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Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
denj said:
Edit 1: Will do. I'm currently waiting on the adapter to get delivered and then I will see how things go.

Edit 2: I just ran everything that I went through and I think it did work! I'm waiting for the adapter to come but I ran all the commands on an apple SSD. I don't see any reason of this not working on an non-apple ssd since we are manually updating the EFI.

@tshelby73 It passed the integrity check with no problems!
@erudyne, The firmware file name and version would remain the same since we actually modifying just a piece of the original firmware. Here's how i confirmed:

From the original Mojave update file, you had extracted your MBP firmware right? In my case, the firmeware was MBP112.SCAP file.

Using this article as a guide: https://www.modmy.com/how-mount-your-efi-partition-macos

I copied the firmware onto my desktop and compared the two.

Edit 3: See the attached screenshoot. The left shows the original firmware for my MBP 15, 2013 A1398. The guide provided by CMD+Q (Click on most liked posts) told me what firmware to use.

The right shows the firmware currently sitting on my EFI volume with the updated driver from the 2015 version.

For anyone wanting to try this, please note that I mentioned earlier that I had the original ssd in the macbook when i updated my firmware manually.

Could someone please try this out with a non apple ssd? My adapter is still being shipped so I can't try out yet. If it does work, I will try to replicate the steps and if needed, post a guide.

Edit 4: Re-uploaded screenshot and added modified plus 2015 version of the same nvme driver. I'm really confused why as to why an external device was needed now. Did I modify the right thing?
Click to expand...

Thanks for your investigation!

But just to make sure:

The EFI partition is not your BootRom; It's a partition on your HDD/SSD that is loaded prior to loading the actual macOs.

It looks to me like you have written the update file to your EFI partition but not to your BootRom. The BootRom resides on your Logicboard on a separate chip and is responsible for "early stage" booting - even if no HDD/SSD is present.

Are you sure, the BootRom has actually been updated with your "fixed" driver?
 
BBsan said:
Thanks for your investigation!

But just to make sure:

The EFI partition is not your BootRom; It's a partition on your HDD/SSD that is loaded prior to loading the actual macOs.

It looks to me like you have written the update file to your EFI partition but not to your BootRom. The BootRom resides on your Logicboard on a separate chip and is responsible for "early stage" booting - even if no HDD/SSD is present.

Are you sure, the BootRom has actually been updated with your "fixed" driver?
Click to expand...

I will have to wait till I get my hands on the adapter and the NVMe. Otherwise, there is no way for me to confirm this at this time until I can get my hands on CH341A Mini Programmer and SPI to J6100 adapter.

But, given that we know from High Sierra, the BootROM has been updated to recognize NVMe at the boot level, we are really only trying to solve the issue of the sleep/hibernate issue right?

My knowledge is inadequate in this matter and I don't explain things very well sometimes. Wouldn't power management such as sleep or hibernate be at an OS level rather at the Boot level?
 
Just wanted to add another success story for anyone thinking of trying this - updated a 2014 MacBook Pro with the long sintech adapter (this one: http://amzn.eu/d/ePq068h) and the intel 760p 1TB (SSDPEKKW010T8X1). I was still on High Sierra and it was practically plug and play. Reinstalled High Sierra from a bootable USB drive, restored from Time Machine and had no issues at all. Speed has gone from 560/700 MB/s read/write to 1200/1500. I've now updated to Mojave with no issues. Should get me another year or two of this laptop until I'm ready for a USB-C world. So grateful to others on this thread who pioneered the update, I'd never have tried it without all the guidance and learning that others have posted here.
 
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denj said:
I will have to wait till I get my hands on the adapter and the NVMe. Otherwise, there is no way for me to confirm this at this time until I can get my hands on CH341A Mini Programmer and SPI to J6100 adapter.

But, given that we know from High Sierra, the BootROM has been updated to recognize NVMe at the boot level, we are really only trying to solve the issue of the sleep/hibernate issue right?

My knowledge is inadequate in this matter and I don't explain things very well sometimes. Wouldn't power management such as sleep or hibernate be at an OS level rather at the Boot level?
Click to expand...

No problem, just wanted to help you with your investigation

Yes, the only issues when Mojave is installed seems to be hibernation/sleep.

As for my understanding, the BootRom is able to recognize the NVM.e SSD as an external storage and therefore not considering it as "hibernatable". So it doesn't look for a hibernate file on it when trying to boot from hibernation.

This would also explain, why a BootRom update cannot be installed from NVM.e SSD, as it will not install the update from EXTERNAL storage.

Those are just "educated guesses" based on what I've seen on this thread.
 
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Hi,

I just tried updating my 2014 Mid Macbook Pro with a 1TB Samsung 970 Pro NVMeM.2 SSD. But: The macbook doesn't seem to recognize the SSD. Does it even work with the Pro?

