Resolved Mac Pro 5,1 extremely slow (Mojave) RAID0

[LAHegarty]

Mac Pro 5,1
I installed Mojave on my Mac Pro, it runs fine for a few hours and sometimes longer then bam! It just becomes unresponsive, everything takes ages to do anything. eg: You a right click then 15+ seconds later the menu shows, move a window same things, has anyone else had this issue?

Activity Monitors shows nothing unusual, nothing resource heavy. (Closing all running software does nothing)

It was running fine under Sierra for years without any issues.

You have to force a reboot to restart the system, then it works for a number of hours then does the same.

To no avail, I have tried the following:

1. New, newer GPU
2. Reinstalling Mojave (Which is a pain in the butt)
   
3. Different SSD's
4. Killing all running apps/software
5. Unplugging all USB external drives

My specs are:
Mac Pro 5,1 (2010)
Dual Xeon X5690
4x SSD's RAID0 (HFS+)
32GB RAM 1333Mhz
RX 570 - 4GB
4k Monitor

Recommendations, anyone else having the same issue?

I like Mojave, but above!

 

[bsbeamer]

4x SSD RAID is your system drive? If so, that’s likely the problem. RAID in Mojave is very poorly supported regardless of what any specs state.

 

[tsialex]

Did you checked Console for disk errors? Install DriveDX and check if you have any problems.

Disks timeouts are usually like you describe, don't need to be your boot disk to bog down your Mac.

 

[LAHegarty]

tsialex
I will do that in the morning, though the SSD's were working for years without issues before 'Mojave'. (Hackintosh might be on the cards, or back to Sierra)

 

[casperes1996]

tsialex
I will do that in the morning, though the SSD's were working for years without issues before 'Mojave'. (Hackintosh might be on the cards, or back to Sierra)

A RAID 0 setup with 4 drives is prone to failure. Every task is spread across all 4 drives, and any of them failing will faill them all.

But, I of course recommend the usual, PRAM and SMC resets

 

[LAHegarty]

casperes1996, I've been running Raid0 for well over 10 years now on many, many systems without a single issue (Even with HDD's 'Western Digital Raptor's' back in the day!)

How do you think SSD's work? Multiple chips combine together for increased performance and size, they are essentially small RAID devices in themselves. (Some SSD's have a single storage chip)

Like bsbeamer stated the problem lies with 'Mojave', and Apple being a ****bag.

 

[LAHegarty]

Did you checked Console for disk errors? Install DriveDX and check if you have any problems.

Disks timeouts are usually like you describe, don't need to be your boot disk to bog down your Mac.

Drives are all healthy, having less than 30 days total power on time on each drive according to DriveDX.

But, I of course recommend the usual, PRAM and SMC resets

Yes, I had tried that too.

 

[casperes1996]

Drives are all healthy, having less than 30 days total power on time on each drive according to DriveDX.

Yes, I had tried that too.

Have you tried running AHD/AHT? (Apple Hardware Diagnostics)

 

[tsialex]

Drives are all healthy, having less than 30 days total power on time on each drive according to DriveDX.

Yes, I had tried that too.

Forgot to ask, you are using the RAID0 array as storage or you are using it to boot Mojave?

Software RAID boot or booting from HFS+ drives are not supported by Mojave anymore, if you are doing it, you could found a bug/incompatibility.

 

[casperes1996]

casperes1996, I've been running Raid0 for well over 10 years now on many, many systems without a single issue (Even with HDD's 'Western Digital Raptor's' back in the day!)

How do you think SSD's work? Multiple chips combine together for increased performance and size, they are essentially small RAID devices in themselves. (Some SSD's have a single storage chip)

Like bsbeamer stated the problem lies with 'Mojave', and Apple being a ****bag.

The more RAID0 devices you combine, the higher the risk of failure. I don't assume you dispute that.
Yes, SSDs combine many storage packages on a single controller and uses parallel access for speed, similar to RAID. But a flash controller managing its own flash is still different to a RAID system managing the spread across two different drives,
Plus, in the case that one SSD controller dies or other complete drive failure occours, the complete RAID set loses data, as opposed to a JBOD system, where only the data on the malfunctioning drive would suffer.

But if you're certain all drives are healthy, this discussion seems irrelevant to go on with

 

[bsbeamer]

Let's not focus on the "risks" of RAID0. If you're using RAID0, you should have a backup plan in place and likely know the risks. Many users who go through the hassle of setup truly need the speed it offers and/or utilize it. PCIe NVMe reduces the "need" slightly, but there are only so many PCIe slots available... and if you have 4 open SATA sleds, you should use them.

@LAHegarty Any chance you have a spare SSD and/or PCIe adapter (SATA or NVMe) you can run your system/OS from? Then can likely keep the 4xSSD as media/storage and use the system drive on its own, or via PCIe adapter.

It's basically the solution I've been using for awhile. Currently have 7 SSDs in my system. 4 SSD via SATA sleds, 2 SSD via SATA PCIe (Velocity Duo X2), and 1 NVMe system drive via PCIe (PX1). Several of the SATA sled SSDs are in RAID0 right now.

I'm on High Sierra as my full-time OS right now with firmware 140.0.0.0.0. Ran into several issues with software in Mojave when testing, so didn't bother updating right now. Also no NVIDIA web drivers. (I use CUDA a lot.)

When testing Mojave, there were TONS of issues with accessing RAIDs properly. If you're using a controller card (like an Apple RAID card), there are even more documented issues. Search this forum and you'll see very similar reports. These issues do not present in High Sierra.

 

[LAHegarty]

The uptime today has been over 7 hours without any slowdown.

