- Joined
- Nov 4, 2016
- Messages
- 113
- Motherboard
- GA-Z170x-Designare
- CPU
- Core i7-6700k
- Graphics
- AMD FirePro W9000 + Radeon 7970
So thanks to Rehabman, who noted to me in the OSX NVMe thread that the nvme patches only deal with altering the sector size used by the driver to 512 from 4096.
Knowing that Intel has a utility to set the sector size of its SSD's, I decided to gamble on getting a 750 to test with. Short story, it works with zero driver alterations or kext's.
1. I tested with the U.2 version of the 400GB model on macOS 10.12.2.
2. I did a low level format of the drive to 4k sectors with the latest intel data center tool under windows using the following command (assuming your intel ssd to be formatted is indeed index 0)
"isdct start -intelssd 0 -nvmeformat LBAFormat=3 SecureEraseSetting=0 ProtectionInformation=0 MetadataSettings=0"
3. Operation as a second drive works. Booting from it also works after some jiggering with carbon copy cloner and copying around my previous EFI. I'm not sure that was the best idea ... maybe reinstalling would be better, but what a pain that is.
4. Speed is below benchmarks in windows. I get about 850MB/sec read and write and the real speeds should be around 2.2GB read and 1.2GB write. Not sure why. I checked for 4k sector alignment and that seems fine. Just saw another post here that says they have a similar problem with the patched NVMe drivers, tho, so maybe it has something to do with the native macOS driver.
Screenshots:
Knowing that Intel has a utility to set the sector size of its SSD's, I decided to gamble on getting a 750 to test with. Short story, it works with zero driver alterations or kext's.
1. I tested with the U.2 version of the 400GB model on macOS 10.12.2.
2. I did a low level format of the drive to 4k sectors with the latest intel data center tool under windows using the following command (assuming your intel ssd to be formatted is indeed index 0)
"isdct start -intelssd 0 -nvmeformat LBAFormat=3 SecureEraseSetting=0 ProtectionInformation=0 MetadataSettings=0"
3. Operation as a second drive works. Booting from it also works after some jiggering with carbon copy cloner and copying around my previous EFI. I'm not sure that was the best idea ... maybe reinstalling would be better, but what a pain that is.
4. Speed is below benchmarks in windows. I get about 850MB/sec read and write and the real speeds should be around 2.2GB read and 1.2GB write. Not sure why. I checked for 4k sector alignment and that seems fine. Just saw another post here that says they have a similar problem with the patched NVMe drivers, tho, so maybe it has something to do with the native macOS driver.
Screenshots: