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Jperkins27 Author

Level 1

5 points

Mac Pro 2023 will not boot with PCIe SSD installed.

I just spent all night setting my new M2 Mac Pro. Everything seemed OK. This morning I was ready to do the final steps and get back to work. The final steps included adding some additional storage for my audio projects. Something I've been doing for over two decades now and didn't expect that to be a showstopper.

As soon as I installed my previously working OWC SSD OWC Accelsior 4M2 the Mac Pro would NOT boot. This drive works and I put it back in my 2019 Mac Pro and there are no issues. Even if I put the OWC SSD in a Sonnet PCIe to Thunderbolt chassis, the same thing happens. No boot. If I connect the chassis when the Mac is booted, it freezes.

I had also purchased a new OWC Accelsior 8M2 and planned for it to be my main working audio drive but the issue also happens with that SSD, so it's safe to say it's not a faulty SSD.

OWC is a VERY reliable brand and widely used in the pro audio and video community. I've been using them over 20 years now without issue.

I am not using these drives to boot the MacOS from. These are just storage for my actual audio projects, which is common in audio studios to have a dedicated drive for all the audio work. No software runs from these drives. I am using the internal Mac SSD to boot from as you normally would and without the PCIe SSDs, the computer seems to run just fine. I was so excited to get to work but I can't use this machine and get by on just the internal storage. Additional PCIe storage is essential in a pro studio.

I chatted with Apple Support today and they are looking into it, but I don't feel too confident about it. The "senior advisor" was not even aware there was a new 2023 Mac Pro (LOL) and hadn't watched the WWDC yet. I thought he was joking. He was not.

I called OWC as well and they are not aware of any issues yet but the Mac Pro just started arriving yesterday so it's still new territory. I'm trying to find out if it's an OWC issue, or Apple.

I do have an OWC Thunderbay 8 with 8 HDD (my project archives) and that did work OK.

Something about the new Mac Pro is NOT happy with PCIe SSDs connected either internally, or in a Thunderbolt chassis.

After staying up all night and wasting about 10 hours of setting up the new 2023 Mac Pro, I am sadly back to working on my 2019 Mac Pro. All my OWC SSDs work just fine again when inserted in the 2019 Mac Pro.

This could be bad news for Apple if it's on their end.

Mac Pro

Posted on Jun 15, 2023 10:22 AM

Top-ranking reply

Jperkins27 Author

Level 1

5 points

Posted on Jun 16, 2023 7:44 AM

Some progress has been made. While for some reason, the new and unformatted OWC 8M2 drive was still causing this issue (it could be due to needing an additional power cable/supply), I tried a new and unformatted OWC 4M2 drive and it worked.

I am currently back to work using the M2 Mac Pro and a new OWC 4M2 PCIe SSD to store my active audio projects.

In talking with OWC, it seems that the new Mac Pro might not like external PCIe drives that are formatted to anything other than APFS Volume • APFS.

Hopefully Apple can release an update that makes the M2 Mac Pro work with a wider variety of external drives in terms of how they are formatted.

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119 replies

Jperkins27 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jun 21, 2023 12:45 PM in response to David K. Gross

My 2nd new 4TB OWC 4M2 PCIe SSD just arrived and I put it in the 2023 Mac Pro and it still boots up OK.

This is a good sign but it's still odd that the M2 Ultra Mac Pro DOES NOT like most of the other similar models.

I will probably install SoftRAID software again soon to format/name the new drive.

lukiffer

Level 1

8 points

Jun 22, 2023 8:16 PM in response to SoftRAIDSupport

Running the "Uninstall All SoftRAID Components" option did not work.

I'm on 13.4.1 (22F2083), was previously on 13.4 (unsure of the build number).

I purchased 16 new (uninitialized) drives, installed them, and was able to boot. I didn't destroy the RAID or wipe any of the previous drives, so if you need additional info in testing, just let me know.

Jperkins27 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jun 22, 2023 8:43 PM in response to lukiffer

Are you able to say the SSD size and model number? I had issues with brand new 4M2 and 8M2 drives that were 2TB, but the two new 4TB 4M2 drives I have are working.

My older 1TB and 2TB 4M2 drives also cause the issue.

lukiffer

Level 1

8 points

Jun 22, 2023 11:02 PM in response to Jperkins27

My assumption (based on the “workaround” posted earlier of zeroing the disks and recreating the RAID set) would be that indicates the issue has something to do with what’s on the disk rather than the disk hardware itself. My further assumption based on the kernel panic stack trace is that it has something to do with the kext’s (or the system API’s) interpretation of the RAID config. This is of course conjecture without actually having source code visibility, but find it interesting that no one has reported having this issue with Disk Utility (native) RAID sets.

ctwinger

Level 1

4 points

Jun 25, 2023 10:04 AM in response to Jperkins27

After wasting 30+ hours testing this with the same setups you all have, I’m done. I found that just keeping each SSD formatted by Apple in recovery and not using OWC makes it bootable. The moment I do anything with the SoftRaid program, it’s not rebootable.

