Resolved Velocity Solo x1 and BootCamp

[NOTNlCE]

Alright guys, so I've read a ton of threads here, and I've researched this extensively, and the conclusion I have come to is that Windows 7 will NOT boot while I have my Velocity Solo x1 card installed in my system. Originally, I thought it was BSoDing because my main drive is a CoreStorage volume, but having just the HDD installed seems to make it OK, but having the Solo installed causes a BSoD, or a boot failure.

I would have thrown this into the "Windows" discussion forum, but I've pinpointed that the Velocity Solo is the cause of the failure, and I figured you guys would know best. If it helps, the Solo is controlling the Fusion Drive which houses my OS X partition, and Boot Camp is on an internal HDD in a drive sled.

Honestly, all I want to know is if anyone has found a way to use BootCamp with the Solo installed, or whether I am going to have to resort to removing a PCIe card every time I want to boot into Windows (which I obviously do not want to do). As always, I appreciate all your help. Thanks in advance!
-N

EDIT: If anyone else is experiencing this problem, I have determined that it is in fact an issue with Windows 7. Though Windows 8 is "unsupported" on my system, it doesn't have issues with the Solo. Despite my Windows Update issues, the point of this thread was to have a functioning Windows installation without having to rip out my Solo every time I swapped systems.

 

[Gav Mack]

Alright guys, so I've read a ton of threads here, and I've researched this extensively, and the conclusion I have come to is that Windows 7 will NOT boot while I have my Velocity Solo x1 card installed in my system. Originally, I thought it was BSoDing because my main drive is a CoreStorage volume, but having just the HDD installed seems to make it OK, but having the Solo installed causes a BSoD, or a boot failure.

I would have thrown this into the "Windows" discussion forum, but I've pinpointed that the Velocity Solo is the cause of the failure, and I figured you guys would know best. If it helps, the Solo is controlling the Fusion Drive which houses my OS X partition, and Boot Camp is on an internal HDD in a drive sled.

Honestly, all I want to know is if anyone has found a way to use BootCamp with the Solo installed, or whether I am going to have to resort to removing a PCIe card every time I want to boot into Windows (which I obviously do not want to do). As always, I appreciate all your help. Thanks in advance!
-N

I used to live in the windows forum until I got my 3,1

Have you enabled AHCI SATA mode in bootcamp by modding the partition? The solo is an AHCI controller and if you are booting in Apple's handicapped legacy IDE mode (which is the default) you will always get a BSOD.

 

[NOTNlCE]

I used to live in the windows forum until I got my 3,1

Have you enabled AHCI SATA mode in bootcamp by modding the partition? The solo is an AHCI controller and if you are booting in Apple's handicapped legacy IDE mode (which is the default) you will always get a BSOD.

I have not, let me give that a shot, thanks for the tip. I'll update in a bit.

 

[hfg]

I used to live in the windows forum until I got my 3,1

Have you enabled AHCI SATA mode in bootcamp by modding the partition? The solo is an AHCI controller and if you are booting in Apple's handicapped legacy IDE mode (which is the default) you will always get a BSOD.

Could you please elaborate on how the ACHI partition mod is accomplished. Can you do it non-destructively on a Windows installed drive (single SSD drive, not partitioned with OS X).

Thanks...

 

[NOTNlCE]

Could you please elaborate on how the ACHI partition mod is accomplished. Can you do it non-destructively on a Windows installed drive (single SSD drive, not partitioned with OS X).

Thanks...

This is a thread on how to modify BootCamp to use AHCI instead of the Apple Default IDE controller. I have successfully completed the modification, and Windows7 boots PERFECTLY in AHCI mode with the Drive Bay controller. Unfortunately, I still BSoD at login with the Solo installed.

 

[hfg]

This is a thread on how to modify BootCamp to use AHCI instead of the Apple Default IDE controller. I have successfully completed the modification, and Windows7 boots PERFECTLY in AHCI mode with the Drive Bay controller. Unfortunately, I still BSoD at login with the Solo installed.

