OWC expands Boot Camp compatibility to all SSDs, eases storage upgrade path for Mac

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited May 2016
Mac specialist Other World Computing on Thursday released software drivers that bring Apple Boot Camp support to its entire lineup of aftermarket SSDs, giving users who run Windows a wider selection of storage upgrade options.




The free Dual Boot Enabler brings Boot Camp to all OWC SSD drives, including previously unsupported products like the Aura SSD for Mid-2013 and later MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina display, Aura SSD for 2013 and later Mac Pro, and Mercury Accelsior S and Mercury Accelsior E2 PCIe SSDs.

Prior to today's software release, only certain newer OWC drives were able to dual boot using Boot Camp.

Since factory SSDs from Apple are expensive, some consumers choose the lowest possible configuration when they purchase their new computer, later swapping out the spinning HDD with a comparatively affordable aftermarket solution.

OWC offers a number of SSD solutions for Mac owners, including Aura SSD PCIe-based upgrades for various MacBook models. For desktops, OWC's Mercury Acceslior E2 expansion card offers high-speed data transfer at up to 811MB/s and two eSATA ports, while the Accelsior S line provides swift SATA 6G performance with any 2.5-inch drive.

Boot Camp enables a Mac user to create and format a Windows partition on their local storage device. Apple last year updated Boot Camp with support for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system.

Users can download the free OWC Dual Boot Enabler from the company's website. The enabler can be uninstalled after provisioning, though users can leave it installed as it uses no memory or other system resources.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    emoelleremoeller Posts: 574member
    I've been a long time owner of OWC hard drives and memory modules and I can highly recommend their products and service.  I have never had any of their products ever fail, and before I switched to them more than a decade ago I had all kinds of problems with after market drives and memory (particularly Western Digital (WD) drives).  
  • Reply 2 of 8
    baconstangbaconstang Posts: 1,103member
    emoeller said:
    I've been a long time owner of OWC hard drives and memory modules and I can highly recommend their products and service.  I have never had any of their products ever fail, and before I switched to them more than a decade ago I had all kinds of problems with after market drives and memory (particularly Western Digital (WD) drives).  
    I've had great luck with a variety of their products, especially DRAM.  
    Issues I've had mostly were with Seagate drives.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    runbuhrunbuh Posts: 315member
    Need bigger drives.  2TB for MBPr, please.
    fastasleep
  • Reply 4 of 8
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    emoeller said:
    I've been a long time owner of OWC hard drives and memory modules and I can highly recommend their products and service.  I have never had any of their products ever fail, and before I switched to them more than a decade ago I had all kinds of problems with after market drives and memory (particularly Western Digital (WD) drives).  
    I bought their 64GB RAM package for my new 5K iMac.  Their service and delivery were fantastic.  I'd buy from them again any day.

  • Reply 5 of 8
    hypoluxahypoluxa Posts: 694member
    emoeller said:
    I've been a long time owner of OWC hard drives and memory modules and I can highly recommend their products and service.  I have never had any of their products ever fail, and before I switched to them more than a decade ago I had all kinds of problems with after market drives and memory (particularly Western Digital (WD) drives).  
    I just bought a SSD from them last month for my 2012 MBPro. It is like a brand new machine!  So worth the purchase. High recommend from me with their products.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    Incorrect information in the article.  This new software patch applies to the OWC SSD drives that are compatible with the 2013 and later MacBook Pros.  The article claims people would spend less money and then later swap out traditional spinning hard drives.  That is incorrect because all MacBook Pros shipping in 2013 and later all had proprietary SSD drives.  The traditional spinning hard drives were 2012 and earlier models, and those drives were standard SATA drives.  Swapping those with a SATA SSD drive worked fine with Boot Camp because those drives appeared as traditional internal drives.  The 2013 models with the OWC SSD upgrade installed sees the upgrade as an external hard drive because of the way the hardware is configured on the drive itself (it appears as an external RAID drive).  Boot Camp cannot install Windows on an external drive, so OWC had to create a software hack to make it work.
    TCG
  • Reply 7 of 8
    I have the 480 GB Aura Pro in my 15" Macbook Pro Retina (2012) for about 3 years now and have been using Bootcamp since then with Windows 7, so "Prior to today's software release, only certain newer OWC drives were able to dual boot using Boot Camp." is not quite correct. Never had a single problem and its been running flawlessly and incredibly fast. Definitely worth the price, as you get to keep your old ssd as an external harddrive, which is crazy fast. EDIT: Ok, I noticed this is specific to the 2013 models, which use PCIe 2.0. The 2012 MBPr Models use Mini-SATA III. Also noticed they don't sell those anymore :/
    edited May 2016
  • Reply 8 of 8
    TCGTCG Posts: 1member
    Incorrect information in the article.  This new software patch applies to the OWC SSD drives that are compatible with the 2013 and later MacBook Pros.  The article claims people would spend less money and then later swap out traditional spinning hard drives.  That is incorrect because all MacBook Pros shipping in 2013 and later all had proprietary SSD drives.  The traditional spinning hard drives were 2012 and earlier models, and those drives were standard SATA drives.  Swapping those with a SATA SSD drive worked fine with Boot Camp because those drives appeared as traditional internal drives.  The 2013 models with the OWC SSD upgrade installed sees the upgrade as an external hard drive because of the way the hardware is configured on the drive itself (it appears as an external RAID drive).  Boot Camp cannot install Windows on an external drive, so OWC had to create a software hack to make it work.
    So, does this mean that the OWC hack would also work on an actual external drive? It would be nice to keep a PC on an external disk, to be connected whenever needed.
    entropys
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