APFS not compatible with OWC SSDs

[mwf67]

Argh. I tried installing the public beta a few weeks ago and got a weird message about firmware verification failure and that I couldn't install it. I figured it would be fixed with the real release today. Nope!

APFS doesn't play with some 3rd-party SSDs - apparently including my OWC 6G 480GB in my 2012 rMBP. I've just been on a chat with their tech support. They know about this but haven't posted anything to warn their customers! And they don't have a fix yet or an estimate and suggested putting back my original drive

Anyone else hitting this? Any other non-Apple SSDs work with APFS?

David

ps - here's the lines in the install log (ia.log)

Sep 25 17:31:20 MacBook-Pro OSInstaller[546]: Package Authoring Error: PackageInfo bundle reference found without top-level bundle definition. Bundle will be skipped: <bundle id="*"></bundle>
Sep 25 17:33:00 MacBook-Pro Unknown[521]: 2017-09-25 17:33:00.527 usbcupdater[592:50568] Error reading plist: No files to support boardID: Mac-C3EC7CD22292981F
Sep 25 17:33:01 MacBook-Pro Unknown[521]: Error while writing firmware updater for EFI
Sep 25 17:35:20 MacBook-Pro OSInstaller[547]: Package Authoring Error: PackageInfo bundle reference found without top-level bundle definition. Bundle will be skipped: <bundle id="*"></bundle>
Sep 25 17:35:20 MacBook-Pro OSInstaller[547]: OSIInstallElement <OSIVerifyROMElement: 0x7fbb30b97ee0> errored out:Error Domain=com.apple.osinstall Code=512 "An error occurred while verifying firmware." UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=An error occurred while verifying firmware.}
Sep 25 17:35:20 MacBook-Pro storagekitd[548]: storagekitd: copyDiskForPath returned nil, error: -69808
Sep 25 17:35:20 MacBook-Pro OSInstaller[547]: Operation: Verify firmware failed, Failure Reason: Error Domain=com.apple.osinstall Code=512 "An error occurred while verifying firmware." UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=An error occurred while verifying firmware.}

Does anyone tried on OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD ? high sierra did not install on mine. Had to restore Sierra from time machine. Thank you

 

[EddieK420]

Does anyone tried on OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD ? high sierra did not install on mine. Had to restore Sierra from time machine. Thank you

+1 I would also like to know about this. I was able to install into the accelsior pcie ssd but I want to know if its possible to convert to AFPS without errors. Its still HFS+

 

[hobbes3113]

The bug affects some OWC SSD models but not others. If About This Mac—System Report—SATA/SATA Express shows spinning disk under Medium Type, you've been bitten by OWC.

Mine (OWC Aura) is listed as 'Solid State'under the Medium Type, yet I am still not able to upgrade due to the firmware issue. Any other ideas???

 

[Marco Klobas]

MacSales just published a post about this issue:

https://blog.macsales.com/42466-a-note-on-high-sierra-compatibility-with-third-party-ssds

I've tried to convert an an external Mercury Electra SSD to APFS and got the following error:

Found APFS EFI driver /usr/standalone/i386/apfs.efi to install into the APFS Container
Unmounting disk3s2
Exiting conversion operations with error code -69888
The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.DiskManagement error -69888.)
Operation failed…

 

[rraven]

OWC announced a new SSD line today that claims compatibility with APFS:

https://blog.macsales.com/42598-owc...for-most-2013-and-later-macs-its-fastest-ever

The announcement also contains the line: "For users who do not want to upgrade to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, the original Aura line of SSDs is still available for purchase." Hmm...

 

[h9826790]

That doesn't surprise me in the least. OWC is DOG PUCKY IMHO.

Lou

100% agree, their SSD is almost the worse I've ever seen. Expensive but poor performance, and they BS about their SSD don't need TRIM to hide the fact that their SSD has no TRIM support (on some products).

And now, they have excuse to sell new product which may be compatible to APFS (but may be incompatible to something else). AFAIK, all SSD out there compatible to APFS, HFS+, NTFS, ExFAT..... except their own "design for Mac" SSD. Even my $30 DGM SSD can run HS flawlessly. OWC charge 3x for the same capacity but can't even make SMART working properly.

