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mmarionsd1 Author

Level 1

13 points

Did Mavericks drop support for express card SSDs?

I've been using a Wintec Filemate 128G SSD expresscard/34 as my OS disk (with a filevaulted homedir on the HDD) on my 17" (Mid 2010) Macbook Pro for awhile now. When I tried to upgrade to Mavericks it failed to boot showing the universal NO symbol, verbose boot showed it stuck waiting for root device.

Luckily I had another spare drive (I'd replaced my superdrive with another HDD to store most of my itunes libarary when I travelled last summer) and I was able to clone the SSD to the HDD just fine using target mode and my iMac. I can still attempt to boot off the SSD but when booting mavericks off the HDD, the SSD isn't even seen in disk utility.

I did a bunch of searching and didn't see any confirmation online that drivers for these expresscard ssds were removed, but it sure seems like it.

Is anyone else using one of these and not seeing this with Mavericks/10.9?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9), Mid-2010 17"

Posted on Oct 22, 2013 11:42 PM

91 replies

Da Cat

Level 1

0 points

May 12, 2014 1:36 AM in response to mmarionsd1

Just so you know when you install Mavericks, it segregates the "incompatible software" into a file on the main HD. Just to be safe in this case, which was an ESATA Expresscard with SiliconImage drivers, I downloaded their update from SI instead of messing with the other options mentioned here. You might find your drivers by looking at what's on the boot HD in a file called Incompatible Software, on mine that contains: SiCoreService and SiliconImage3132.kext

Note that any major updates to Mavericks will segregate these files again.

So is the final solution for 2010 era MBPs the latest Mavericks update or using the old kext file? OP might update his post pointing out the best solution. From what I gather from the threads 2008 MBPs don't have this issue, though reinstalling the drivers might be necessary if they get segregated, as on my 2008.

Did Mavericks drop support for express card SSDs?