hp p600 ssd

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hp p600 ssd

i bought this HP p600 ssd (1 tb) to use as storage. has anyone had any trouble with this, as regards as to how it works with Catalina, and by extension, macs in general? a few things about this, after weeks of testing: this has a software CD built into it, and it pops up along with the volume as a separate disk. Ejecting either or both takes forever. Frequently, macos crashes, and my computer reboots, and upon inspection of the crash reports that get sent out, a common theme has to do with power control, and possibly the drive interface as well, as near as i can figure out. it works perfectly with my windows setup, but on my mac, geez. bought what i should have bought in the first place, a sandisk extreme ssd, and both of them sandisk ssds are perfect.

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 6, 2020 7:36 PM

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Answer 1

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HWTech

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68,714 points

Apr 7, 2020 2:06 PM in response to agingboomer

I've never used this drive and I don't know the specifics about the drive. If you want to use an external drive on a Mac, then you should use Disk Utility to properly erase the drive for use on the Mac.

If the drive is to be used exclusively on the Mac, then erase the drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled). If you cannot see the physical drive on the left pane of Disk Utility, then within Disk Utility click on "View" and select "Show All Devices".

If you need to share this drive with Windows, then use Disk Utility to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and exFAT. Formatting the drive as exFAT using Windows 10 may not make it compatible with macOS due to the larger block sizes Windows uses when formatting the drive that macOS does not understand.

This assumes that you are not using the SSD's built-in hardware encryption. If you are using the SSD's built-in hardware encryption, then it will first need to be disabled before you can allow macOS to manage the drive.

I've also had to resort to using a powered USB3 hub with UASP support to buffer and filter the connection to my USB drives, otherwise my Mac's USB port will shutdown until a system reboot restores it.

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Answer 2

agingboomer Author

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34 points

Apr 7, 2020 2:31 PM in response to HWTech

hardware encryption not built in. the rest i already know, but the last comment about usb with UASP is helpful. thank you. this thing is not like most ssds, which would be a single interface to a single drive. apparently it's built as a hub, with the writable ssd interfaced to that, and a software CD separately interfaced to the hub. the ssd interface is presented as a scsi device, weird. the device tree is like this

computer-usb 3 hub___scsi disk

\_software CD

thanks for your two bits!

--david

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Answer 3

agingboomer Author

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Apr 16, 2020 10:35 PM in response to agingboomer

new development. interesting. stumbled on something, not sure what, but after the 2nd or 3rd try, got this ssd setup as a mac os boot disk, went through the whole restore thing from my backup, and it's working now. there was one panic in the beginning, but so far now it seems to be working ok. long term testing indicated. i think that the ssd, mac os doesn't really like it when it's hotplugged in and out, in the course of normally using the ssd just for data and files. if i boot from it, and leave it where it is, no hot plugging or anything, i guess the driver settles down and accepts or maybe forces it to work, since it is a boot drive, now. most OS's would tend to be like that, super protective of it's own residence, no? so far so good. will test extensively, shut downs, restarts, updates, whatever, and just see that the computer starts up normally each time. it seems just a little slower, i think, because of that whole virtual cd and flash memory in an internal hub in the device, but ok..

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Answer 4

HWTech

Level 9

68,714 points

Apr 7, 2020 4:36 PM in response to agingboomer

I hate when manufacturers try to get fancy like that. They just need to keep things simple.

macOS no longer includes a SCSI driver, but you could try the special USB driver used by the DriveDX app which is made to communicate with an external drive's SMART features. IIRC this requires the SCSI interface. You can grab the special USB driver from this link:

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/usb-drive-support

UASP USB support is great when you connect multiple hard drives. Just make sure everything in the chain supports UASP. You can mix non-UASP devices on a hub.

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Answer 5

HWTech

Level 9

68,714 points

Apr 7, 2020 5:24 PM in response to agingboomer

It says it supports macOS 10.9+. I think they would mention Catalina specifically if it was not compatible. You just have to jump through more hoops to get macOS to approve the driver install for macOS 10.13+. Considering all the other details I think it will work with Catalina. The question is whether this driver will be enough to solve your HP SSD issue.

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Answer 6

agingboomer Author

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34 points

Apr 7, 2020 4:45 PM in response to HWTech

agreed. also, the drivedx thing appears to just be for high sierra or earlier. no mention of catalina (10.15.4, currently) anywhere on website, so, thanks for the tip!

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Answer 7

agingboomer Author

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Apr 16, 2020 10:54 PM in response to agingboomer

spoke too soon. still crashes like it always does. i give up. windows only, this drive is never going to be connected to my mac again.

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Answer 8

agingboomer Author

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34 points

Apr 6, 2020 10:16 PM in response to agingboomer

aha! figured something out! the thing is showing up as a usb attached SCSI (UAS) mass storage device on my windows computer, and not a normal usb connection. it actually seems to be sort of a usb hub, with a software cd on one side, and the scsi flash memory on the other side. doesn't act like a normal usb device. I guess Apple aint using a very compatible driver for this thing? all i know is, i quit using this thing for my apple computers.

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hp p600 ssd

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