Q: Did Mavericks drop support for express card SSDs?

I'm facing pretty much the exact same problem with a Wintec Filemate 96GB SSD. It seems to recognize the disk when I connect it via USB, but doesn't seem to recognize it at all when it's connected as an expresscard. If I load the Mountain Lion recovery partition, it sees it just fine in Disk Utility.

I have a Sonnet Tempo Edge eSata expresscard/34 and it acts the same as yours and when I went to re-install the driver it does not even start the install.

I hope there is a fix for this soon!

Same thing here with my Wintec 128.

Quite annoying.

I got mine to work by downloading the latest driver which was still from 2011... had to use the ctrl-click then open and open again to get it to install cause it came up as unknown developer. 

For some reason I could not change in prefs to allow anyone to install files under security... and I was in a admin account!  The button would spring back to original postion as soon as you clicked 'anyone' which is another bug!!

But finally got it to do the install, rebooted, plugged the card/drive in and bang-zoom its working again.  So try to re-install the latest driver you can find and cross fingers!

Do you have a link to the driver you got to work?

Thanks.

Annoying as I have loads on my drives connected to my Tempo Sata Express 34!

Have the same problem but not w/r/t an SSD. My Expresscard adapter simply doesn't work and my hard drives aren't being recognized.

Here is where I got the Sonnet eSATA expresscard driver...

http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=410&expand=&action=a3#a3

Here is a support page for all thier expresscards...

http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=306#position_content

I have the same problem. I have a mid-2010 17" MacBook Pro, and use a 48GB WinTec FileMate ExpressCard SSD as my boot drive.

When I tried to install Mavericks it just showed the "disk not found" error (an X, really).

I raised a support ticket with WinTec, who replied as follows:

Thank you for contacting us about the recent issue with the new MAC OS Mavericks and express cards and SSDs.  While Wintec Industries is a major manufacturer of express cards and SSDs, this is not an isolated event or issue.  This issue as evidenced in the apple community and in forums ranges from all sorts of express cards and SSDs.  While Wintec Industries can investigate with the controller manufacturer for support, we believe this issue is an Apple issue, and are looking forward to Apple addressing this issue with their update. Should we have any new information in regards to this issue, we will be more than glad to pass it along to our customers.

I really hope Apple fix this issue! I don't want to go back to booting from the internal drive. The performance increase by the SSD and separate media drive for my Aperture library is fantastic.

I have the exact same issue.   I have a partition on my HDD that duplicates my ExpressCard SSD.  I was able to install Mavericks on the HDD boot partition after a failed attempt directly on the ExpressCard SSD.  After booting there is no sign of the SSD in Disk Utility.

The SSD still shows up find when booting (holding down the option key).  I can even boot to it (still on Lion) and everything is fine.  But as soon as I boot to Mavericks any sign that I have an ExpressCard drive vanishes -- there is no diagnostics to be done, it just doesn't exist.

The fact that I have an ExpressCard does still show up in System Information System Report (under PCI Card):

ExpressCard:

  Type:          AHCI Controller

  Driver Installed:          No

  MSI:          No

  Bus:          PCI

  Slot:          ExpressCard

  Vendor ID:          0x197b

  Device ID:          0x2363

  Subsystem Vendor ID:          0x197b

  Subsystem ID:          0x2363

  Revision ID:          0x0003

Hope this gets fixed soon.  I've been using this as a boot/applications drive for 3 years and am not used to my machine running this slow (booting from the HDD).

I think this has to be a bug / error. I don't see why they would deprecate this type of functionality. I have a developer account, and will try and file a bug for Mavericks on this issue.

I am having the same issue, Macbook Pro mid 2011 17" using a Wintec express 128gb ssd and it give the grey prohib sign when rebooting to install Mavericks. This is a pain in the backside. Does anyone have any new info on this?

I'm using a Wintec Filemate 128Gb for my iTunes library and it's not recognized... no expresscard icon on the menubar.  I also use a Sonnet Tempo Edge sata expresscard - this is partially recognized, as the menubar icon appears. Beyond that - nothing.

I'm sure this will get sorted out soon, but it's annoying and frustrating to "upgrade" only to find existing functionality's been disabled/broken.