It's a boot volume, yes.

You can not install Mojave to raid0 but you can do it via a 'Time Machine Restore' of Mojave. (Though, that's a whole other story)

I want to use raid0 and boot from it, because performance! Link. (I'm DI'ing the SATA ATM, FYI)

It states 10.14 and when I go to the 'Software Update' it states Your Mac is up to date, so that's mighty odd.

I'm manually downloading the updates now, I will try updating to 10.14.1, then 10.14.2 and see if that helps. (This 'may' solve the issue.)

But as I stated no issues today...

[doublepost=1547663665][/doublepost]NICE! Got me by the balls now.

 

[tsialex]

The uptime today has over 7 hours without any slowdown.

It's a boot volume, yes.

You can not install Mojave to raid0 but you can do it via a 'Time Machine Restore' of Mojave. (Though, that's a whole other story)

I want to use raid0 and boot from it, because performance! Link. (I'm DI'ing the SATA ATM, FYI)

It states 10.14 and when I go to the 'Software Update' it states Your Mac is up to date, so that's mighty odd.

I'm manually downloading the updates now, I will try updating to 10.14.1, then 10.14.2 and see if that helps. (This 'may' solve the issue.)

But as I stated no issues today...

View attachment 816013 View attachment 816012
[doublepost=1547663665][/doublepost]NICE! Got me by the balls now.

View attachment 816020

You can't install updates to HFS+ volumes, people with unsupported Macs found this during the Mojave DP phase.

 

[LAHegarty]

Well, I know that now. Haha. (Cheers)

I'm now looking at a 'Lycom DT-120' and a 'Samsung 970 EVO 1TB NVME M.2 SSD' and using the new file system for my boot device if that will work, question mark.
[doublepost=1547666632][/doublepost]Parts ordered we'll see what happens when they arrive.

 

[bsbeamer]

If in Mojave and wanting to use the drive as system/boot/macOS drive, you'll need to setup the 970 EVO as APFS. Your "trick" to workaround the install requirements has you locked in this Apple Mojave Update "Purgatory" of sorts that needs to be resolved before you can move forward.

Believe two requirements most need to keep in mind for installing updated: APFS and Metal GPU. Both can be worked around, but issues creep up and these are the two requirements that seem to resolve most issues.

You SHOULD theoretically be able to use the 4xSSDs in SATA sleds in some RAID capacity if you keep them HFS+, however I've run into issues with this during testing. Possibly removing from system for all update installs would help? If you're using a RAID controller, the problems seem to be worse. SoftRAID was just updated to 5.7.3 for Mojave, so there are options. Version 6 beta says it will support APFS, but likely not for booting.

 

[jsts]

Mac Pro 5,1
I installed Mojave on my Mac Pro, it runs fine for a few hours and sometimes longer then bam! It just becomes unresponsive, everything takes ages to do anything. eg: You a right click then 15+ seconds later the menu shows, move a window same things, has anyone else had this issue?

I had same issue with original 138/140.0.0.0 BootROM on High Sierra AND Mojave.

I returned to HSierra due to multiple graphic glitches/artifacts in Mojave.

My specs:
Mac Pro 4,1->5,1 (2009)
2x Xeon X5690
4x SSD's HFS+ SM951 Amfeltec carrier board RAID0 (Slot2)
96GB RAM 1333Mhz
1x Flashed EVGA SC GTX680 2GB (Slot1)
1x Apple LED Cinema Display 1920х1200

Thanks to tsialex, after flashing by reconstructed 140.0.0.0 BootROM with ver.15 CPU microcode my Mac on High Sierra works perfectly. I suppose the CPU microcode version does matter.




UPD: Slow write speed corrected by SSD recondition operation: I destroyed the raid-0, 5 times overwritten all SSD`s with zeros, re-created raid-0. Everything became ok.

 

[LAHegarty]

Hmmm, interesting. Thanks bsbeamer.

Yeah, SoftRAID 6.0 basically sounds like what I need, but it's not out yet. (I can try that at a later date with the 4x 2.5 SSD's)

So, Apple aren't f'in us, they are just being super slow and not forward thinking. (Or 'not' thinking about people using older hardware)

jsts, Thanks for the link; I'll need that!

And the help from everyone! =)

140.0.0.0.0 BootROM has to be installed manually?

 

[jsts]

140.0.0.0.0 BootROM has to be installed manually?

Reconstructed (hand made ) BootROM - unfortunately yes.

 

[bsbeamer]

@LAHegarty what firmware/bootrom are you currently using?

SoftRAID 5.7.3 will work with your HFS+ drives to continue using as RAID0 in Mojave as long as they are SATA connected, so they can still be used without speed loss from current setup IF you move boot drive to PCIe/NVMe. I cannot say the same if you're using a RAID controller card - many issues with them in Mojave reported.

 

[LAHegarty]

 

[bsbeamer]

You’ll need a few firmware updates... several threads walk through those in great detail. You have to get to 140.0.0.0.0 for booting from NVMe on PCIe.

 

[LAHegarty]

Done! I'm ready for NVMe, right? Nice.

 

[bsbeamer]

Done! I'm ready for NVMe, right? Nice. View attachment 816120

Yes, should be easy clone once it arrives. Just remember APFS format for Mojave boot drive.

 

[LAHegarty]

Lovely, I will keep you'all posted.

Parts should be here later today, Prime used.

I'll try out 'Carbon Copy Cloner', I've not used it before.

 

[crjackson2134]

Done! I'm ready for NVMe, right? Nice. View attachment 816120

You REALLY shouldn’t post your serial number!