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In short, the firmware cannot be updated either by upgrading macOS to High Sierra or by bless manually. Here comes the detail.

My MacBook pro info: about my macbook pro firmware version SSD drive info

Attempt 1 - update it by updating macOS from 10.12.6 to 10.13.2

Failed with error message "An error occurred while verifying firmware". Key info in ia.log is as following.

ROM does not support APFS

Clearing automation and attempting to rebless.

Failed to get disk for UUID specified for rebless.

Operation: Verify firmware failed, Failure Reason: Error Domain=com.apple.osinstall Code=512

If look into previous log of EFI updating, it seems they are quite normal.

EFI currentVersion: [0000000000D30008] EFI updateVersion: [0000000000D70000]

/Volumes/bless.YdD7/EFI/APPLE/FIRMWARE/MBP91_00D7_B00.scap created successfully

Writing firmware update installed cookie (/Volumes/MacSSD/macOS Install Data/.FirmwareUpdateInstalled)

/usr/libexec/efiupdater finished with status: 0

Thus, I've no idea why High Sierra installer failed to update the EFI firmware at the very first time.

Attempt 2 - update EFI firmware manually

According to the chapter 2.0 How Does a Mac Update Its EFI Firmware & How Do You Find Your EFI Version of The Apple of Your EFI , with the following command bless, the file MBP91_00D3_B0C_LOCKED.scap extracted from mac2015002efiupdate.dmg, which downloaded from Apple.com, and the file MBP91_00D7_B00.scap extracted from Install macOS High Sierra.app, it executed successfully. 

sudo bless -mount / -firmware <PATH>/MBP91_00D7_B00.scap --verbose --recovery

Shutdown, Power on. It got a flashing LED light indicating the firmware was about to be updated. Then, 3 times power off automatically in a short period, end up with a normal OS X startup. Everything stay still. In another word, the Boot ROM Version hasn't been changed.

Any idea?

Update @11 Jan 2018:

I've just seem a related post Is there any way to manually bless firmware when main disk is external?

It seems that the root cause is running OS X from a second internal disk. Unfortunately the first one of my MacBook is out of order.

Update @13 Jan 2018:

Confirmed the following methods do not work.

  • replaced the Samsung SSD with original Apple HDD and tried again. The ia.log was same as that of SSD
  • kept internal hard drive connected, connected the USB external drive or SXCARD reader. It selected the ESP on internal hard drive as the staging EFI. Thus, same result as above.
  • disconnect all internal hard drive, connected the USB external drive and SXCARD reader. Got the log as

    No appropriate ESP could be found. Error while writing firmware updater for EFI.

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4
  • May I know your situation now? Have you been able to update to High Sierra? I am having the same issue. Thanks.
    – Averell
    Jan 18, 2020 at 21:58
  • @Averell My MacBook has upgraded successfully. I replaced the primary disk cable and make it work again. The upgrade ran smoothly as silk. A friendly suggestion, don’t spend too much time on it as I did, although it was a bit fun. In my case, $20 could save more than 20 hours which might earn $200.
    – Kent
    Jan 20, 2020 at 0:40
  • Thank you for the reply. So your problem was with the cable? Was that a different type? In my case, I read somewhere else about the same issue, and solved that by connecting to the original HDD via USB, upgrade to High Sierra on that disk, disconnect it, and run the upgrade again on my SSD.
    – Averell
    Jan 20, 2020 at 1:45
  • @Averell I read that too. From my experience, the original HDD is not necessary. Connecting via USB won’t work. The key point is the mac need a EFI partition on your primary drive to persist the BOIS upgrade file for the BOIS upgrade after a reboot. The system won’t look elsewhere for the upgrade file, neither secondary drive nor USB drive. For sure the original HDD was mentioned for a reason, I would say the reason was his SSD is not well supported by MAC and can’t use for the BOIS upgrade. I’ve got a Samsung SSD; it worked perfectly while doing the upgrade.
    – Kent
    Jan 21, 2020 at 23:12

5 Answers 5

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The EFI partition is used when the firmware is updated. I assume this EFI partition must be on the primary internal disk. Apple posted that firmware updates require a GUID partition scheme at the archived website Firmware updates for Intel-based Macs require a GUID partition scheme, although the site does not explicitly say this must be the primary drive. When a SDD or HDD is formatted to use a GUID partition scheme by the Disk Utility or diskutil command, the EFI partition is automatically created.

Basically, the firmware update is copied to the FAT32 formatted EFI partition. The firmware is then instructed to update itself. Basically, the same procedure occurs for firmware updates on my HP PC running Windows. So, this is not unique to Apple Macs.

Having to update the firmware to run High Sierra makes sense. The APFS is new and older Macs would need a firmware update before being able to recognize this filesystem and read the boot files.

You used to manually update the firmware. At some point, Apple decided to include firmware updates in the macOS installs. Apple posted this in the now archived website About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers.

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9

Just wanted to post on this topic since I had a related problem in an Apple store yesterday and this was the post I found.

Apple had replaced my logic board but didn't install the newer firmware and so I could no longer boot off of my existing SSD drive (which was formatted with APFS, and had my original Mojave and all of my files).

Luckily one of the geniuses had a good idea. Boot off of Mojave on a USB, and plug in a new blank external hard drive, and install Mojave onto that. As part of the installation process, the firmware was installed. Then, the USB stick and external hard drive were removed, the machine rebooted, and it could finally boot off of its original Mojave on the existing SSD drive.

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Key point: Get the primary internal disk work.

Then unplug the second internal disk. Boot the machine with an USB to install high sierra, by following the standard installation guide. After that, the firmware will be upgraded.

Alternatively, you may use bless to update it manually, as long as the primary internal disk is there.

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Unfortunately this is no longer the case... Apple changed their installers (assuming to make sure older devices can't take advantage anymore), and now when you do a fresh install, it basically skips the firmware update. At least on my 2012 Mac Mini

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Putting an original hard disk drive in the MacBook Pro and building off my Samsung SSD via the USB port resolve the firmware update issue for me.

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