MP 6,1 NVMe drive and old OS X version

[R2FX]

Quick question if someone can help - would NVMe drive work with OS X 10.9 in Mac Pro 2013? Assuming machine is running latest firmware.

I’m contemplating to get 2TB SSD for it, but plan to downgrade it later (after getting M2 Mac in the future).

Thanks in advance!

 

[kwikdeth]

you would need a physical adapter as the drive slot in the 2013 Mac Pro is not a standard NVMe connector.
see This thread

 

[R2FX]

you would need a physical adapter as the drive slot in the 2013 Mac Pro is not a standard NVMe connector.
see This thread

That’s not what I’m asking kwikdeth. Let’s assume I’ve got original Apple SSD (SSPOLARIS)

 

[JustAnExpat]

Not exactly sure what's being asked:

1. Is the physical connection compatible between the NVMe drive and the Mac Pro 2013? If it is, then it'll work.
2. Can you take an NVMe drive formatting for data only (not as a start-up disk) in Mac OS X 10,9 and put it in an M2? Yes, it should work.

 

[R2FX]

Neither. SSPOLARIS type of SSD is the last removable SSD Apple made but it needed firmware update in Mac Pro 2013. I’m thinking of getting 2TB version but I plan to downgrade to Mavericks.

My layman question is - since there were no NVMe drives around in 2013, will OS recognize the drive? Or once the firmware on the Mac is updated any older system will “see” the drive?

 

[mikas]

I would believe you'd need High Sierra for NVMe.
Couple of links to back my belief:
NVMe and Mavericks
Mavericks not support nvme m.2 SSD? Mac Pro 6,1

 

[R2FX]

That confirms it then. Thank you Mikas!

 

[tsialex]

Neither. SSPOLARIS type of SSD is the last removable SSD Apple made but it needed firmware update in Mac Pro 2013. I’m thinking of getting 2TB version but I plan to downgrade to Mavericks.

My layman question is - since there were no NVMe drives around in 2013, will OS recognize the drive?

No, NVMe drives also need OS support. For Mac Pros, support of NVMe drives start with Sierra (for Apple OEM drives and 3rd party drives that support 4096 bytes/sector).

Or once the firmware on the Mac is updated any older system will “see” the drive?

Nope, while the firmware is aware of the drive, without macOS support won't work.

 

[joevt]

Use AHCI instead of NVMe for old macOS versions. Or create a NVMe driver for old macOS.

 

[Dayo]

From what I can gather, NMVe support was first added in Mac OS 10.10 (Yosemite):

Apple enables NVM Express protocol for faster SSD performance with OS X 10.10.3 | AppleInsider

Looking to take full advantage of PCI Express solid state drives found in the latest Mac models, including the new 12-inch MacBook, Apple built support for the NVM Express SSD Interface into its most recent OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite update.

appleinsider.com

This appeared to only work on new units (Laptops etc) and excluded Mac Pros.
It became possible to use on such units as from Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan) by applying RehabMan's patch:

GitHub - RehabMan/patch-nvme: A set of scripts and plists for patching IONVMeFamily.kext for non-Apple NVMe SSDs (based on the work of PikeRAlpha)

A set of scripts and plists for patching IONVMeFamily.kext for non-Apple NVMe SSDs (based on the work of PikeRAlpha) - RehabMan/patch-nvme

github.com

The patch was also needed for Mac OS 10.12 (Sierra), but was largely made unneccesary as from Mac OS 10.13 (High Sierra)

 

[R2FX]

Thank you all! Saved decent amount of headaches and $$$ 😀