High Sierra doesn't recognize SM951 (AHCI)

[359]

I've been trying to update from Sierra to High Sierra for a while with little success. Initially I tried following the upgrade guide, which would get to the point of rebooting to complete the installation and the system would crash. Next I tried doing a fresh installation using an external USB drive (in a 2.0 port) created with Unibeast. However my M.2 SM951 (AHCI variant), the disk I use for Mac, was not visible to the installer.

After some attempts at isolating the issue I made a working clone of my Sierra system on a spare HDD. From there I was easily able to upgrade to fully functional High Sierra. However, the system still does not "see" my SM951, and attempts to clone the system back to the 951 results in a crash on boot (the cloning is done using an Ubuntu system, and I'm confident that's not the issue).

Are there any ideas as to why this is happening?


EDIT: At any point I've been able to restore my Sierra system from a backup image, so it's not an issue with the drive not working.

 

[359]

After poking around some more, the SSD is being registered by the system and appears in System Information as an Unknown Apple SSD Controller:

 

[RehabMan]

After poking around some more, the SSD is being registered by the system and appears in System Information as an Unknown Apple SSD Controller:

As expected.

 

[359]

No, it should appear as:

SAMSUNG MZHPV128HDGM-00000:
  Capacity:    128.04 GB (128,035,676,160 bytes)
  Model:    SAMSUNG MZHPV128HDGM-00000            
  Revision:    BXW2500Q
  Serial Number:    S1X3NYAH300171    
  Native Command Queuing:    Yes
  Queue Depth:    32
  Removable Media:    No
  Detachable Drive:    No
  BSD Name:    disk0
  Medium Type:    Solid State
  TRIM Support:    No
  Partition Map Type:    GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  S.M.A.R.T. status:    Verified
  Volumes:
EFI:
  Capacity:    209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
  BSD Name:    disk0s1
  Content:    EFI
  Volume UUID:    0E239BC6-F960-3107-89CF-1C97F78BB46B
Sierra:
  Capacity:    127.18 GB (127,175,917,568 bytes)
  Available:    21.76 GB (21,762,658,304 bytes)
  Writable:    Yes
  File System:    Journaled HFS+
  BSD Name:    disk0s2
  Mount Point:    /
  Content:    Apple_HFS
  Volume UUID:    B7B885F4-267C-3A31-A745-AB1046A48BB3
Recovery HD:
  Capacity:    650 MB (650,002,432 bytes)
  BSD Name:    disk0s3
  Content:    Apple_Boot
  Volume UUID:    370E3952-40DC-3007-A064-5FF29F62A203

Which it does in Sierra, but in High Sierra I see:

Unknown:
  Native Command Queuing: No
  Detachable Drive: No

And the drive does not appear in /dev.

 

[RehabMan]

No, it should appear as:

SAMSUNG MZHPV128HDGM-00000:
  Capacity:    128.04 GB (128,035,676,160 bytes)
  Model:    SAMSUNG MZHPV128HDGM-00000           
  Revision:    BXW2500Q
  Serial Number:    S1X3NYAH300171   
  Native Command Queuing:    Yes
  Queue Depth:    32
  Removable Media:    No
  Detachable Drive:    No
  BSD Name:    disk0
  Medium Type:    Solid State
  TRIM Support:    No
  Partition Map Type:    GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  S.M.A.R.T. status:    Verified
  Volumes:
EFI:
  Capacity:    209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
  BSD Name:    disk0s1
  Content:    EFI
  Volume UUID:    0E239BC6-F960-3107-89CF-1C97F78BB46B
Sierra:
  Capacity:    127.18 GB (127,175,917,568 bytes)
  Available:    21.76 GB (21,762,658,304 bytes)
  Writable:    Yes
  File System:    Journaled HFS+
  BSD Name:    disk0s2
  Mount Point:    /
  Content:    Apple_HFS
  Volume UUID:    B7B885F4-267C-3A31-A745-AB1046A48BB3
Recovery HD:
  Capacity:    650 MB (650,002,432 bytes)
  BSD Name:    disk0s3
  Content:    Apple_Boot
  Volume UUID:    370E3952-40DC-3007-A064-5FF29F62A203

Which it does in Sierra, but in High Sierra I see:

Unknown:
  Native Command Queuing: No
  Detachable Drive: No

And the drive does not appear in /dev.

Always expected it will use the generic AHCI kext.
You should attach full PR files.

No "Problem Reporting" files attached.
Read FAQ, "Problem Reporting" again. Carefully. Attach all requested files/output.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/faq-read-first-laptop-frequent-questions.164990/
Use the gen_debug.sh tool mentioned in the FAQ, that way it is less likely you'll omit something.

 

[359]

Sorry for the long delay, I became very busy and needed to put off my updating attempts.

Here're the requested Bootloader and IO Registry files. The IO Registery Explorer application would run within the system installer, but would segfault whenever I attempted to save its output. So I constructed the same information from #ioreg for the SM951's PCI device tree.

Status is still the same, disk is successfully recognized by Sierra 10.12.1 but not by later systems. The latest attempt was using Mojave Installer 14.3.2.

 

[Rikoshet]

Sorry for the long delay, I became very busy and needed to put off my updating attempts.

Here're the requested Bootloader and IO Registry files. The IO Registery Explorer application would run within the system installer, but would segfault whenever I attempted to save its output. So I constructed the same information from #ioreg for the SM951's PCI device tree.

Status is still the same, disk is successfully recognized by Sierra 10.12.1 but not by later systems. The latest attempt was using Mojave Installer 14.3.2.

Have you solved that? I have 256GB version and same behavior in my laptop but the same ssd work fine in my assembled PC hack.

 

[359]

I haven't had any luck so far with finding a solution. I'm currently spending some free time trying to learn to read and interpret DSDT tables to see if that could be the issue. Which system(s) do you have it functioning with? Because I can see it with macOS(10.12.1), Ubuntu(18.04LTS), and Windows(10.something)


You should run # ioreg from terminal in the Mojave/High Sierra installer to see if it's truly the same problem. I find the faulty device at: root/iMac14,2/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0/AppleACPIPCI/RP13, and if I run # ioreg -b -c IOAHCIDevice from the installer terminal application I get this message at the device ...RP13/IOPP/PXSX/AppleAHCI/PRT0/IOAHCIDevice.

{
"Trace ID" = 83886080
"IOUnit" = 0
"Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="PCI","Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal","AHCI Port Number"=0}
"Terminate Reason" = "Could not recover SATA HDD after 5 attempts. Terminating."
}

("-b" bolds object names, and "-c IOAHCIDevice" shows properties for objects with class "IOAHCIDevice.")


If you get the same or similar error it's probably at least a similar cause. Maybe then we could work together to try and figure out a solution; I don't know your experience, but I'm fairly computer savvy and want to learn more about these cursed systems.
[read "cursed" with "kərsəd" pronunciation ]

In any case I'll definitely post here if I come up with a solution or make any headway.