Could you please send me a private message too? I am new in Mac (although very experienced in Windows). I also have a macbook air 13' 2017 128gb and i want to upgrade to 512gb or 1TB. I am thinking of intel 660p or Adata SX8200pro. I am totally confused.private message sent
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Macbook air 2017 SSD Compatibility with Samsung SSD
- Thread starter enarida
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You may want to ask Audit13 to PM you so you can ask him questions off line. I think he has more experience using these drives. I only stick to the Samsung 950PRO, 970EVO or 970PRO storage drives as I know they work 100% of the time. I have used the 2TB 970EVO drive in my 2015 13inch MBA with no issue.
Hello.
Thanks in advance for your answer!
Hi Macdctr ! When you are speaking that you don't have any issues with these Samsung drives, do you mean that there are also no issues with sleep mode (i dont know how it would be correct in english, but from my language it is translated as "sleep") and hibernate mode? And you can just close your Air by putting down display and then open it and it is always wake up without any problems, hangs or crashes? It is very important, because i've heard a lot about such troubles.
Thanks in advance for your answer!
I’m using a Sintech adapter with my Samsung drives and have no issues at all. Everything works 100% including sleep mode.
No problem. I have two 2015 MacBook Airs (see my sig below) and I'm using Samsung drives (950PRO and 970PRO) and have no hibernation issues. I open up my laptop after putting it to sleep and my login screen appears and I log onto my computer and everything comes up as it should. This is why I say 100% functional because everything works as expected. You have to use the 950 series drives or the 970 PRO/EVO drives. These drives are "plug and play" and will work out of the box using the Sintech adapter.
The Samsung 970 EVO PLUS drives will work only after doing the firmware update to the Samsung drive. You get the updated firmware from the Samsung web site. I have not personally verified this on my MacBook Airs but there have been people who have done this and posted their 970 EVO PLUS drives are fully functional on their Macs.
The Samsung 960 series drives will not work in the Mac. This has been proven and reported in the MacBook Pro forum so don’t buy these for your Mac.
Last edited:
I've read on the other forum (don't know whether it against rules or not to post the link here) that despite new firmware EVO PLUS work properly only for some period of time, and then it became unstable again. So i didn't decide yet whether i want to do such experiments exactly with EVO PLUS series or not, and may be it would be the only right way to use PRO series. Or Intel 760p, because it has less power consumption - for me it is vital because i use Macbook Air 13" 2017 1466, and battery drain is not what i want (i have some problems with my spine and every excess load on it even with additional AC adapter while i walking makes my life worse).
The Samsung 950/970 series drives are more power hungry oriented drives and will reduce battery life but not significantly from what I have seen. If battery life is of great concern then there are other drives which provide adequate performance but much better battery life. I prefer the reliability of Samsung drives so I have no issue using either the 950PRO or 970PRO/EVO drives...
I have no desire to use bootcamp on my MacBook Airs so I don't have any experience... however with that said, I do run VMWare Fusion 11/Windows 10 PRO from time to time on my 13inch Air and have no issues, including hibernation mode.
Oh, i forgot the last thing - do i understand correctly, that if remove my original Apple SSD from Air, try to use Samsung drive, and then if something wrong i will decide to put Apple SSD back, the system will boot without any problems from the last state in which i stoped to use Apple SSD? I mean, that i won't have to reinstall OS.
Thanks for this posting. Do you have any additional observations after more usage? any reliability or battery drain or performance issues? I am thinking of upgrading my MBA 2017 with same ssd (Adata xpg SX8200 Pro 512 GB version)
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Yesterday I got my bootrom in MBA 2017 (Seirra ) updated to 188.0.0.0 by following steps (without an actual update to High Sierra) with stock SSD
-I tried to download the High Seirra installer (full version ) but could download only a stub installer
-To overcome this, I Updated by MBA to latest version of Seirra (was not updated from purchase date two years back)
- Also installed the suggested security updates (Seirra)
-Again tried to download the full version of High Seirra updater but could not. Hence went for one of the alternative method to down load full version using High seirra patcher tool from dosdude.com. After this created a High seirra bootable usb disk.
-For verifying the above bootable disk (just to see and not to upgrade) , I restarted the MBA with option key pressed and with the above usb plugged in. MBA startup showed two options - normal startup or High Seirra installer.
-I selected the High seirra installer just to see whether it starts and thinking of stopping actual installation when it prompts further
-The Installed seemed to be doing something for sometime (without prompting anything) but with progress bar moving and then restarted the MBA .
-After restart, it prompted for language selection (for license agreement I think) . I shutdown (hard press the power button) the MBA at this time and removed the USB installer and started the MBA normally
-At this time, I found the bootrom version was updated to 188.0.0.0 (Seirra version 10.12.6, MBA model 7,2)
Does it mean that I dont need to update to High seirra on the stock ssd ? If so, I can go for High Seirra install on new NVME PCI SSD direcly (which I plan to purchase). This way I can keep stock SSD with original Seirra for possible future use and in case of any issues with New SSD or donot like High Seirra.
