How to boot El Capitan with RAID mode enabled in BIOS

[imrazor]

Haven't upgraded to Sierra yet, so I'm afraid I can't help you. You'll have to try it on your own, or downgrade to El Cap. I have no immediate plans to upgrade my gaming rig to 10.12 as I find myself using laptops much more frequently these days.

If you do decided to try it on your own, the process should be similar UNLESS Apple decided to rename the kexts. You might also find that it works with some versions of Sierra and not others. For example, Yosemite up to 10.10.2 supported this method, but 10.10.3 killed it. AFAIK, all versions of El Cap support this hack.

 

[chriscainx]

Its 10.12.3 now, does it work? What are current workarounds?

Not working on 10.12.4

 

[e12350]

This works on macOS Sierra 10.12.4, but I did it on a laptop with Intel Motherboard H87.

 

[imrazor]

Interesting that it works for you and not others. It seems you have an older chipset (H87) whereas the others have newer chipsets (Z97 and Z170.) Maybe this only works on 7- and 8- series chipsets.

 

[csoren]

I'm wondering, would it be possible to use FakePCIID for this?

I've made a Clover kext patch which, I think, is superior to patching the Info.plist manually. I've just updated from 10.12.4 to 10.12.5 (updated AppleAHCIPort) with this, and RAID mode still works. This patch replaces pci8086,1e03 with pci8086,2822 so you should still be able to boot in AHCI mode.

           <dict>
               <key>Comment</key>
               <string>RAID (7 series)</string>
               <key>Disabled</key>
               <false/>
               <key>Find</key>
               <data>
               cGNpODA4NiwxZTAz
               </data>
               <key>InfoPlistPatch</key>
               <true/>
               <key>Name</key>
               <string>AppleAHCIPort</string>
               <key>Replace</key>
               <data>
               cGNpODA4NiwyODIy
               </data>
           </dict>

To adapt to other chipsets, use terminal to generate the base64 strings (caveat: this probably requires that your terminal uses UTF-8, which is most likely the case OOB)

iMac:~ ces$ echo -n pci8086,2822 | base64
cGNpODA4NiwyODIy

If you're not comfortable with hand-editing the Clover config.plist, this is what it should look like in Clover Configurator (the blue highlighted line). Remember to check InfoPlistPatch.

The two hex strings are Find: 70636938 3038362c 31653033 and Replace: 70636938 3038362c 32383232

 

[imrazor]

I'm still using Chameleon on my desktop, believe it or not, so this method wouldn't work for me. I've also had zero luck using FakePCIID when I did try Clover out, but this is probably due to a lack of understanding on my part.

Is there any particular place in Clover's config.plist that your patch needs to go? I've been considering moving to Sierra, so I'd have to use Clover, and since you're also using a Z77 board it should (in theory) work for me.

One potential issue with Clover patching, if I understand it correctly, is that Clover can only patch kexts in the kext cache. Wouldn't that present issues for kernel updates, etc?

 

[csoren]

One potential issue with Clover patching, if I understand it correctly, is that Clover can only patch kexts in the kext cache. Wouldn't that present issues for kernel updates, etc?

If the kext cache is updated or rebuilt, you just reboot and let Clover do its thing. That's my understanding anyway. If all else fails, on the desktop we can always switch back to AHCI for one boot and RAID should work again for the next boot.

The patch goes in the KextsToPatch section, but all this will probably become obvious once you make the switch.