Just going to use each ssd separately until a resolution is made on here.

Jun 25, 2023 10:07 AM in response to ctwinger

Thanks for the update, CT. I'm still waiting for my replacement of the 2TB 4M2 (I want to get a 4TB one now since it seems like those DO work..but I'm stuck in an RMA delay snafu that's not making me happy :/. I'll report back as soon as a new one arrives as well.

ctwinger

Level 1

4 points

Jun 25, 2023 10:19 AM in response to Jperkins27

Last update from me. Not sure why I didn't do it until after 30 hours, but I used Raid Assistant in MacOs and both my 4M2 8TB drives are working in raid 0 now with no issues.

100% the issue is connected to using SoftRaid, or an external application.

16TB's SSD are now fully working and no issues booting. My HDD via the Pegasus never had any issues, but are not setup in a Raid format.

Jperkins27 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jun 25, 2023 3:53 PM in response to Jperkins27

Interesting stuff here. I'm not sure how the 4M2 units are formatted from OWC out of the box but both my new 2TB 4M2 and older and already formatted 1TB and 2TB 4M2 units definitely caused the issue.

My goal here is to have one large volume, and not a bunch of smaller volumes. I'm also not trying to reuse any of my older 4M2 SSDs at this point, I just need something that works.

The 4TB units are slighter large than one I need for my active projects (and backup) but I can't really invest any more time in this.

Something about the larger 4TB ones don't cause the issue, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 8TB and 16TB models work out of the box.

Something about the smaller sized ones and certain formatting types seem to be a trigger.

Hopefully Apple and/or OWC/SoftRAID will comment on this soon so we know what's going.

Even though I've had a solid working new M2 Mac Pro for over a week now, it's still slightly unsettling that a 10k Mac can just stop booting up due to a certain type of PCIe SSD inserted.

The PCIe slots for my audio cards and active project SSD(s) are a big part of why I went with this machine.

ctwinger

Level 1

4 points

Jun 25, 2023 6:58 PM in response to Jperkins27

All of them will work, just use Apple Raid Assistance rather than SoftRaid software.

I tested positive everything I own this week and that was the final thing that worked in all my configurations.

Apple just isn’t liking SoftRaid on the M2.

Jperkins27 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jun 25, 2023 7:05 PM in response to ctwinger

Does this mean that you had to format the drives using another Mac somehow? It's just kind of hard to format a PCIe SSD unless you have a spare PCIe enclosure and another Mac.

Technically I can do this but the easier option for me was to just get a couple 4TB drives instead which are working with SoftRAID installed, right out of the box.

ctwinger

Level 1

4 points

Jun 25, 2023 9:30 PM in response to Jperkins27

When you can’t boot up, it takes you to recovery. Erase your drives. Reboot and the system will start as they are not initialized.

Once in Mac OS, erase and reset them all. Then use Raid Assistant to setup the raid. Avoid SoftRaid and you are good to go.

Jperkins27 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jun 26, 2023 6:38 AM in response to ctwinger

I tried that but even in recovery mode, it wasn't letting me in far enough to reformat the OWC drive(s).

I'm just glad I randomly had a new 4TB 4M2 that I tried before giving up and potentially returning the M2 Mac Pro.

I'm going to call that good for now and keep working.

lukiffer

Level 1

8 points

Jun 26, 2023 12:29 PM in response to David K. Gross

ctwinger's feedback is consistent with my theory about the SoftRAID kext. My issue is that Disk Utility doesn't (elegantly) handle RAID 10. I may abandon this ambition and just use Time Machine or a cloud backup solution for resiliency and forego local redundancy.

For those of you who only need RAID-0 or RAID-1, and still have access to your 2019 Mac Pro, you should be able to put the drives in the 2019 MP and wipe them. I was unsuccessful at getting into recovery mode with the drives present in the 2023 MP.

Once they're wiped in the 2019 MP, you should be able to put them back into the 2023 MP and then build the new RAID set using Disk Utility and it should be fine.

Jun 26, 2023 4:50 PM in response to lukiffer

Here is where we are with this bug.

We have discovered a bug with the new M2 Mac Studio and Mac Pro, when running macOS 13.4, which makes most NVMe blades unusable with SoftRAID. We have reported this problem to Apple and have been actively investigating possible solutions. Until Apple delivers a fix in future release of macOS, we suggest that users of these new Macs use Apple's Disk Utility to configure their NVMe blades as RAID 0 volumes.

This problem only affects users of the 2023 Mac Studio and 2023 Mac Pro.

The other thing I can add is this primarily affects NVMe blades with 4K sector size, which is why some enclosures work and some do not.

If I were to guess, this may be fixed in 13.5, when released.

Jun 26, 2023 4:54 PM in response to SoftRAIDSupport

thank you SO much for the detailed dive in. So the next obvious question, will OWC be updating their Website regarding the fix with perhaps a 'call us if you want to buy one of these PCIe/Blade drives", and/or offering a 'we'll format this with Disk Utility for you before we ship it out" service?

Mac Pro 2023 will not boot with PCIe SSD installed.