same problem. Then I bought two PCIE cards and mounted them in their own slots. Same problem. After digging around I found that the directories were corrupting. I tried rebuilding the directories but had limited success. The solution for me was to reboot in RECOVERY MODE and run DISK UTILITY First Aid on them. That was about a month ago and I haven't had a problem since. I'm a bit surprised such a simple fix worked but there it is...
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: jwestpro

Theophilos

macrumors regular
Jul 29, 2015
171
178
California
You can also try booting into recovery mode and entering the FileVault encryption password to access the disks. Someone at the Apple forums mentioned that the whole thing is caused by a glitch in FileVault with these external disks. I had the same issue after installing the latest Sonoma update, but after booting into recovery mode, everything mounted fine. I'm going to try to avoid rebooting for as long as possible. lol
 

bcomer

macrumors regular
Jan 25, 2008
196
137
Ottawa
I have three Samsung SSDs individually mounted on separate cards and at times one or two will not mount.
I have tried rebooting with no change resulting to unplugging the Mac Pro for a reset.

Running Sonoma 14.2.1.

2019 Mac Pro
 
Last edited:
  • Wow
Reactions: ZombiePhysicist

ZombiePhysicist

macrumors 68030
May 22, 2014
2,797
2,703
Wow this is super sad to see. I wonder of the 3 people that bothered to buy the 2023 MP, if they are having similar issues. It would be a good point of compare and contrast.
 

H. Flower

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2008
740
824
Kia Ora Everyone. I had a similar issue with my Iocrest m.2 card running dual Samsung 2T 980s (not RAID). They had been running perfectly for a year then I updated to Sonoma and they became very temperamental. Sometimes they would not mount at start-up. Or one would mount and not the other. I would erase / reformat / reload backed up data. They would would work for a few days then the same problem. Then I bought two PCIE cards and mounted them in their own slots. Same problem. After digging around I found that the directories were corrupting. I tried rebuilding the directories but had limited success. The solution for me was to reboot in RECOVERY MODE and run DISK UTILITY First Aid on them. That was about a month ago and I haven't had a problem since. I'm a bit surprised such a simple fix worked but there it is...
Glad to hear this stopped your problem! However, didn't work for me. My internal RAID still failing to mount even after running first AID.

I'm really annoyed by this and am going to try to get in contact with some Apple engineers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ZombiePhysicist
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.