High Sierra 10.13.6 - NVME not seen in Clover/MacOS

[PhriXion]

Hi all,

Hope everyone is doing well. For the last few days, I've been struggling to get my NVME drive to be recognized by High Sierra without any luck. I've read just about every thread there is related to NVME issues in High Sierra and I haven't been lucky enough to have any of them work for me. I know that with High Sierra, NVME drives are supposed to be native and shouldn't have any issues, but I guess I'm one of the unlucky ones. So, I'm turning to you guys to try to get some help. I do currently have a fully functional build aside from my NVME not being detected by MacOS. I just went ahead and opted to install via my 2TB data drive in hopes to copy it later to my SSD with CCC which I have read about in several threads on here.

NOTE: The drive is seen in BIOS, as well as inside of a live boot Linux iso in GParted. The drive also had Windows 10 pro installed for about a year on it up until about 5 days ago.

Build details:

• MSI Z170A SLI PLUS
• i7 6700k
• Gigabyte GTX 980 OC 4GB
• 16 GB Kingston Hyper X Fury
• 2TB sata HDD
• Kingston Predator X 240GB m.2 NVME

BIOS Settings:

• Reset to factory defaults
• XHCI hand-off: enabled
• Serial (com port 0): disabled
• CFG Lock: disabled
• SATA mode: AHCI
• VT-d: disabled
• Intel Virtualization technology: disabled
• Boot mode: UEFI
• Windows 7/10 installation: disabled

Things I've tried:

1. Complete re-install via iGPU
2. Manual creation/patching of SSDT via Rehabman's NVME guide -- IONVMEFamily
3. Complete tear down/rebuild of config.plist
4. Added NvmExpressDxe-64.efi to drivers64EUFI folder -- I know this probably isn't a necessary file, but tried it anyway
5. Added apfs.efi to drivers64EUFI folder -- read somewhere that this may initialize the drive
6. Attached a secondary SATA SSD to see if NVME would initialize
7. Checked diskutil for hidden drive
8. Booted into live linux ISO several times and formatted per other guides:
   8a. Formatted to NTFS as one primary partition -- no luck
   8b. Formatted to ext4 as one primary partition -- no luck
   8c. Create an EFI (200MB) partition, an HFS+ (600MB) Recovery partition, and an HFS+ (230GB) Primary partition -- no luck
9. Checked "Show all drives" in Disk Utility
10. Updated to latest BIOS (version: 01/16/18) -- drive is shown in BIOS and Linux, not in Mac OS/Clover still

At this point, I am extremely lost and hoping someone may be able to dive into my issue and possibly provide some insight for it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
PhriXion

 

[PhriXion]

Bump.

 

[PhriXion]

Here is the link to the exact SSD I'm trying to use:

https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-HyperX-Predator-SHPM2280P2-240G/product-reviews/B00V01C376

 

[Vanles]

I also had problems with my M2 ... this article helped me and now it works for me.

How to Format a New Internal SSD in macOS High Sierra

Recently, some MacSales.com customers have reported experiencing a situation where their new SSD will not show up in Disk Utility in High Sierra.

blog.macsales.com

 

[PhriXion]

I also had problems with my M2 ... this article helped me and now it works for me.

How to Format a New Internal SSD in macOS High Sierra

Recently, some MacSales.com customers have reported experiencing a situation where their new SSD will not show up in Disk Utility in High Sierra.

blog.macsales.com

As mentioned in my OP, diskutil does not see the drive, but Windows, Linux and BIOS can.

 

[jxg199033]

Hi all,

Hope everyone is doing well. For the last few days, I've been struggling to get my NVME drive to be recognized by High Sierra without any luck. I've read just about every thread there is related to NVME issues in High Sierra and I haven't been lucky enough to have any of them work for me. I know that with High Sierra, NVME drives are supposed to be native and shouldn't have any issues, but I guess I'm one of the unlucky ones. So, I'm turning to you guys to try to get some help. I do currently have a fully functional build aside from my NVME not being detected by MacOS. I just went ahead and opted to install via my 2TB data drive in hopes to copy it later to my SSD with CCC which I have read about in several threads on here.

NOTE: The drive is seen in BIOS, as well as inside of a live boot Linux iso in GParted. The drive also had Windows 10 pro installed for about a year on it up until about 5 days ago.

Build details:

• MSI Z170A SLI PLUS
• i7 6700k
• Gigabyte GTX 980 OC 4GB
• 16 GB Kingston Hyper X Fury
• 2TB sata HDD
• Kingston Predator X 240GB m.2 NVME

BIOS Settings:

• Reset to factory defaults
• XHCI hand-off: enabled
• Serial (com port 0): disabled
• CFG Lock: disabled
• SATA mode: AHCI
• VT-d: disabled
• Intel Virtualization technology: disabled
• Boot mode: UEFI
• Windows 7/10 installation: disabled

Things I've tried:

1. Complete re-install via iGPU
2. Manual creation/patching of SSDT via Rehabman's NVME guide -- IONVMEFamily
3. Complete tear down/rebuild of config.plist
4. Added NvmExpressDxe-64.efi to drivers64EUFI folder -- I know this probably isn't a necessary file, but tried it anyway
5. Added apfs.efi to drivers64EUFI folder -- read somewhere that this may initialize the drive
6. Attached a secondary SATA SSD to see if NVME would initialize
7. Checked diskutil for hidden drive
8. Booted into live linux ISO several times and formatted per other guides:
   8a. Formatted to NTFS as one primary partition -- no luck
   8b. Formatted to ext4 as one primary partition -- no luck
   8c. Create an EFI (200MB) partition, an HFS+ (600MB) Recovery partition, and an HFS+ (230GB) Primary partition -- no luck
9. Checked "Show all drives" in Disk Utility
10. Updated to latest BIOS (version: 01/16/18) -- drive is shown in BIOS and Linux, not in Mac OS/Clover still