The Macbook currently runs Mojave, and everything seems up2date. Here is the system information: (although in german, but you should get it)

Modellname: MacBook Pro
Modell-Identifizierung: MacBookPro11,3
Prozessortyp: Intel Core i7
Prozessorgeschwindigkeit: 2,8 GHz
Anzahl der Prozessoren: 1
Gesamtanzahl der Kerne: 4
L2-Cache (pro Kern): 256 KB
L3-Cache: 6 MB
Speicher: 16 GB
Boot-ROM-Version: 149.0.0.0.0
SMC-Version (System): 2.19f12


Anything I can do to make it work?

Cheers
Dominik
 
Does anyone know if a NVMe SSD (like the 960 EVO) would play nicely with a Late 2015 5k iMac? Will I have any heat/sleep issues?
 
dpfaffenbauer said:
Hi,

I just tried updating my 2014 Mid Macbook Pro with a 1TB Samsung 970 Pro NVMeM.2 SSD. But: The macbook doesn't seem to recognize the SSD. Does it even work with the Pro?

The Macbook currently runs Mojave, and everything seems up2date. Here is the system information: (although in german, but you should get it)

Modellname: MacBook Pro
Modell-Identifizierung: MacBookPro11,3
Prozessortyp: Intel Core i7
Prozessorgeschwindigkeit: 2,8 GHz
Anzahl der Prozessoren: 1
Gesamtanzahl der Kerne: 4
L2-Cache (pro Kern): 256 KB
L3-Cache: 6 MB
Speicher: 16 GB
Boot-ROM-Version: 149.0.0.0.0
SMC-Version (System): 2.19f12


Anything I can do to make it work?

Cheers
Dominik
Click to expand...
Which Adapter are you using? Does fit good in the socket?
 
Khaleal said:
Does anyone know if a NVMe SSD (like the 960 EVO) would play nicely with a Late 2015 5k iMac? Will I have any heat/sleep issues?
Click to expand...
Hi,
in the late 2015 5K NVMe drive should work perfectly, with a high speed thanks to the 4x lanes PCIe 3.0 bus. No sleep issues. As for heat, it should be ok because iMacs have quite good thermal design.
[doublepost=1544996008][/doublepost]Hi everyone,
juste a little update to my tests of NVMe SSD.
This time I focused on energy consumption, I also included for comparison some AHCI and NVMe genuine Apple SSDs.
I've sorted the table in three way :
- SSDs sorted by performance / price ration
- SSDs sorted by growing power consumption (assuming a time ratio of 80% idle - 10% read - 10% write)
- SSDs sorted by power efficiency = speed / power consumption

Note that my favorite SSD at this time is the Adata SX8200, but it is not yet available in 2TB (although it has been announced for nearly 1 year...).

I don't especially love QLC ssds which have very low speed once the SLC cache has been filled.

I would also love to test the MyDigital BPX which seems to be very interesting : high performance / price value, MLC cells, 5 year warranty, high endurance (TBW), and exists in 2TB (at $519),

SSD Performance by price.png
SSD Power Consumption.png
SSD Power Efficiency.png
 
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I upgraded to Mac OS Mojave a little while ago (about 2-4 months ago) and everything was fine before the upgrade and after until the past 2 weeks. I've been having crashes when waking up from sleep (the login screen appears but after typing my password in, I get the infinite beachball) along with getting the infinite beach ball randomly while working too. I used to get crash logs that said something about IONVMEController.cpp or something, but no longer get it. I tried doing the pmset fix but I'm not sure It worked (maybe I got the wrong one? Could someone post the PMSet) but again, this happens sometimes while working while being logged in for over an hour or so. I have the Samsung SM951 NVMe 256GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD MZVPV256hdgl.

Any ideas?

Thanks
 
gilles_polysoft said:
Hi,
in the late 2015 5K NVMe drive should work perfectly, with a high speed thanks to the 4x lanes PCIe 3.0 bus. No sleep issues. As for heat, it should be ok because iMacs have quite good thermal design.
[doublepost=1544996008][/doublepost]Hi everyone,
juste a little update to my tests of NVMe SSD.
This time I focused on energy consumption, I also included for comparison some AHCI and NVMe genuine Apple SSDs.
I've sorted the table in three way :
- SSDs sorted by performance / price ration
- SSDs sorted by growing power consumption (assuming a time ratio of 80% idle - 10% read - 10% write)
- SSDs sorted by power efficiency = speed / power consumption

Note that my favorite SSD at this time is the Adata SX8200, but it is not yet available in 2TB (although it has been announced for nearly 1 year...).

I don't especially love QLC ssds which have very low speed once the SLC cache has been filled.

I would also love to test the MyDigital BPX which seems to be very interesting : high performance / price value, MLC cells, 5 year warranty, high endurance (TBW), and exists in 2TB (at $519),

View attachment 811200 View attachment 811201 View attachment 811202
Click to expand...
Hey Gilles,
Thanks to your previous research in this thread I installed a Kingston KC1000 last year and it worked like a charm in my 2015 13"MBPr, but apparently after installing Mojave it all went down to hell with the new IONVMe kext. By hell I mean constant KPs and freezes after waking from sleep or even after booting. For now I went back to High Sierra, but I'm wondering if you have any idea what might be causing those issues? Would upgrading the bootrom help in any way(that would mean swapping in my Apple SSD which is currently installed in my cMP) or reformatting the SSD since it's still formatted in 4K for Sierra support?
 