Thanks for the link!

This may be related to my inability to boot Windows from a PCIe card (Solo x2 or Sonnet Tempo Pro) with or without OS X boot disk on PCIe as well (OS X boots fine on either card).

My desired goal was to have a 512GB SSD and a 256GB SSD with both Windows and OS X (RAID-0) on only 2 physical drives mounted to the Sonnet Pro card (or a pair of Solo x2 cards). The larger 512 drive would be partitioned in half so that Windows would occupy one half, and the other half would be OS X RAID-0 with the smaller drive. Thus 512GB OS X RAID-0 and 256GB Windows.

I was able to get it to work flawlessly in the Mac Pro drive sleds, but could not get it to work on PCIe bus cards.
No Windows boot!!!

-howard

 

[Gav Mack]

This is a thread on how to modify BootCamp to use AHCI instead of the Apple Default IDE controller. I have successfully completed the modification, and Windows7 boots PERFECTLY in AHCI mode with the Drive Bay controller. Unfortunately, I still BSoD at login with the Solo installed.

Does it BSOD with the card installed but with no SSD in it booting from the sled? You have to run the solo empty, and download the drivers from Windows update for it first before attempting to boot off it

----------

Thanks for the link!

This may be related to my inability to boot Windows from a PCIe card (Solo x2 or Sonnet Tempo Pro) with or without OS X boot disk on PCIe as well (OS X boots fine on either card).

My desired goal was to have a 512GB SSD and a 256GB SSD with both Windows and OS X (RAID-0) on only 2 physical drives mounted to the Sonnet Pro card (or a pair of Solo x2 cards). The larger 512 drive would be partitioned in half so that Windows would occupy one half, and the other half would be OS X RAID-0 with the smaller drive. Thus 512GB OS X RAID-0 and 256GB Windows.

I was able to get it to work flawlessly in the Mac Pro drive sleds, but could not get it to work on PCIe bus cards.
No Windows boot!!!

-howard

I ran into problems with my Solo X2 booting windows when I setup the bootcamp folder on the same partition on the single SSD. No BSOD in my case, didn't even boot into black screen legacy mode at all. Would boot from the sled fine with both partitions. I only managed to get it going by sticking bootcamp on a separate SSD, connecting the second port on the X2 and have actually stuck the second SSD using thermal sticky pads on top of the primary SSD installed in the card and now works great (thanks costabunny). As both drives are read only to each other they pretty much run maxed out.

I have never been able to get bootcamp working with raid support for Windows, Apple do not support it in their legacy mode. It may be possible to get it working via native EFI booting Windows 8 but that's definitely a topic for others in the Windows forum!

 

[costabunny]

Thanks for the link!

This may be related to my inability to boot Windows from a PCIe card (Solo x2 or Sonnet Tempo Pro) with or without OS X boot disk on PCIe as well (OS X boots fine on either card).

My desired goal was to have a 512GB SSD and a 256GB SSD with both Windows and OS X (RAID-0) on only 2 physical drives mounted to the Sonnet Pro card (or a pair of Solo x2 cards). The larger 512 drive would be partitioned in half so that Windows would occupy one half, and the other half would be OS X RAID-0 with the smaller drive. Thus 512GB OS X RAID-0 and 256GB Windows.

I was able to get it to work flawlessly in the Mac Pro drive sleds, but could not get it to work on PCIe bus cards.
No Windows boot!!!

-howard

I would be surprised if it did work with a Raid member on the disk as well as Windows. For Bootcamp, OS makes a hybrid disk partitioning map (HFS GUID and MBR).

I cannot test this theory but I wonder if that is still the case when one partition is a RAID member?

