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Sudden Pletora of Issues with 3rd party drives, and High Sierra

Lately I have had several Machines come in to the shop that I have upgraded with third party SSHD and/or SSDs. These machines were working fine until the latest System Upgrades. I have also noticed a lot more questions than normal about people having problems replacing drives, putting in secondary drives or upgrading to SSHDs or SSDs. I am beginning to suspect Apple as the culprit in their ongoing effort to eliminate 3rd party repairs. What's your opinion and/or experience?

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/artic...

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35502...

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@mayer - Still early on the first two, I'm suspecting the HD SATA cable and in one the system may have an issue within the optical carrier using an Auto sense drive Vs using a Fixed SATA II drive. The last one looks like the Toshiba OCZ compatibility issue which is why we stuck with Samsung SSD's and only using them in the HD bay (we gave up on dual drive setups) as they are so iffy.

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@danj what is the OCZ compatibility issue? I bought several of these from iFixit for stock but have not used them as of yet.

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It depends on the systems chip set as well as the firmware level on the drive.

Checkout Toshiba's web site here: OCZ Downloads & Updates.

In addition the current drive TR200 is a fixed SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) drive so it does not play nice in the older SATA I & SATA II systems. And won't work in the optical drive bay if you have one of the lucky SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) incompatibility MacBook Pro's which need a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) drive even though you would think a SATA III drive would work. Here's the best guide I know of: Data Doubler OWC made a big effort to document which systems have the issue. The issue is not OWC's! It's the MacBook Pro's them selves that have a clocking issue in the optical bay ports SATA connection that Apple never addressed.

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I have 10.13.4 on an Evo 850 with the APFS file system.

No problem so far.

May I suggest verifying the latest 3rd party firmware for the SSDs are installed?

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What third party software for SSDs?

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3rd party firmware, meaning Samsung EVO firmware, OCZ firmware, etc.

FYI, OCZ has a known issue on the T150s that it doesn't work with Macbook Pro Nvidia chipsets.

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The last version of OS X I ran was probably 10.9, after coming from 10.6 for 5 or so years when application compatibility began going down the toilet. My hand was forced by dying 10.6 application compatibility.

As much as I say that this nonsense is normal on iDevices seeing it on MacOS is a new one. You'd THINK Apple wouldn't want to spite Mac owners as much as seem to like doing it to iDevice owners. Since Macs cost more then an iPhone, there's less incentive to do so because people will eventually get tired of your crap and switch platforms.

Personally, Apple lost me when they used a nonstandard SSD and soldered RAM on the 2015 rMBP. Unlike an iDevice where you may have platform specific investments piled up you aren't tied to the Mac OS platform most of the time. While there are Mac OS only applications that may tie someone down (Ex: FCP) most applications are cross platform and have Windows equivalents.

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The Motherboard & BBC articles are old news before the iPhone X came out. Both articles are scare pieces (click bait)!!

While fixing the logic board is almost impossible with the iPhoneX. There is still the basics that are still repairable in the iPhoneX and the newer iPhone 8 & 8+. Even the Apple watch is repairable! Apple hasn't trapdoor'ed their devices.

Yes, because Apple doesn't sell parts we have to make do with knock off parts that as far as we know are compatible.

When Apple altered its iOS lots of replacement screens failed. And we are now facing a possible issue with the battery health function Apple just put in (still in BETA).

For Mac systems the issue is more complex as the newest models is now so intergraded (RAM & SSD) there is little to fix without getting into micro-soldering. Then you need to get the schematics and board layout drawings. While the older models are findable if you know where to look. Apple nolonger offers them in PDF or paper! You need the special ID that only Apple and their suppliers have to gain access to them electronically. They are getting very paranoid!!

As to the drive issues... Apple changed the format to GUID/APFS when the installer see's a SSD drive within High Sierra, this only effect SSD drive's!

SSHD or HD's still use the older GUID/HFS + {Mac OS Extended (Journaled) fils system}. The only exception is Fusion Drives at this point they stay as GUID/HFS +

I have APFS running on two of my systems and I have not had any issues installing. I still have an issue with queuing within Finder in High Sierra so when you drag a file or drag a URL out of Safari (I use a folder to hold my links Vs within Safari as I can manage them better externally). But thats a usability issue not an upgrade/install issue.

I'm starting to suspect Apples firmware updates are the issue here. Apple has made it clear iCloud locking is coming to the Mac systems. Even the older systems will see improvements so it will lockup. The iMac Pro is the first to have a Secure Enclave so its OS & data is even more secure.

So, if you buy a used system which someone has locked and reformat the drive the system may lock up and not let you install the OS! Sadly, Apple has not clarified what they are doing or offer a means to tell the person who's system is now locked and why.

Now let me add one more thing here... A company in China had created a tool to reprogram iPhone chips which were iCloud locked! As they needed an unused ID key they leverage Apples online iPhone checker which Apple took down once they understood what this company was up to. What this company was doing was only to see if the ID was locked it not they used it which could have been already in use! If you remember about two years ago Apple was encountering issues with users who's ID's where linked to these fake ones! It was a mess! Its possible we are facing the same thing here in the Mac system's! Some EFI chip burners may have created a mess for us! If they reused the original series number & model ID then there shouldn't be an issue but we just don't know if all these people did that.

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I'm GLAD I got away from Mac OS before things like iCloud locked Macs. Apple only gets away with it because the majority of people tolerate this crap.

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Hold your tongue Nick!!

Microsoft is doing this too! Apple is just a bit a head of them here. We're just rolling it out to our test users HP laptop systems.

Linux or BSD are the only ones you'll gett around this for now.

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@danj I'd just like to see MS lock my home-built PC. Also, it is not necessary to use a MS account on a windows PC- I believe most users don't. I can only imagine MS would put their version of iCloud lock on their own surface tablets, and maybe other laptop manufacturers will follow suit. However, I could never see something like this coming to windows desktops with any sort of modular hardware. That's what you'd get a TPM for, if you cared enough about someone breaking into your house and stealing your desktop PC.

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You just don't use a M$ account then.

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@pccheese & @nick - The issue is not desktop systems its laptop's. The risk here is people swiping the system gaining information on the system which a business needs to keep confidential. It can also see someone who has a lot of personal stuff also wanting this on their laptop.

One of the driving forces many people went with MacBook Pro's was the ability to lock out access to the user account if someone attempted to log in to many times with the wrong password. You can do this with Windows as well now.

The other risk here which we had seen with cell phones it outright theft out of the hands of the owner (some times violently!) As these crazed people want to sell it for drug money. Here in Boston we had people mugged waiting for the subway trains a few died! Once Apple put iCloud tracking & locking into the phone things got so much better as the thief could be located.

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mayer will be eternally grateful.