Difference between "OWC Aura Pro X" and "OWC Aura SSD" for a Mac Pro 6,1??

[djangofan]

Does anyone know the difference between "OWC Aura Pro X" and "OWC Aura SSD" ?? The website does not say anything about the difference except that the cheaper one is faster. I need a larger 2TB SSD, for MacOS Mojave, and I am not sure of which to choose.

"OWC Aura Pro X" 2TB - $879
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/S3DAPB4MP20K/

"OWC Aura SSD" 2TB - $1429
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDA13MP2.0/

 

[djangofan]

Ok, I got a reply from them:

Yes, the difference is that the Aura Pro X carries a requirement of having OS 10.13 or higher installed prior to the installation of the new drive. We still have many users who don't wish to upgrade past OS 10.12, for software reasons. For this reason, we still offer the Aura drive as a solution.

 

[djangofan]

After a long journey, here is my story relating to my Mac Pro 2013 6,1:

I watched EBay for a long time, and "OWC Aura Pro X" was typically selling for retail, and no cheaper. In February, 2019 I found a deal on EBay for an older "OWC Aura SSD" for about $500 and I bought it (NOTE: i did not buy the newer Aura Pro X).

I put the drive in my "Mac Pro 2013" and it installed from the included 8GB recovery partition, but after getting it running I noticed I could not upgrade beyond El Capitan. Here is where the dilemma started since there are a lot of people talking about this on the internet but there is a bit of misinformation.

Mis-info #1: To upgrade the "OWC Aura SSD" to Mojave, you need the $99 OWC Envoy enclosure as a boot drive to install to the Aura. Nope, a 16GB USB stick or larger will work.
Mis-info #2: When bootable USB stick is not recognized by boot loader, plug the USB stick into a USB hub. Then it will probably work.

I did order an Envoy that I found on EBay for $50 but I never used it. I fiddled for a long time and here is how I updated it.

1. First, I updated original OS to Mojave, on the original 256GB SSD
2. I made a time machine backup of Mojave
3. I formatted a USB stick with Mac journaled (not sure if APFS would work)
4. I made a Mojave bootable installer from that stick, using the typical command line procedure.
5. Turn off Mac Pro completely
6. Installed the "Aura SSD" into my Mac Pro. NOTE: this was the hardest part for me since it was hard for me to unscrew the 2 security screws that provide power to the larger SSD. I thought for sure I was going to strip the screws since I had a low quality Torx screwdriver. I bought a nice Torx security toolset and I managed to get the torque to loosen the screws although I was very scared I would break the computer) VERY IMPORTANT: get the "security Torx" driver with the small button indent inside it!!
7. Trick: boot from USB stick (hold down option key during boot). For me, booting from the USB stick would not work unless it was plugged into a USB Hub.
8. Format the Aura SSD as APFS.
9. At this point you CANNOT direct install fresh OSX to drive BUT it WILL allow restore from the time machine backup!!!!
10. Reboot and it works!
    

 

[djangofan]

Final Benchmarks after upgrading to 2TB SSD:

Single Core: 3564
Multi-Core: 29932 (2000 higher than expected)
D300 Dual OpenCL Performance: 70012

 

[djangofan]

Now, 9 months later, in retrospect, it appears the OWC drives are no longer the only option for replacement drives on Mac Pro. I found some documentation (lost the URL) that almost any NVMe drive (256MB - 1.0TB) will work. I suspect 2.0TB drive might get too hot?? Of course, with that drive, you need the connector/adapter and stick-on slim heat sync. I haven't tried this yet but I probably will since 10.14.6 finally killed my OWC drive completely.

I priced it out on Amazon, with a 970 EVO, to be around $190 for 1.0TB.