I was going to chime in about the ACHI - I boot off the Solo in my system with Win7 and 8. no issues, Infact the Win7 install was done when the SSD was in a drive bay. I simply put it on solo when it arrived and the win install booted up first time (and much quicker). I have never used any ACHI mod.

the difference being in my system the SSD's mounted to the Solo are one for OSX and the other for Windows. No split partitions or RAID.

When you have the RAID OS up and running - does Bootcamp assistant work as it should? I mean does it allow you to make the Windows partition on the SSD or are you having to do it manually?

 

[Gav Mack]

I would be surprised if it did work with a Raid member on the disk as well as Windows. For Bootcamp, OS makes a hybrid disk partitioning map (HFS GUID and MBR).

I cannot test this theory but I wonder if that is still the case when one partition is a RAID member?

I was going to chime in about the ACHI - I boot off the Solo in my system with Win7 and 8. no issues, Infact the Win7 install was done when the SSD was in a drive bay. I simply put it on solo when it arrived and the win install booted up first time (and much quicker). I have never used any ACHI mod.

the difference being in my system the SSD's mounted to the Solo are one for OSX and the other for Windows. No split partitions or RAID.

When you have the RAID OS up and running - does Bootcamp assistant work as it should? I mean does it allow you to make the Windows partition on the SSD or are you having to do it manually?

Most likely you did the initial windows setup in legacy mode with the solo installed and that would have setup your X2 as a standard AHCI controller but that means that only sleds 1-2 are accessible in Windows as the IDE configuration only allows for a total of four devices and only ATA-133 as the highest speed for the onboard SATA. Crippled in terms of speed and ports so as a mixed OS user modding the mbr for intel AHCI simply has to be done!

I tried years ago to get bootcamp going when the mac had some kind of raid function going on the OSX side and it never worked so have always ruled it out since. I assume the only way to get it going is to boot natively using full EFI with Win Hate and not the bootcamp option. There's a few big threads on the windows forum about EFI boot you may find more answers there...

 

[costabunny]

Most likely you did the initial windows setup in legacy mode with the solo installed and that would have setup your X2 as a standard AHCI controller but that means that only sleds 1-2 are accessible in Windows as the IDE configuration only allows for a total of four devices and only ATA-133 as the highest speed for the onboard SATA. Crippled in terms of speed and ports so as a mixed OS user modding the mbr for intel AHCI simply has to be done!

That would have made sense - however I didn't have the solo when I installed windows. I guess maybe I booted into bootcamp after I had it, but before I moved it to the Solo...

 

[hfg]

I would be surprised if it did work with a Raid member on the disk as well as Windows. For Bootcamp, OS makes a hybrid disk partitioning map (HFS GUID and MBR).

I cannot test this theory but I wonder if that is still the case when one partition is a RAID member?

I was going to chime in about the ACHI - I boot off the Solo in my system with Win7 and 8. no issues, Infact the Win7 install was done when the SSD was in a drive bay. I simply put it on solo when it arrived and the win install booted up first time (and much quicker). I have never used any ACHI mod.

the difference being in my system the SSD's mounted to the Solo are one for OSX and the other for Windows. No split partitions or RAID.

When you have the RAID OS up and running - does Bootcamp assistant work as it should? I mean does it allow you to make the Windows partition on the SSD or are you having to do it manually?

As I recall, I manually partitioned the shared disk and installed Windows, then I created the RAID-0 in the other partition along with the second small SSD and installed OS X. With both drives mounted in drive bay sleds, it all worked perfectly, even switching between the operating systems as expected with Startup Disk. I thought I had it made ... only 2 physical drive slots, RAID-0 in OS X, and standard booting in Windows.

Then I moved the SSDs to the PCIe bus and while OS X worked fine, Windows would no longer boot. This was on 2 configurations: a pair of Solo x2 cards, and a Sonnet Pro dual SSD card. The suggestion of letting Windows update the drivers by putting the bare Solo x2 card had not been reported at that time, so I did not have the advantage of trying that to see if it would change the situation.

