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Help Me With Old/Legacy Machine HDD /NVMe

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Jun 2, 2011
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Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4-B3
CPU
i7-2600K
Graphics
RX 560
I have an old SandyBridge hackintosh (in sig) that I have Catalina running on. When I last updated it (from Yosemite to Catalina), my Samsung SSD started causing freezes. I had other HD issues (occasionally partitions would start throwing I/O errors, needing a reboot). I abandoned my SSD in order to stabilize my system, and currently boot off a partition on a 7200 rpm drive that also has some data partitions.

I have gotten the system stable, however I still get long pauses (5-10 seconds) of non-responsiveness, beachballs, etc. Often occurs when opening finder, opening a webpage, copying files, unzipping files, etc. I suspect it is related to HD access, possibly the disk needing to wake up, or maybe to many things access the same physical drive. I really don't know.

My Samsung SSD should work, so I am going to revisit that now that my system is stable and see if I can get it working. I also have an Apple SSD that I pulled from a dead Macbook Air. I have it in PCI adapter in my hackintosh and can access it. I understand that my Legacy BIOS cannot boot from this NVMe drive, but that there are some drivers/kexts that may or may not allow this. A lot of this information is old, because my hardware is so old, and I am hesitant to start reading to old/obsolete/abandoned stuff.

Questions:
- Should my system run smoothly with my boot drive on a non-SSD with my data partition?
- Can my system boot from an NVMe drive? Does the type of NVMe matter?
- I know that my hardware is no longer officially supported, updating OSX will be more and more difficult, and this computer has served me well. Is this the end of the line? Is it worth replacing my SSD if the one I have won't work?
 
Actually your system despite its age can still run the latest macOS as long as it is UEFI based. You just need to run it with Opencore bootloader. They have a fantastic guide for Sandy Bridge systems here > https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/config.plist/sandy-bridge.html

As to your questions:

1) Normally it should do, but non-SSD drives are as you know considered very slow now. With the prices that they are now, it is worthwhile to go for and use SSDs. I'd recommend Samsung EVO/PRO SSDs all the way (but not QVO).

2) No your system cannot boot from the NVMe drive. It may be able to access it with a EFI driver but not boot from it because of the legacy BIOS. You will need to install a NVMeFix.kext and/or NvmExpressDxe.efi driver with Opencore to be able to use it as a separate (non-booting) drive.

3) Your setup is considered old. While it still can boot the latest macOS with Opencore, what you'll be missing compared to some of the newer systems is mainly system performance, and increased connectivity such as NVMe, PCIe 3.0/4.0 access and Thunderbolt 4. Not to forget the requirements of Windows 11, which requires a Coffee Lake spec system at the very least. Considering also the rather low price of NVMe SSD storage nowadays, it may worth your while to upgrade it entirely. My recommendation for most users is to either go for a Z490/Z590 Comet Lake setup (or Rocket Lake with dedicated AMD GPU) or an AMD Ryzen 5800/5900X setup with a macOS compatible AMD card. That would be more than sufficient to meet pretty much all your needs.
 
If the Samsung SSD was old, it might just have showing its age. SSDs do wear out and will eventually fail completely.

The cheapest option would be to buy a new SATA SSD and keep using your hack with whatever OS X version can run smoothly on it.
If you do take the more expensive road to get a new system, then I would advise to stay with Z490 or older. Using 500-series can only bring additional headaches and inconvenience for no benefit whatsoever.
But if you're ready to spend for NVMe, you may consider going for AppleSilicon and retiring your hack…
 
Thanks for the responses. I didn't think my motherboard/bios supports UEFI, but I will look into the link you posted (I assume it is a UEFI spoof for non-UEFI boards, or similar). It took me quite a while to get Clover working on it.

My Samsung wasn't that old (it replaced an older SSD that failed), maybe 4 or 5 years old. I think I ran disk checks on it and it was all fine. It was working fine in Yosemite, and as soon as I converted it to the new disk format and installed Catalina, it started freezing the system (no KP) within a few minutes of booting. Oddly, plugging it into an USB HDD adapter I could boot and run the system without issue. Maybe loose/bad cables (which may have contributed to other HDD issues I have had). I need to retry.

The NVMe drive is recognized by my system as an external HD. I don't think I added any special driver/kext. Sad I cannot boot from it though.

I don't care about the lack of modern connectivity like NVME, PCIe, TB, etc. at this point. I would like to fix the long pauses, lags, and beachballs, if I could, and just have a basic smooth/functioning machine. And I'd like to continue upgrading OSX to the extent that is possible (mainly just for security, and software compatibility).

I am considering buying a MacMini (silicon) and converting my Hackintosh into a HDD server/NAS. I don't know how feasible that is, but I assumed I'd be able to get something to work. I'm not sure I'd build another Hackintosh, as I understand their future is relatively limited with Apple's new direction/hardware. I also have less time these days to mess around with it, and my last one tended to consume more and more time to keep it running.

What kind of life could I expect from a replacement Hackintosh as recommended?
 
I know that my hardware is no longer officially supported, updating OSX will be more and more difficult, and this computer has served me well. Is this the end of the line? Is it worth replacing my SSD if the one I have won't work?
I've had the best results with PNY 2.5" Sata SSDs with macOS. They are nearly as fast as the more expensive brands and none have given me problems. They don't have the TRIM issues and slow boot times that others have. I think I own at least 5-6 of them currently. Give one a try. In my testing I do get the stated read/write speeds.
Contained in the 2.5-inch SATA-III (6 Gb/s) solid-state drive is 960GB of 3D-NAND storage offering sequential read speeds up to 535MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 515MB/s. Not the fastest out there, but for $94.99, the CS900 offers a great balance of price and performance, and it's a guaranteed way to boost boot times and application load lag.

The 1TB version is currently selling for $87.99 which is a good price for 1TB.

I've tried using NVMe drives as a boot drive on older hardware. It can work but boot times are no faster and in everyday use I can't notice any difference. You might only need one if editing 4K video regularly.
 
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