Can’t Update OWC SSD to macOS Mojave

Dear Apple Tech Talk:

I have a 2014 15” Retina MacBook Pro that I bought second hand. It is working great and from what I have been told, it should be able to be updated to the current macOS. I recently tried to update it to the latest version of macOS (Mojave) and got a strange message that said there was something wrong with my third party storage. I’m not really sure what that means since I am trying to do the upgrade to my Macintosh HD. I took it to a local electronics store that says it works on Macs but they weren’t much help, saying they would have to investigate the problem and perhaps replace my hard drive. That seems like a drastic solution. Can you help?

Based on the information you provided it was difficult to pinpoint your problem but after exchanging a couple of emails we determined that the error you are referring to looks like this.

We were also able to figure out that whomever had the MacBook Pro before you, upgraded the original hard drive to an OWC Aura Solid State Drive (“SSD”).

OWC makes great products for the Mac and the Aura SSD is no exception. The issue you have is associated with the firmware on the SSD. OWC provides detailed information on how to update the firmware of the Aura SSD. There are two (2) files that you need to download to accomplish the update. One is an application called MarvellTray Firmware Utility and the other is the actual firmware update that gets applied to the SSD using the MarvellTray utility. You can find the two files and detailed instructions here.

OWC still lists this list as a beta process so we strongly suggest you have a full backup of your data before you start the upgrade process. That said, we did the upgrade on a machine just like yours and had no issues.

Once the firmware update is installed, you should be able to install macOS Mojave (10.14) without issue.

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