Perhaps I can find time to build that SSD configuration again and see if I can get it working. My current Mac Pro configuration is working so well and fast right now that I hesitate to dig into it for that last tiny bit of performance, and risk screwing it all up again.

-howard

 

[costabunny]

As I recall, I manually partitioned the shared disk and installed Windows, then I created the RAID-0 in the other partition along with the second small SSD and installed OS X. With both drives mounted in drive bay sleds, it all worked perfectly, even switching between the operating systems as expected with Startup Disk. I thought I had it made ... only 2 physical drive slots, RAID-0 in OS X, and standard booting in Windows.

Then I moved the SSDs to the PCIe bus and while OS X worked fine, Windows would no longer boot. This was on 2 configurations: a pair of Solo x2 cards, and a Sonnet Pro dual SSD card. The suggestion of letting Windows update the drivers by putting the bare Solo x2 card had not been reported at that time, so I did not have the advantage of trying that to see if it would change the situation.

Perhaps I can find time to build that SSD configuration again and see if I can get it working. My current Mac Pro configuration is working so well and fast right now that I hesitate to dig into it for that last tiny bit of performance, and risk screwing it all up again.

-howard

Yep i should think letting windows find the card and install it before moving to it will do the trick. Makes sense as it sounds like thats how my system did it ( cant remember but i would have tested bootcamp after moving the os disk to the solo).

 

[NOTNlCE]

I have attempted all recommendations here. Even without the SSD installed in the Solo but with the Solo still in the PCIe slot, it BSoDs at startup. I can't install the driver for the Solo through Windows Update if I can't even boot into Windows successfully.

 

[hfg]

I have attempted all recommendations here. Even without the SSD installed in the Solo but with the Solo still in the PCIe slot, it BSoDs at startup. I can't install the driver for the Solo through Windows Update if I can't even boot into Windows successfully.

Have you done a PRAM reset since you rearranged your disks?

Where do you currently have your Windows SSD installed (and runs ok without bare Solo in system).

 

[NOTNlCE]

Have you done a PRAM reset since you rearranged your disks?

Where do you currently have your Windows SSD installed (and runs ok without Solo in system).

Oh yes, tried that first. Windows is currently on my hard drive in drive bay 2, with the whole disk allotted to Win7. It boots fine without the Solo installed, even with the AHCI mod.

 

[hfg]

Oh yes, tried that first. Windows is currently on my hard drive in drive bay 2, with the whole disk allotted to Win7. It boots fine without the Solo installed, even with the AHCI mod.

What is in drive bay #1? Perhaps your CoreStorage Fusion hard disk?

Have you tried putting your Windows disk in drive bay #1?

Does your system work OK (both windows and OS X Fusion) if the SSD is located in one of the drive bays?

Boy I do know the frustration you are going through ... been there, with all the interactions between controller chips in various PCIe boards.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Drive Bay one had my storage drive installed in it. Tried moving Windows to that bay, nothing. The CoreStorage HDD is in Bay 3, for sure it's not the CoreStorage that's causing the BSoD, I've booted with JUST the Windows Disk and the Solo (without the SSD attached) and still BSoD. I can give a shot at putting the SSD in the drive bay. I don't have a 2.5" adapter, so this is gonna be sketchy. I'll report back. Thanks for the help.

 

[hfg]

Drive Bay one had my storage drive installed in it. Tried moving Windows to that bay, nothing. The CoreStorage HDD is in Bay 3, for sure it's not the CoreStorage that's causing the BSoD, I've booted with JUST the Windows Disk and the Solo (without the SSD attached) and still BSoD. I can give a shot at putting the SSD in the drive bay. I don't have a 2.5" adapter, so this is gonna be sketchy. I'll report back. Thanks for the help.

Yeah ... just be careful !! The SSD is so light that it will be fine just plugged-in to the bay connector. Just be careful not to accidentally bump it while you are working.

