Updating System Firmware with third party SSD installed

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Level 1

5 points

Updating System Firmware with third party SSD installed

I have a Mac Pro 6.1 and an OWC 2TB SSD installed. My System firmware is MP61.0120.B00 which is old. I booted from a Big Sur usB, erased the drive and did a fresh install, then migrated from my Time Machine backup. Apparently because I have the OWC (or any non-Apple SSD) install the process will not update my firmware. OWC tells me that the only way to get my firmware updated is to

install the original SSD
install Big Sur (I would do so using a Big Sur USB installer) in order to get the firmware updated
reinstall the OWC drive

I already have Big Sur on the OWC drive, so I assume I'm good, but in the future I am told that every "update" I will need to first put the Apple SSD in the machine, then update that SSD hoping that any firmware updates are applied, then reinstall the OWC SSD and update that drive.

First, is there any way to determine if a given update will contain a firmware update for my machine so that I can bypass the swapping of the SSDs and do so only when a firmware update is included?

Second, how can we get Apple to stop this insanity of only updating the firmware when an original SSD/HDD is present, or provide the firmware updates as standalone installs?

Posted on Jan 22, 2021 10:35 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

DonH49

Level 6

16,716 points

Jan 25, 2021 2:05 PM in response to george346

for the 2013 Mac Pro 427.0.0.0.0 is the latest. You'll be getting that soon enough. They used to document firmware and provide the route to get it but no longer. They arrive in software updates and the only way to tell is to have other people do it and inform you.

BTW I was booted into an intel SSD335 external thunderbolt and received the firmware update.

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Answer 2

jcp-123

Level 1

9 points

Feb 23, 2021 7:44 AM in response to george346

Exact same situation (except I'm using a Sabrent Rocket NVME as my main drive).

I bought the cheapest compatible Apple OEM 128GB SSD on eBay (SD6PQ4M-128G-1021L). I installed Big Sur from a USB installer (11.1) and, once installed, ran 'Software Update' (11.2).

This got me to 427.0.0.0.0. I then swapped back to the Sabrent SSD.

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Answer 3

george346 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 24, 2021 7:04 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

After installing a 1TB SSD and installing Big Sur from the USB drive I then swapped back to the OWC 2TB SSD. When I check my Hardware information I see :

Model Name: Mac Pro

Model Identifier: MacPro6,1

Processor Name: 12-Core Intel Xeon E5

Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 12

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 30 MB

Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

Memory: 64 GB

System Firmware Version: 426.0.0.0.0

SMC Version (system): 2.20f18

Panel Illumination Version: 1.4a6

Serial Number (system): F5KM30UTF694

Hardware UUID: 9B7EE678-BB75-5A29-985A-72AB15A99BCA

Provisioning UDID: 9B7EE678-BB75-5A29-985A-72AB15A99BCA

I ran /usr/libexec/firmwarecheckers/eficheck/eficheck --integrity-check and it returns:

EFI Version: MP61.88Z.F000.B00.2011042256 (Boot ROM Version: 426.0.0.0.0)

Primary allowlist version match found. No changes detected in primary hashes.

SEC Version: MP61.AAPLEFI5.88Z.9982.I99.1312061508

SEC allowlist version match found. No changes detected in SEC hashes.

I assume that I am now current.

I have other Apple computers. Does Apple document when a firmware upgrade is included in an update? If so where would that documentation be found?

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Answer 4

Feb 23, 2021 8:39 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

The statement I made above that 131.0.0.0 is current is out-of-date.

The latest at this writing is 426.0.0.0.0

Some have suggested that once you get to 131.0.0.0, the Apple SSD is no longer required to make additional progress.

http://blog.greggant.com/posts/2019/05/07/the-definitive-mac-pro-2013-trashcan-guide.html#tfirmware

.

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Answer 5

HWTech

Level 9

68,444 points

Jan 25, 2021 12:18 PM in response to george346

You have the new firmware (new numbering style).

Apple used to provide a list showing the latest firmware revisions for all their Macs, but Apple stopped providing this information shortly after releasing macOS 10.13 High Sierra. AFAIK, the following website is the only one that tries to keep track of the Apple firmware revisions, but their information may be incomplete or inaccurate since it is being collected & documented by other users:

https://eclecticlight.co

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Answer 6

george346 Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 23, 2021 8:42 AM in response to jcp-123

Back in January I used this technique to successfully get my Firmware updated, but I also wanted to reformat my SSD to clean it up good and restore from backup. The restore process was very lengthy, but it all worked well.

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Answer 7

Jan 23, 2021 5:42 PM in response to george346

The current BootROM version is 131.0.0.0.0 and ships with 10.14.6.

Once you manage to get that version installed, it is extremely unlikely there will be any more firmware updates for this model Mac.

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Answer 8

Jan 25, 2021 1:03 PM in response to HWTech

This article:

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/16/which-firmware-should-your-mac-be-using-version-5/

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Updating System Firmware with third party SSD installed

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