Apple MacPro Booting HighSierra & MntLion

Question

Apple MacPro Booting HighSierra & MntLion

For years, I was able to use my MacPro with a dual OSX HD workflow system. Mountain Lion, High Sierra and 2x WesternDigital HDs installed for data storage only.

My High Sierra HD recently failed (stop spinning) and now I have a brand new OWC SSD with High Sierra newly installed.

Now, when I boot into those drives, (holding down the Option Key) the MacPro is not recognizing or reading the other HDs and SSDs installed. It seems the MacPro only works fine when only ONE OSX Boot Drive is present. Now, I have to manually install and remove these SSDs when I need to Boot up and work in different OSX environments.

Before the original High Sierra OSX HD failed me, i was definitely able to Boot in and out of both OSX drives with no issues and all internal drives installed were 100% recognized in any OSX I choose to start-up with.

Has anyone experienced this before? Does any know how to fix this?

Thank you for your time.

PS. I did not do Time Machine backup. 😕

Posted on Mar 5, 2023 7:53 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

142,369 points

Mar 6, 2023 7:29 AM in response to djalwereventsusa

This replacement drive is mounted in a drive bay or on a PCIE-slot card?

If you re-installed High Sierra on an SSD drive, that drive will now be Apple File System (APFS) format, which is harder for older Macs and very hard for older MacOS to consider bootable.

You need to conduct rigorous experiments and be absolutely certain what your symptoms are, especially the difference between Option-boot at startup, and set startup disk control panel.

I would expect:

In startup Disk Control panel, MacOS 10.8 Mountain Lion would NOT be willing to consider your High Sierra drive a valid Startup disk.

In Option-boot, Startup Manager should consider your High Sierra Drive a valid startup drive, provided you have EVER installed 10.13.6 on this exact machine

The firmware is stored in a private store on the backplane board, not on any drive or even on the processor module. The firmware update changes the ROM code used for Startup Manager to allow a slightly wider group of drives including APFS drives. Your firmware version should be at least M51.089.B00

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Answer 2

Mar 6, 2023 3:14 PM in response to djalwereventsusa

<< When all 4x drives are installed, and I choose the Mountain Lion disk to boot, there is a message window immediately pop-up that says “disc not readable by computer”. Options are: Initialize/Ignore/Cancel >>

10.8 Mountain Lion has no idea what to do with your High Sierra SSD drive, now Apple File System (APFS) format. Your best bet is Ignore, as you certainly do not want to initialize.

<< Also simultaneously, my 4TB WesternDigital storage/data HD is not being read or recognized by the MacPro. >>

If that drive was also formatted as Apple File System (APFS) it has the same issue.

But rather than guess, launch Terminal and type this command:

diskutil list

and copy and paste the output text back to the forums.

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Answer 3

Mar 6, 2023 6:57 PM in response to djalwereventsusa

As I thought, your 1 TB SSD boot disk is APFS format, so Mountain lion has no clue about what it might be.

But your 2TB Recording and 4TB Instruments are still HFS (MacOS Hierarchical File System extended) .if one of those is not mounting properly, it may have some minor directory damage, and may benefit from a Disk Utility RepairDisk.

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Answer 4

Mar 7, 2023 5:25 AM in response to djalwereventsusa

For the "firmware version":

 menu > about this Mac > (System Report)...

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro

Model Identifier: MacPro5,1

Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Processor Speed: 2.93 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 4

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 8 MB

Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

Memory: 24 GB

System Firmware Version: 144.0.0.0.0

SMC Version (system): 1.39f5

SMC Version (processor tray) 1.39f5

[...]

please don't post your serial number, it attracts vermin.

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Answer 5

Mar 6, 2023 10:04 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thank you for your reply.

This replacement drive is mounted in a drive bay. (2.5” to 3.5” SSD converter)

When all 4x drives are installed, and I choose the Mountain Lion disk to boot, there is a message window immediately pop-up that says “disc not readable by computer”. Options are: Initialize/Ignore/Cancel

Also simultaneously, my 4TB WesternDigital storage/data HD is not being read or recognized by the MacPro. It does however recognize the 2TB WesternDigital HD.

When all 4x drives are installed, and I choose the High Sierra disk to boot, Mountain Lion is read and I can drag and drop files from this drive into Hight Sierra, and my 4TB WesternDigital storage/data HD is also not being read or recognized by the MacPro. It does however recognize the 2TB WesternDigital HD.

This is all totally new as before High Sierra crashed, I never had these issues.

How can I check the firmware version ? And which firmware version should I be on so I can go back to my workflow as mentioned before.

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Answer 6

Mar 6, 2023 6:38 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

This has High Sierra OS and 2 Storage Drives (Mountain Lion OSX not installed)

Last login: Mon Mar 6 21:19:57 on console

Mac-Pro:~ al$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk3 1000.0 GB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD Instrum... 4.0 TB disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk2

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD Recording 2.0 TB disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +1000.0 GB disk3

Physical Store disk0s2

1: APFS Volume Macintosh SSD High S... 14.4 GB disk3s1

2: APFS Volume Preboot 21.3 MB disk3s2

3: APFS Volume Recovery 516.2 MB disk3s3

4: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB disk3s4

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Answer 7

Mar 6, 2023 7:26 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

This has Mountain Lion OS and 2 Storage Drives (High Sierra OSX not installed)

Last login: Mon Mar 6 21:45:43 on console

mac-pro:~ al$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD Mtn Lion 999.3 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk1

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD Instrum... 4.0 TB disk1s2

/dev/disk2

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk2

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD Recording 2.0 TB disk2s2

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Answer 8

Mar 6, 2023 7:54 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant,

So this is my new found dilema with my MacPro that’s impeding my workflow.

What is my next step with this MacPro ?

I just want to be able to go back to booting in-and-out of both OSX drives and having the 2x storage drives readable.

At this moment, i have to physically remove one of the OSX drives out the drive bay, just to be able to work inside the MacPro.

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Apple MacPro Booting HighSierra & MntLion

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