 

[NOTNlCE]

No luck. I was able to boot my BootCamp installation in VMWare, and made an attempt to install the Asmedia 1061 Controller Driver MANUALLY, but no such luck. Didn't even blue screen the first time, I actually was able to log into the OS, but as soon as I was "installing device driver software" there was an instant reboot. Not even BSoD that time, booted back up again, BSoD before I could even log in.

I WAS able to boot into BootCamp AND OS X with the SSD in Drive Bay 4, no problems whatsoever. The Solo is for sure the problem.

 

[hfg]

Sounds like a Solo problem.
You might try exchanging it for a new one to see if it makes a difference.

I know it is always nice to find the problem ... and fix it. But sometimes you need to just go with what works and consider the real effects of doing that.

I have found that for normal OS X booting, applications, and data (random small file read/write), I could not tell the difference whether the SSD was in a drive bay on SATA II, or on a PCIe card running SATA III.

The only time I really felt a big difference was when my photo library (all very large files) was on a SATA III PCIe RAID-0 card. So in my Mac Pro, I have my OS X system 512GB SSD in a drive bay, and my photo library on a 1TB RAID-0 using a pair of 512GB SSDs on a Sonnet Pro SSD card. Everything else, mostly archive and media files (music and video) is on hard disk. My system is fast, quiet, and stable now and I am very happy with it.

My Solo x2 cards are in my desk drawer.

-howard

BTW: what version of Windows are you running?
also, is your BSoD prior to logging in to Windows, or does it occur a minute or so afterwards?

 

[Gav Mack]

Could you provide the details of the BSOD? You can either go into advanced system properties disable automatic restart on failure and it will stay on screen or use an app like Blue screen view.

 

[NOTNlCE]

I will find a copy of the BSoD. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate SP1, 64 bit. The BSoD occurs at various times, sometimes before the login window comes up, sometimes as I am logging in, and sometimes even up to a minute after I log in. I've got a spare drive and I am going to attempt to install Windows and boot into that with the Solo installed, and see if it's just something dumb. I'll report back, thanks again.

 

[Gav Mack]

Easiest to get them with blue screen view before you go reinstalling anything. If you can't post them here send me a pm and I'll give you my email address to have a good look through them

 

[ybz90]

Alright guys, so I've read a ton of threads here, and I've researched this extensively, and the conclusion I have come to is that Windows 7 will NOT boot while I have my Velocity Solo x1 card installed in my system. Originally, I thought it was BSoDing because my main drive is a CoreStorage volume, but having just the HDD installed seems to make it OK, but having the Solo installed causes a BSoD, or a boot failure.

I would have thrown this into the "Windows" discussion forum, but I've pinpointed that the Velocity Solo is the cause of the failure, and I figured you guys would know best. If it helps, the Solo is controlling the Fusion Drive which houses my OS X partition, and Boot Camp is on an internal HDD in a drive sled.

Honestly, all I want to know is if anyone has found a way to use BootCamp with the Solo installed, or whether I am going to have to resort to removing a PCIe card every time I want to boot into Windows (which I obviously do not want to do). As always, I appreciate all your help. Thanks in advance!
-N

Does the Velocity Solo X1 not have an internal SATA data header? If so, I would try building your fusion drive with the mechanical hard drive also attached to the PCI-e card in addition to your SSD, rather than using one on the PCI-e and one on the built-in SATA.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Well guys, I have gone ahead and left my Windows 7 installation for dead. Today I went ahead and installed Windows 8 on my spare drive. No problems. So very odd. Not a huge deal for me though, because anything I don't bother to back up, I don't need. Just going to be a night of reinstalling stuff, which I don't mind. Plus, I need to learn Windows 8, as much as I don't like the interface. I'll just mod its visuals back to Windows 7 standards as much as I can. I might redo the 7 installation if I REALLY hate Windows 8, but the fact that it installed and functions with the Solo is good enough for me. I'll keep updating this thread if I come across more problems. Thanks for all your help.
-N