mmarionsd1
Level 1 (9 points)

Q: 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

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mmarionsd1

Q: Did Mavericks drop support for express card SSDs?

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  • by Christopher Chandler,

    Christopher Chandler Christopher Chandler Feb 27, 2014 4:44 AM in response to vukodlak75
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2014 4:44 AM in response to vukodlak75

    I just upgraded to 10.9.2, and I did not have to back out the hack patch. My Wintex 128GB SSD still works fine.

    System Report/Express Cards:

     

    ExpressCard:

     

      Type:          AHCI Controller

      Driver Installed:          Yes

      MSI:          Yes

      Bus:          PCI

      Slot:          ExpressCard

      Vendor ID:          0x197b

      Device ID:          0x2362

      Subsystem Vendor ID:          0x197b

      Subsystem ID:          0x2362

      Revision ID:          0x0010

      Link Width:          x1

      Link Speed:          2.5 GT/s

     

     

      I left the computer running but when I returned, it had rebooted after a panic, but the Wintec SSD had not remounted. Shutting down and using the power switch to restart rebooted everything successfully, and the Wintec SSD remounted. All is using my mid 2010 MacBook Pro 17"

     

       The panic was caused by not releasing a vnode (vnode_rele() or whatever it's called for the reference counting of vnodes for you other kernel hackers out there,) The BSD process was mds_store. Although I don't have any more concrete information, this looks very similar to what I saw before when I first installed the Wintec SSD and it ran out of space. I fixed this before using TRIM enabler, so that I wasn't just relying on garbage collection to recycle deleted space on the drive. Sure enough, TRIM enabled had been disabled, probably by the installation of 10.9.2 (it was not disabled when I upgraded to 10.9.1). I updated TRIM enabler, rebooted, and everything seems fine now.

     

       Your mileage may vary, but it really does look as though you should enabled TRIM on all SSD drives in 10.9.x (I also have a Crucial m4 550GB as the main drive.)

     

    Regards,

    Chris

  • by Da Cat,

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

     

    Screen Shot 2014-05-12 at 1.26.29 AM.png

     

    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.

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