-I tried to download the High Seirra installer (full version ) but could download only a stub installer
-To overcome this, I Updated by MBA to latest version of Seirra (was not updated from purchase date two years back)
- Also installed the suggested security updates (Seirra)
-Again tried to download the full version of High Seirra updater but could not. Hence went for one of the alternative method to down load full version using High seirra patcher tool from dosdude.com. After this created a High seirra bootable usb disk.
-For verifying the above bootable disk (just to see and not to upgrade) , I restarted the MBA with option key pressed and with the above usb plugged in. MBA startup showed two options - normal startup or High Seirra installer.
-I selected the High seirra installer just to see whether it starts and thinking of stopping actual installation when it prompts further
-The Installed seemed to be doing something for sometime (without prompting anything) but with progress bar moving and then restarted the MBA .
-After restart, it prompted for language selection (for license agreement I think) . I shutdown (hard press the power button) the MBA at this time and removed the USB installer and started the MBA normally
-At this time, I found the bootrom version was updated to 188.0.0.0 (Seirra version 10.12.6, MBA model 7,2)
Does it mean that I dont need to update to High seirra on the stock ssd ? If so, I can go for High Seirra install on new NVME PCI SSD direcly (which I plan to purchase). This way I can keep stock SSD with original Seirra for possible future use and in case of any issues with New SSD or donot like High Seirra.
Install High Sierra on the NVMe drive after you format it using Disk Utility. As for your original SSD, you can pull it with Sierra installed on it. You should have no issues doing a clean install of High Sierra onto the new drive if you're booting off your thumb drive using the installer software on the thumb drive...
This is how I did my OS installs onto my new NVMe drives.
This is how I did my OS installs onto my new NVMe drives.
I'm running the same bootrom on both my 2015 MacBook Airs and have no issue booting directly from my NVMe M.2 drive. The boot sequence is delayed as I think the computer is looking for a drive on the SATA Express bus first then when the computer does not find a drive it starts looking for an NVMe drive and finds it and the rest of the boot up sequence goes fairly quick. I have not had any issues yet...
Last edited:
Hi.
Am new here, relaitvely new to Mac but laptop/PC literate - I have a MBA 2017 which I plan to upgrade the SSD in, to 1TB. I'm sourcing the adapter recommended earlier and have looked through many of the how-to's.
If I understand - the transfer speed available on latest Samsung (as example) drives (970 etc), is beyond the capability of the extant electronics/logic on the MBA Motherboard. From what I've seen in sample tests posted, the achievable speed is 1300MB or so, even if the drive could exceed it.
So, I am assuming 'new' (but slower) devices are adequate, and may save me some $, when I would not be able to realise the higher performance of devices like the Samsung 970; Intel 760p
Specifically looking at (new) Intel 660p; Corsair MP510;
Views, comment, derisive laughter, as you determine. Many thanks.
Am new here, relaitvely new to Mac but laptop/PC literate - I have a MBA 2017 which I plan to upgrade the SSD in, to 1TB. I'm sourcing the adapter recommended earlier and have looked through many of the how-to's.
If I understand - the transfer speed available on latest Samsung (as example) drives (970 etc), is beyond the capability of the extant electronics/logic on the MBA Motherboard. From what I've seen in sample tests posted, the achievable speed is 1300MB or so, even if the drive could exceed it.
So, I am assuming 'new' (but slower) devices are adequate, and may save me some $, when I would not be able to realise the higher performance of devices like the Samsung 970; Intel 760p
Specifically looking at (new) Intel 660p; Corsair MP510;
Views, comment, derisive laughter, as you determine. Many thanks.
Last edited:
I got 1TB crucial on macbook pro 2015 early and it worked so well.
[doublepost=1568470509][/doublepost]I got 1tb crucial for macbook pro 2015 early, everything run well even I didnot do anything after install and got all back by timemachine. But one thing I'm curious about how can I anable the SMART on this SSD?
You would need to run third-party software to enable S.M.A.R.T. as macOS does not support this function in non-Apple drives.
I have MBA 2017, I use Samsung 970EVO and worked well. however, I found out it slow down to 750Mb/s (blackbmagic) and I also noticed that NVME controller has Link Width x2 - I saw others is x4. Does it cause SSD slow? or the SSD have some issue? - I use it only 3-4 months and 50% is blank.
BTW, I tried 970EVO plus -not work on my MBA. ( with sintech adapter of course )
BTW, I tried 970EVO plus -not work on my MBA. ( with sintech adapter of course )
The air should have a link width of x4. Try removing and installing the drive and adapter. You may need to apply kapton tape to the adapter if it won't switch to x4.
Having X2 will allow down the read and write speed.
The Evo Plus will work in the air if it is running the latest firmware.
Thanks, I will try to reinstall it - So it only cause by the adapter.?
I just returned 970 EVO plus ( which is produced on 05-2019, don't know if its new firmware) it can be regained, but it will interrupted during format to APFS.
Update: I reinstall the adapter (there have tape already) and keep a small gap in between, The link width is x4 now and speed back to 1350/1450MB/s.
Thank you @Audit13
Last edited: