What's the latest with internal PCIe NVMe drive mounting issues?

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Level 1

15 points

What's the latest with internal PCIe NVMe drive mounting issues?

I posted about this in Oct 2024 but can no longer find my post.

I work in music production and only upgrade my OS very carefully, between projects, usually more than a year after the OS is out.

Last fall I upgraded my MacPro2019 to OS 14.7 Sonoma and WHAM, my internal PCIe NVMe SSD drives from OWC would not mount. I managed to get them to mount after restarting many times. The situation is still true, when they work all is good but I'm terrified of shutting down the computer in case they never reappear (silver lining now I have so many backups).

Other folks have posted

(Has Sequoia finally resolved the PCIE M.2… - Apple Community)

There is no Apple store in my state but I paid a licensed Apple repair person to visit and they found nothing wrong with my drives or my computer. They just recommended I get a new MacPro. Um, no.

What's the scoop on Sequoia working with these drives?

MacPro 2019

Mac Pro, macOS 14.7

Posted on Apr 29, 2025 08:41 AM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

55,286 points

Apr 29, 2025 08:56 AM in response to sempervirens

sempervirens wrote:

I posted about this in Oct 2024 but can no longer find my post.

Here it is: Internal SSD mounting intermittently sinc… - Apple Community

I work in music production and only upgrade my OS very carefully, between projects, usually more than a year after the OS is out.

Last fall I upgraded my MacPro2019 to OS 14.7 Sonoma

Why? Can you quantify the value that the new features in Sonoma have brought to your music production business?

I paid a licensed Apple repair person to visit and they found nothing wrong with my drives or my computer. They just recommended I get a new MacPro. Um, no.

I can understand that. Mac Pros are quite expensive. How about a Mac Studio or Mac mini instead? Even a new MacBook Air would probably out perform it.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

66,758 points

Apr 30, 2025 09:13 AM in response to sempervirens

You can test drive Sequoia in one of two ways depending on how much actual Free space you on the internal boot drive. If you have at least 100GB of Free space on the internal boot drive, then you can create a new APFS volume where you can install Sequoia for testing. Keep in mind 100GB is the bare minimum just for a barebones macOS installation (no third party apps or restoration). Also, ignore the "Available" storage value since it is very misleading and with macOS is not a synonym for Free. FYI, a new APFS is like a partition in many ways, but is much better since it doesn't require a dangerous & risky change of the physical drive layout.

Or you can install macOS Sequoia to an external USB3/Thunderbolt3 SSD and boot from the external SSD to see how the system works.

This is all about allowing you test Sequoia without risking your current setup. I believe some people now have working systems with Sequoia, but I think it has to do with specific hardware & software configurations. Those threads were large & convoluted. What does the third party manufaturer(s) of your PCIe NVMe cards have to say? They should be the experts on what will & will not work at this time.

Or you can downgrade back to Ventura to continue working with your old configuration before the upgrade to Sonoma. Or you may need to re-think your current hardware setup & find a setup which is more compatible such as possibly external Thunderbolt 3/4 SSDs.

If the PCIe NVMe SSD issue is still a problem after a year & a half, then it does not seem that Apple cares or is able to do anything about it, and the third party hardware manufacturers are unable to find a work around for whatever reason.

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