At this point, I am extremely lost and hoping someone may be able to dive into my issue and possibly provide some insight for it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
PhriXion

I have solved this problem by add nvme codes,you can have a try

 

[pastrychef]

Hi all,

Hope everyone is doing well. For the last few days, I've been struggling to get my NVME drive to be recognized by High Sierra without any luck. I've read just about every thread there is related to NVME issues in High Sierra and I haven't been lucky enough to have any of them work for me. I know that with High Sierra, NVME drives are supposed to be native and shouldn't have any issues, but I guess I'm one of the unlucky ones. So, I'm turning to you guys to try to get some help. I do currently have a fully functional build aside from my NVME not being detected by MacOS. I just went ahead and opted to install via my 2TB data drive in hopes to copy it later to my SSD with CCC which I have read about in several threads on here.

NOTE: The drive is seen in BIOS, as well as inside of a live boot Linux iso in GParted. The drive also had Windows 10 pro installed for about a year on it up until about 5 days ago.

Build details:

• MSI Z170A SLI PLUS
• i7 6700k
• Gigabyte GTX 980 OC 4GB
• 16 GB Kingston Hyper X Fury
• 2TB sata HDD
• Kingston Predator X 240GB m.2 NVME

BIOS Settings:

• Reset to factory defaults
• XHCI hand-off: enabled
• Serial (com port 0): disabled
• CFG Lock: disabled
• SATA mode: AHCI
• VT-d: disabled
• Intel Virtualization technology: disabled
• Boot mode: UEFI
• Windows 7/10 installation: disabled

Things I've tried:

1. Complete re-install via iGPU
2. Manual creation/patching of SSDT via Rehabman's NVME guide -- IONVMEFamily
3. Complete tear down/rebuild of config.plist
4. Added NvmExpressDxe-64.efi to drivers64EUFI folder -- I know this probably isn't a necessary file, but tried it anyway
5. Added apfs.efi to drivers64EUFI folder -- read somewhere that this may initialize the drive
6. Attached a secondary SATA SSD to see if NVME would initialize
7. Checked diskutil for hidden drive
8. Booted into live linux ISO several times and formatted per other guides:
   8a. Formatted to NTFS as one primary partition -- no luck
   8b. Formatted to ext4 as one primary partition -- no luck
   8c. Create an EFI (200MB) partition, an HFS+ (600MB) Recovery partition, and an HFS+ (230GB) Primary partition -- no luck
9. Checked "Show all drives" in Disk Utility
10. Updated to latest BIOS (version: 01/16/18) -- drive is shown in BIOS and Linux, not in Mac OS/Clover still

At this point, I am extremely lost and hoping someone may be able to dive into my issue and possibly provide some insight for it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
PhriXion

Most NVMe SSDs are natively recognized with High Sierra.

• You don't need to do any of the IONVMEFamily patches. That can only make matters worse, not help it.
• You don't need that SSDT for NVMe. Again, it can only make matters worse, not help.
• NvmExpressDxe-64.efi is not meant to help macOS recognize NVMe SSDs, so you don't need that.
• I don't know what EFICheckDisabler.kext is. Judging by the name, it doesn't sound like it's something that you want installed.

Double and triple check that your SSD is NVMe and not AHCI. If AHCI, you may need to see if there's a BIOS setting to set it as AHCI.

If it still isn't working after all of that, you may just have an SSD that isn't compatible with macOS.

 

[PhriXion]

Most NVMe SSDs are natively recognized with High Sierra.

• You don't need to do any of the IONVMEFamily patches. That can only make matters worse, not help it.
• You don't need that SSDT for NVMe. Again, it can only make matters worse, not help.
• NvmExpressDxe-64.efi is not meant to help macOS recognize NVMe SSDs, so you don't need that.
• I don't know what EFICheckDisabler.kext is. Judging by the name, it doesn't sound like it's something that you want installed.

Double and triple check that your SSD is NVMe and not AHCI. If AHCI, you may need to see if there's a BIOS setting to set it as AHCI.

If it still isn't working after all of that, you may just have an SSD that isn't compatible with macOS.

So I found out the drive isn't truly NVMEe. It's a PCI gen-3 AHCI. I have removed all the files you listed and also triple checked that it's enabled as AHCI mode in BIOS. I've moved over to some older SATA SSD's that I had laying around for now until I can revisit this some more.

At this point, it almost seems that I'm out of luck in this drive and may need a true NVMe drive to replace it. They're cheap these days though, so it's not a major deal.

 

[pastrychef]

So I found out the drive isn't truly NVMEe. It's a PCI gen-3 AHCI. I have removed all the files you listed and also triple checked that it's enabled as AHCI mode in BIOS. I've moved over to some older SATA SSD's that I had laying around for now until I can revisit this some more.

At this point, it almost seems that I'm out of luck in this drive and may need a true NVMe drive to replace it. They're cheap these days though, so it's not a major deal.

AHCI can work. I used an AHCI Samsung with one of my hacks for a while without any issues. I don't know why macOS doesn't like the one you are using... I don't know what else to try...

 

[PhriXion]

AHCI can work. I used an AHCI Samsung with one of my hacks for a while without any issues. I don't know why macOS doesn't like the one you are using... I don't know what else to try...

It's definitely crazy to think back on how many different things I've tried over the past two weeks. I didn't think it would be a big deal, but at this point, my only thoughts on it seem to point to the possibility of there being custom firmware on this specific chip that MacOS doesn't like.