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dpfaffenbauer said:
Hi,

I just tried updating my 2014 Mid Macbook Pro with a 1TB Samsung 970 Pro NVMeM.2 SSD. But: The macbook doesn't seem to recognize the SSD. Does it even work with the Pro?

The Macbook currently runs Mojave, and everything seems up2date. Here is the system information: (although in german, but you should get it)

Modellname: MacBook Pro
Modell-Identifizierung: MacBookPro11,3
Prozessortyp: Intel Core i7
Prozessorgeschwindigkeit: 2,8 GHz
Anzahl der Prozessoren: 1
Gesamtanzahl der Kerne: 4
L2-Cache (pro Kern): 256 KB
L3-Cache: 6 MB
Speicher: 16 GB
Boot-ROM-Version: 149.0.0.0.0
SMC-Version (System): 2.19f12


Anything I can do to make it work?

Cheers
Dominik
Click to expand...

Do you have a bootable USB High Sierra or Mojave installation medium? If so, please Boot from there and open Disk Utility. On the top left, select ‘show all devices’ and please post a screenshot here.

Thanks,
Magnus
 
mbosse said:
Do you have a bootable USB High Sierra or Mojave installation medium? If so, please Boot from there and open Disk Utility. On the top left, select ‘show all devices’ and please post a screenshot here.

Thanks,
Magnus
Click to expand...

Can do later tonight.

here is what I did:

1. Obviously: I created multiple backups
2. Opened the macbook
3. unplugged the power-supply
4. swapped the original SSD with the new one (of course using the adapter)
5. re-attached the power supply
6. power on with holding the option (alt) key, it then offers a "internet recovery" where I already tried to restore the time-machine backup, but it didn't show any device. So I opened the disk-utility which also didn't show any device. In terminal, using "diskutil list", it neither did show the device.
 
dpfaffenbauer said:
Can do later tonight.

here is what I did:

1. Obviously: I created multiple backups
2. Opened the macbook
3. unplugged the power-supply
4. swapped the original SSD with the new one (of course using the adapter)
5. re-attached the power supply
6. power on with holding the option (alt) key, it then offers a "internet recovery" where I already tried to restore the time-machine backup, but it didn't show any device. So I opened the disk-utility which also didn't show any device. In terminal, using "diskutil list", it neither did show the device.
Click to expand...
Point '6' is a bit concerning... Please do as I asked you.
 
dpfaffenbauer said:
Can do later tonight.

here is what I did:

1. Obviously: I created multiple backups
2. Opened the macbook
3. unplugged the power-supply
4. swapped the original SSD with the new one (of course using the adapter)
5. re-attached the power supply
6. power on with holding the option (alt) key, it then offers a "internet recovery" where I already tried to restore the time-machine backup, but it didn't show any device. So I opened the disk-utility which also didn't show any device. In terminal, using "diskutil list", it neither did show the device.
Click to expand...

Have you tried with a USB install medium? I seem to remember there were issues trying to use Internet Recovery with non-Apple drives.
 
My Dime Is Up said:
I upgraded to Mac OS Mojave a little while ago (about 2-4 months ago) and everything was fine before the upgrade and after until the past 2 weeks. I've been having crashes when waking up from sleep (the login screen appears but after typing my password in, I get the infinite beachball) along with getting the infinite beach ball randomly while working too. I used to get crash logs that said something about IONVMEController.cpp or something, but no longer get it. I tried doing the pmset fix but I'm not sure It worked (maybe I got the wrong one? Could someone post the PMSet) but again, this happens sometimes while working while being logged in for over an hour or so. I have the Samsung SM951 NVMe 256GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD MZVPV256hdgl.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Hello,
Sorry for your problem. I did upgrade to 10.14.2 on 2 rMBP and didn't noticed anything wrong (although I don't have a SM951 to test, my tests with 10.14.2 were on a KC1000 and on a SX8200).
Please can you tell me which model of Mac and which BootRom do you have ?
thanks
 
My Dime Is Up said:
I upgraded to Mac OS Mojave a little while ago (about 2-4 months ago) and everything was fine before the upgrade and after until the past 2 weeks. I've been having crashes when waking up from sleep (the login screen appears but after typing my password in, I get the infinite beachball) along with getting the infinite beach ball randomly while working too. I used to get crash logs that said something about IONVMEController.cpp or something, but no longer get it. I tried doing the pmset fix but I'm not sure It worked (maybe I got the wrong one? Could someone post the PMSet) but again, this happens sometimes while working while being logged in for over an hour or so. I have the Samsung SM951 NVMe 256GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD MZVPV256hdgl.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Click to expand...
PMset: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/page-29#post-25703979
 
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