0

Good day everyone, I have a 15" MacBook Pro Mid 2010. It's working well with the current hard drive (El Capitan). However when we swapped in our SSD (High Sierra) and booted, it gave the blinking folder which means that it can't find an OS to boot from.

I reset the laptop and held down the alt/option key. I then saw two options, an "EFI Boot" and our SSD. I was able to boot from our SSD and everything is working well.

However, this presents an inconvenience, it would be quite the hassle to reset the laptop and remember to hold down the alt/option key to be able to make the laptop boot properly.

When I looked up updates for our MacBook Pro model, the updates I found were dated way back 2010/2012, and I don't think these are the updates I'm looking for.

One solution we're looking at is to get a blank SSD, install El Capitan or until Sierra (whichever is available), and then upgrade to High Sierra. This way, we are guaranteed that the firmware will be updated as well. However, this solution is time consuming.

So here then is my question: Is there a way to update my Firmware so that it can read APFS hard drives?

Improve this question
1
  • The only way AFAIK to update the computer firmware is to install High Sierra on the computer's boot disk.
    – DavidRecallsMonica
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 3:43

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

Installing the full "Install macOS High Sierra" app over again will re-apply the firmware update, whether or not it was done previously.
Installing 'over the top' in this manner will leave all your data intact.

As an added bonus, it will add or fix the Recovery Partition too.

Improve this answer
3
  • So I just need to run the install again and let it run its course? What would happen? Wouldn't it either 1) apply the firmware only or 2) overwrite everything as it tries to install High Sierra again?
    – Razgriz
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 9:21
  • 1
    I did it recently on a drive where I'd managed to lose the recovery partition after cloning. It first insisted on applying the firmware update, which I know had already been done first time I upgraded to HS. It made me a nice new recovery partition & wrote a new OS without touching any other data on the drive - same as it would if you reinstalled 'over the top' from recovery. Always safest to have a full backup, of course... but you have one of those anyway, don't you? ;)
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 9:30
  • You might find this SE thread useful: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/301454/…
    – DavidRecallsMonica
    Commented Jul 21, 2018 at 22:41

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .