Check your bloody (third party) SSD Firmware Version is up to Date

[gthm]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I use iStat Menu https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus which has SMART temp monitoring.

Had no d*mn idea this app or company existed..

Nice one - thanks man!

[Darryl Ramm]

It's a nice app for breadth of what it can do, but I find myself screaming at it's lack of good plotting etc. I'm used to things like Grafana and Performance Co-Pilot in the open source/Kubernetes/Linux monitoring world.

[gthm]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

It's a nice app for breadth of what it can do, but I find myself screaming at it's lack of good plotting etc. I'm used to things like Grafana and Performance Co-Pilot in the open source/Kubernetes/Linux monitoring world.

And I was very surprised to see the $11.99 price for iStat Menus, I thought it was going to be at least $50.

I keep looking at my Menu Bar every 10 seconds now.

[gthm]

By the way, after updating my 980 and 990 PROs, I don't get -9013 errors anymore!

[Darryl Ramm]

That is both good and scary.

[mcnichols]

Hi Darryl,

I've (finally!) tried to update firmware via the Etcher route you described so clearly.

Etcher worked as expected with the latest 980 Mac ISO image: the USB mounts as 'Samsung' after creation, and seems to contain all the relevant files, however my Mac Pro 7.1 does not recognise it as a bootable device - no 'EVIboot' option shown on startup with 'Option' held, just the two Mac OS partitions (Ventura and Monterey) and time machine backup are shown.

Any ideas?

I did use the pathetic Magician software to confirm firmware versions for the Samsung drives (980, Qvo 860) and both are out of date, so I'm keen to get this sorted, but really don't feel comfortable using Terminal.

Thanks in advance,

Martin.

[Darryl Ramm]

How did you create the backups on those drives and why do you think they should be bootable? With APFS (vs HFS+) volumes you can no longer create incremental/updated clones that are bootable. Thats been discussed on DUC before and lots of info is on the interwebs.

[mcnichols]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

OK, sorry for the delayed reply.

3. Burn the ISO Image onto Boot Media
Now then you need to install an image of that file to some bootable device

You need an image copy, you can't just drag and drop this image to a drive. Unfortunately because Apple, is well Apple hand waving "security", you can no longer just use the Disk Utility restore feature to do this, because it will no longer scan/approve iso images. And just as bad, Carbon Copy Cloner will not use an ISO image as a source to restore from (it really ought to have a way at least for advanced users to do this) .

So the multiple ways of doing this, I'll show two here : using the third party Etcher app or (see later) using the UNIX dd command. Anybody somewhat technical is likely to prefer dd as I do.

A. Download Etcher from https://etcher.balena.io

B. Double click on the balenaEtcher-...-x64.dmg file you downloaded

C. When that .dmg opens drag balenaErtcher.app to the Applications folder

D. Double click on balenaErtcher.app to run the app

E. In the app click the 'Flash From File" button and choose the ISO image file you already downloaded in Step 2.

F. Click the Select target button and *carefully* select the USB memory stick drive you are want to image the ISO file to. Be super careful if you make a mistake here you could overwrite/destroy content on some other drive on the Mac.

4. Boot the ISO Installer and Let it Do Its Thing
Reboot your Mac with the Samsung 980 SSDs and the newly bootable USB thumb drive attached. Hold down the Option key as the Mac reboots so you get the option to boot off the thumb drive. You'll see a generic drive icon labeled "efi boot" for the thumb drive. Choose to boot off that drive.

The Linux system on that ISO image will both, you'll see some Linux boot text on the screen and the updater will scan for attached 980 Pro drives and update them without you doing anything.... or at least I'm pretty sure it will, it's been ages since I ran an update this way and I don't have any drives that it would find to update.

5. Reboot Back to macOS
Reboot the computer again, this time from the usual boot volume. Check everything appears OK. I would check the SSD firmware version shown in the System report "Revision" has been updated.

---
If this does not work, describe exactly what you're doing, how far you get and exactly what error message etc. you are getting.

All the above followed exactly with the latest Samsung firmware for my 980 (3B4QFX07), but the USB doesn't show up as an 'EFI boot' option. I've checked that the Startup Security settings allow booting from external media.

Clearly I'm missing something fundamental, so apologies for my inexperience.

Do I need to install a Mac OS onto the USB drive first, before using Etcher?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by mcnichols

All the above followed exactly with the latest Samsung firmware for my 980 (3B4QFX07), but the USB doesn't show up as an 'EFI boot' option. I've checked that the Startup Security settings allow booting from external media.

Clearly I'm missing something fundamental, so apologies for my inexperience.

I'm not sure what is going on. Does the USB SSD drive show up at all as any boot option? When you connect that drive it to the Mac with macOS booted does it tell you the drive is unrecogizable (it should). Make sure you never then format the drive.

You are trying to boot this USB SSD stick on your Intel Mac Pro 7.1 right? Try multiple USB ports on the computer. Try removing as many as possible other USB devices. hubs docks etc.. Try doing a full hard down power off power and start up.

Do I need to install a Mac OS onto the USB drive first, before using Etcher?

No absolutely not, the whole point of this is Etcher is installing a Linux ISO image to that USB drive that includes a Linux based firmware updater. You should see the ISO image appear as a boot option when you restart the Mac with the Option key held down.

Try downloading the .iso install image again from the web site, try erasing the USB SSD using macOS Disk Utility just create any file system on the drive, just to see it works OK for Disk Utility, Etcher will overwrite that anyhow. Reimage it with Etcher and try installing any of the other firmware updater files on the website to it. Even if you don't have those drives you are just testing if you can get any ISO image on the USB SSD drive to boot.

[mcnichols]

Thanks for the suggestions Darryl.

I've done some more testing, and the EFI boot does show up as a boot option on an older MacBookPro running Catalina, so the USB stick(s) seem to be written correctly. I have a nasty feeling it's to do with the T2 security chip and/or Ventura as used on the Mac Pro 7.1. I have checked settings by booting into Recovery, and in the security utility booting from an external drive is allowed, and security is set to 'none'.

Any further thoughts appreciated.

By the way, do you happen to now if it's possible to update firmware with the drive mounted in an external enclosure? I have an iMac with two Samsung SSDs (an Evo 850 and an Evo 860), both connected externally in a Sabrent USB-C enclosures. Should/could this work, or will I have to dig out an ancient 2010 cheesegrater and mont them on the internal SATA bus?

Thanks again,

Martin.