 

[tn-xyz]

OWC announced a new SSD line today that claims compatibility with APFS:

https://blog.macsales.com/42598-owc...for-most-2013-and-later-macs-its-fastest-ever

The announcement also contains the line: "For users who do not want to upgrade to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, the original Aura line of SSDs is still available for purchase." Hmm...

what a rip-off. they can't be serious.

 

[micropitt]

I have a OWC Mercury Electra 3G in my 2010 MacBook and I was able to install the macOS High Sierra update but it doesn't let me convert the SSD to APFS. Telling customers to just buy a new drive to solve the issue is ridiculous.

 

[Jayson A]

I have a Mercury 3G OWC SSD in my Mac and I've installed High Sierra on it. Should I not have? It seemed to work fine, but I didn't to extensive testing on it. Would it fail right away?

 

[gages]

Multiple OWC Mercury drives upgraded to High Sierra, no issues here.....

 

[rraven]

The availability announcement for OWC's new Aura Pro line is up:

OWC Aura Pro X SSDs for Most 2013 & Later Macs Now Available

It includes a rebate offer for owners of the older Aura SSDs (and for Apple installed SSDs). I haven't seen any new information on updates to let those older Auras work with High Sierra.

 

[MartyIrl]

I spent hours installing the old apple drive - installing HighSierra and then trying to update the Aura SSD (1Tb). I then spent an hour on text support with OWC. The answer is that the Aura SSD WILL NOT WORK with HighSierra. They have a rebate program where they want to sell you the Aura Pro X - which will work but they will only give a $300 rebate after you have purchased the Auro Pro X. I have been an OWC customer for years and this is a pretty bad way to treat customers. The old Apple SSD (flash) works fine but the Aura SSD will not suport High Sierra because of the need to have APFS. Somehow they have frigged the internals on the drive to some proprietary system and HighSierra is a no go.

Here is the transcript from OWC support:

Johniah T (17/12/2017, 19:58:06): So after taking a look at the drive that was ordered. I have realized that you do not have the Aura PRo X.
Johniah T (17/12/2017, 19:58:22): That is the drive that is compatible with High SIerra
Me (17/12/2017, 19:59:06): so what does that mean? is the drive i have never going to work with HighSierra?
Johniah T (17/12/2017, 19:59:11): Correct
Johniah T (17/12/2017, 19:59:32): But we have come up with a rebate program for that drive
Me (17/12/2017, 19:59:52): Ok - what happens next?
Me (17/12/2017, 20:01:24): ok? what happens next?
Me (17/12/2017, 20:01:57): the drive is just over a year old?
Me (17/12/2017, 20:02:45): Hi J, can you tell me about what happens next please?
Me (17/12/2017, 20:04:57): Johniah T - are you still there?
Johniah T (17/12/2017, 20:05:57): So. you place an order for the Aura PRo X drive get it home and make sure it works and then we can set you up for the rebate program to send the Aura drive back for a rebate refund check
Me (17/12/2017, 20:06:48): is there anywhere that describes this on you web site and if so please direct me there? DO I get a 100% rebate?
Johniah T (17/12/2017, 20:07:26): https://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/support/rebates/ssd.cfm
Me (17/12/2017, 20:08:16): 1.0TB - $300.00
Me (17/12/2017, 20:10:12): you guys have to be kidding. that is just nuts - I have a product and it cost closer to $900 I am not confident enough to buy an Aura Pro X - what if next year that does not work with the next osx. Can you have someone email me please - you have my email address from the order. this is not fit for purpose
Me (17/12/2017, 20:11:49): ?
Johniah T (17/12/2017, 20:14:16): That is the only available option. We where not aware that the new operating system was not going to work correctly with the Aura. The filing system is different from the other operating systems.

 

[rraven]

That's highly annoying. The last post that I saw from OWC on this topic (it's been a few weeks) in response to questions on their site stated "... we are still hard at work with Apple on the issue with some third party SSDs." Their own product pages also claim that the older Aura is "Supported on all macOS versions, including macOS 10.13 High Sierra." This seems to be three different stories, all from OWC.

