Gigabyte Z390 M Gaming build with working NVRAM

[flatlander48]

If that's the case, in order to rule out a faulty NVMe, you might have to try to install the system on a separate SATA drive, like a SATA SSD or a hard drive.

If you don't have that option available, then you might have to do the work to move the NVMe. After all, at this point, your rig is not useable.

It would seem to be unlikely that it is faulty as the BIOS sees it down to the exact model name and capacity. My guess anyway. I said ”last resort” as it would involve disassembling about half of the computer. Due to the size of the CPU Cooler, you can only see no more than about 1/4 of the NVMe card. It was a B++++ to install in the first place so I don’t want to do that again unless all other approaches have been exhausted. As I said, it is not a trivial exercise...

 

[flatlander48]

You can easily boot off of a Linux "Live" bistro and see if the NVMe SSD is detected. Those Live distros can run off of USB flash drive.

For what it's worth, I have two NVMe SSDs in my system and macOS has no issues seeing or using both.

Yes, I actually did that with my work laptop many years ago. Ran fine at the time, but was a bit slow. I did a search for free distributions and found some that run on a USB device, so that is this afternoon’s project...

 

[tedyun]

It would seem to be unlikely that it is faulty as the BIOS sees it down to the exact model name and capacity. My guess anyway. I said ”last resort” as it would involve disassembling about half of the computer. Due to the size of the CPU Cooler, you can only see no more than about 1/4 of the NVMe card. It was a B++++ to install in the first place so I don’t want to do that again unless all other approaches have been exhausted. As I said, it is not a trivial exercise...

Understood. I had to do the same when I upgraded my NVMe from 1 TB to 2 TB and I concur, it is a major pain.

I just saw PC's post, then reread your earlier post that you never formatted your NVMe? I am not sure if it makes a difference, but every time I went through the system install, I would reformat the NVMe to APFS+/GUID. I think you need to do that before installing Catalina.

 

[flatlander48]

Understood. I had to do the same when I upgraded my NVMe from 1 TB to 2 TB and I concur, it is a major pain.

I just saw PC's post, then reread your earlier post that you never formatted your NVMe? I am not sure if it makes a difference, but every time I went through the system install, I would reformat the NVMe to APFS+/GUID. I think you need to do that before installing Catalina.

6 years ago when I built the first incarnation, my system drive was the 2.5” SSD that is my secondary drive in this system. It is HFS. I don’t have a specific memory of formatting it for Mavericks. The system had never run under any other operating system until I installed Mavericks on it. The thing is, before the operating system is installed, I don’t think there is any access to Disk Utility. Is that correct? Also, we don’t have anything else that has an NVMe slot (2011 iMac, M1 Mac Mini, Windows laptop that is almost as old as the iMac).

After the macOS didn’t see the NVMe card, I inserted a 64Gb USB device with the idea of installing Catalina there and being able to boot of that. That didn’t work either. That was when I hit the error in one of the images in #3,599 (can’t remember which one).

 

[tedyun]

6 years ago when I built the first incarnation, my system drive was the 2.5” SSD that is my secondary drive in this system. It is HFS. I don’t have a specific memory of formatting it for Mavericks. The system had never run under any other operating system until I installed Mavericks on it. The thing is, before the operating system is installed, I don’t think there is any access to Disk Utility. Is that correct? Also, we don’t have anything else that has an NVMe slot (2011 iMac, M1 Mac Mini, Windows laptop that is almost as old as the iMac).

After the macOS didn’t see the NVMe card, I inserted a 64Gb USB device with the idea of installing Catalina there and being able to boot of that. That didn’t work either. That was when I hit the error in one of the images in #3,599 (can’t remember which one).

Ok, after you boot from your installer, you'll be greeted with a the splash screen, then when you hit "Continue" you will arrive at the macOS Utilities screen. At the bottom, there is the option to start "Disk Utility"

When you run Disk Utility, make sure to select "View > Show All Devices" Then select your NVMe and you will be able to format your drive to APFS/GUID

From High Sierra onwards, macOS required APFS format to install the system. I don't know if it automatically does this for you during the installation process, so to be absolutely sure, you should go this route to manually reformat it. Every time I reinstalled Catalina when setting up my rig, I just did it as a matter of house cleaning.

The fact that you are getting the same problem with the USB device makes me pretty sure that you need to format it.

 

[tedyun]

6 years ago when I built the first incarnation, my system drive was the 2.5” SSD that is my secondary drive in this system. It is HFS. I don’t have a specific memory of formatting it for Mavericks. The system had never run under any other operating system until I installed Mavericks on it. The thing is, before the operating system is installed, I don’t think there is any access to Disk Utility. Is that correct? Also, we don’t have anything else that has an NVMe slot (2011 iMac, M1 Mac Mini, Windows laptop that is almost as old as the iMac).

After the macOS didn’t see the NVMe card, I inserted a 64Gb USB device with the idea of installing Catalina there and being able to boot of that. That didn’t work either. That was when I hit the error in one of the images in #3,599 (can’t remember which one).

Check out CaseySJ's guide for installing Catalina. He recommends booting off the installer and formatting the hard drive before installing the system:

[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

SSDT's are a type of patch that are applied to get on board devices up and running. They are located in your EFI partition on your boot drive like this "EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched" see pic. As far as i know this is what the folder should look like to get UAD devices to work, but I am not sure as I...

www.tonymacx86.com

Skip down to Step 2 if you've already made your USB Install drive.

The bottom line is that it can't hurt (unless you accidentally reformat a drive that you didn't mean to!)

 

[flatlander48]

YES!! It was formatting the NVMe card.

Now I have to follow through with the EFI stuff...

 

[flatlander48]

Next is testing my Other World Computing USB-C Dock. My machine is going into a tower compartment under my desk. The Dock will minimize running cables directly to the computer.

After that I will disconnect all cables, put the computer back on the kitchen counter and re-install all the case panels and begin the installation process under my desk.

However, this remains:

Open your config.plist and populate the Serial, Board Serial, UUID, (and MAC address, if you are using OpenCore)

Where do those values come from?

 

[pastrychef]

Next is testing my Other World Computing USB-C Dock. My machine is going into a tower compartment under my desk. The Dock will minimize running cables directly to the computer.

After that I will disconnect all cables, put the computer back on the kitchen counter and re-install all the case panels and begin the installation process under my desk.

However, this remains:

Open your config.plist and populate the Serial, Board Serial, UUID, (and MAC address, if you are using OpenCore)

Where do those values come from?

Use Clover Configurator to get your Serial, Board Serial, and UUID.




Get your MAC address from System Preferences > Network > Ethernet > Advanced > Hardware. The MAC address is the first line. Enter it without the colon symbols.

 

[flatlander48]

With Clover Configurator I found the iMacPro1,1 model and the information was populated. However, the Serial Number still doesn't appear in System Information. Are the Hardware UUID and the SmUUid the same thing?

Also, this message shows up at startup. I have not seen this before, but the startup seems to complete without a problem.