OWC's Aura SSDs Not Working With macOS High Sierra, Fix Coming Soon

Tuesday September 26, 2017 2:35 PM PDT by Juli Clover
Some Mac owners who have replaced their machine's storage with Aura SSDs from OWC are not able to install macOS High Sierra at this time due to an incompatibility issue that prevents the update from successfully converting the drives to the new APFS format.

The Aura SSDs show up as "Rotational" drives instead of Solid State, and when attempting to install macOS High Sierra, users are seeing an error message about a firmware update before the installation process crashes.


Several customers who have purchased Aura SSDs have complained on a macOS High Sierra beta blog post, as the issue long pre-dates the macOS High Sierra release. One customer was told that new firmware would not be developed until the High Sierra golden master was released, but new firmware has apparently not made it out yet.

OWC offers Aura SSDs for a range of Macs, including many MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro models. According to the company, Aura SSDs compatible with the following machines are affected:

- MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2013)
- MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013)
- MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2014)
- MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014)
- Mac Pro (Late 2013)

Apple is aware of the issue with select third-party SSDs, and the OWC engineering team is working directly with Apple on a fix. OWC expects "a very timely solution."

Tag: OWC
77 comments


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Weaselboy
17 months ago
It is probably because those drives were setup as RAID0 internally.

Here is an excerpt from the THESSDREVIEW ('http://www.thessdreview.com/mac/macreviews/owc-aura-1tb-pcie-ssd-review-mid-2013-later/'):

The OWC Aura contains two SMI 2246 XT 4-channel controllers which are situated in a RAID configuration through a Marvell 9230 RAID controller. There are four unbranded 256MB MLC synchronous NAND flash chips which, once paired, create a RAID 0 volume with a 1TB capacity.


The whole setup was a kludge from the beginning.
Rating: 7 Votes
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robeddie
17 months ago

Agreed. No clue why someone would buy OWC over Crucial, especially considering that OWC is more $$$. Been running my Crucial M4 in my MacBook Pro for 5 years now and never had so much as a hiccup.


Umm, we're talking about AURA SSD's which is only one of two vendors that make SSD's for macbooks from 2013 onward. So for anyone with a 2013, 2014, or 2015 macbook pro or macbook air, Crucial does NOT make compatible ssd's for those models.
It's either OWC, or these guys -

http://www.transintl.com/super-blade-flash-storage-ssd.html
Rating: 5 Votes
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dan9700
17 months ago
That makes no sense if you swap the ssd with original then replace it back you wouldnt have the OS what a dumb fix
Rating: 5 Votes
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OldSchoolMacGuy
17 months ago
Surprising. Generally OWC has the best customer support in the business and is all over this kinda stuff.
Rating: 5 Votes
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Pike R. Alpha
17 months ago
Why OWC need Apple to resolve this is a mystery to me.

Tip: simply repack the latest FirmwareUpdate.pkg that comes with macOS High Sierra as a stand alone installer and run it. That's how easy it is.

FirmwareUpdateStandAlone-1.0.pkg ('https://uploadfiles.io/wn0l7')

md5 = 24a1731b514c633c7aff07b5d739828c

You can make it yourself by running:

./installSeed.py -a update -f FirmwareUpdate.pkg -t / -u /tmp/FirmwareUpdate

./munkipkg.py --create /tmp/FirmwareUpdateStandalone

cp /tmp/FirmwareUpdate/Scripts/postinstall_actions/update /tmp/FirmwareUpdateStandalone/scripts/postinstall

cp -R /tmp/FirmwareUpdate/Scripts/Tools /tmp/FirmwareUpdateStandalone/scripts/

./munkipkg.py /tmp/FirmwareUpdateStandalone

Used scripts:

https://github.com/Piker-Alpha/HandyScripts/blob/master/installSeed.py
https://github.com/munki/munki-pkg/blob/master/munkipkg
Rating: 4 Votes
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jclo
17 months ago
Updated this with a specific list of machines affected. It's limited to some MacBook Air and Mac Pro models. Other machines with Aura SSDs should be able to install High Sierra with no problems.
Rating: 3 Votes
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Glassed Silver
17 months ago

It is probably because those drives were setup as RAID0 internally.

Here is an excerpt from the Anandtech review ('https://www.anandtech.com/show/10128/owc-introduces-ssd-upgrade-for-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air-pcie-ssds'):

The OWC Aura contains two SMI 2246 XT 4-channel controllers which are situated in a RAID configuration through a Marvell 9230 RAID controller. There are four unbranded 256MB MLC synchronous NAND flash chips which, once paired, create a RAID 0 volume with a 1TB capacity.


The whole setup was a kludge from the beginning.


They have technology to get 1TB of capacity out of 4 modules of 256 MB each?

Well, this whole issue shall be forgotten then, let me get their magic controller whilst I go on a NAND shopping spree to replace some HDDs then...

Glassed Silver:mac
Rating: 2 Votes
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robeddie
17 months ago
This is why, for my 2015 MBP, I purchased a 1tb SSD from these guys instead:
http://www.transintl.com/super-blade-flash-storage-ssd.html

Mac os sees these as oem apple internal SSD's so theres zero compatibility issues and they run faster and cooler than the OWC models.
Rating: 2 Votes
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skottichan
17 months ago
Weird, I have an Aura (480GB in a late 2013 15" rMBP) with High Sierra installed.

Everything went smoothly.
Rating: 2 Votes
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Heebeejeebies
17 months ago

Surprising. Generally OWC has the best customer support in the business and is all over this kinda stuff.

They definitely have good CSR. I got my replacements for free, with no shipping charges and hardly any waiting time. And I didn't even talk to a single person.

But I still got 2 crappy SSDs in a row.
Rating: 2 Votes
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