I have the 1TB Aura Pro X. I installed it as part of moving to High Sierra. So far it hasn't been a good experience. I'm getting daily kernel panics and sleep wake failures. I'm still working on trying to track down the reason (High Sierra in general on this 2013 MBP, cruft left over from earlier versions of macOS, or the Aura Pro X specifically). Right now I'm not seeing it as a solution.

On a somewhat related topic, the most recent episode of Accidental Tech Podcast includes a rant of sorts, inspired by the iMac Pro, about the end of the days when it was possible to safely upgrade computer hardware in general and Apple hardware specifically. I'll have to say that I'm feeling that. I wish I'd put this money into offload/automated backup options and not a larger SSD.

 

[h9826790]

I have the 1TB Aura Pro X. I installed it as part of moving to High Sierra. So far it hasn't been a good experience. I'm getting daily kernel panics and sleep wake failures.

That sounds very abnormal to me. Are you with 10.13.2? APFS with TRIM enabled?

 

[rraven]

That sounds very abnormal to me. Are you with 10.13.2? APFS with TRIM enabled?

Yes to all - especially the abnormal part.

I cloned onto this drive from the Apple internal drive instead of using Migration Assistant (the latter being OWC's recommendation) since I have some old Apple software (Aperture) that Migration Assistant doesn't handle. I've never had a problem with cloning before. Could it be a factor now? I don't know. I guess that I should redo the install but getting off of Aperture first is a huge while you're at it that I've been avoiding for years. Sigh.

Everything I'm seeing seems to be related to power management (ShutdownNVMe, InitializeNVMe, and the sleep wake failures). I saw this in a machine with the old version of the Aura drive and running Sierra but dealt with it using a combination of a drive replacement, SMC/PRAM resets, and (maybe) fiddling with energy saver settings. No such luck here.

 

[rraven]

Here's an OWC article on a firmware update for the original Aura drive:

Aura SSDs: Firmware Update

This is supposed to fix the issue with not being able to complete the macOS 10.13 install onto an Aura SSD (among other things) without installing onto Apple's internal SSD first. I no longer have one of these SSDs and so haven't tried it myself.

[Edit: Link pulled in favor of OWC KB article? See tywebb13's posts below.]

 

[tywebb13]

Here's an OWC article on a firmware update for the original Aura drive:

Aura SSDs: Firmware Update

This is supposed to fix the issue with not being able to complete the macOS 10.13 install onto an Aura SSD (among other things) without installing onto Apple's internal SSD first. I no longer have one of these SSDs and so haven't tried it myself.

Unfortunately OWC's update page seems to no longer be available directly.

However I was able to retrieve it via google cache and saved it as a pdf and have attached it. The update files are still available however at

http://download.macsales.com/kb/msu.dmg

and

http://download.macsales.com/kb/OWCAuraFirmwareUpdate.bin

 

[flowrider]

^^^^There has to be a reason the removed it, dontcha think? Use at your own risk!

Lou

 

[tywebb13]

^^^^There has to be a reason the removed it, dontcha think? Use at your own risk!

Lou

Well it wasn't actually pulled. There is a new link for it at

https://eshop.macsales.com/Service/Knowledgebase/Article/10/730/Aura-SSDs-Firmware-Update

but the pictures don't load properly so the pdf I made is still better than this new link.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Does anyone tried on OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD ? high sierra did not install on mine. Had to restore Sierra from time machine. Thank you

I run High Sierra on a HFS+ formatted OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD. I don't use APFS. I have installed HS on a hard disk and cloned it with CCC to the OWC PCIe SSD. Everything is OK.

 

[raoultenazas]

Does anyone tried on OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD ? high sierra did not install on mine. Had to restore Sierra from time machine. Thank you

Hmm. I just got a OWC 3G for an old imac 10,1 that was pushing 56 MB/SEC on AJA system test on the original HDD. Formatted the SSD to APFS then did a clean install of high sierra downloaded from apple. No problems so far. Then migrated all my files from my backup. Worked fine. It might mean that you have to start it from scratch.