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

[macgeek01]

Can anyone comment what happens if you put back in the original drive to get an EFI update when you have flashed modified ROM with the NVME DXE driver? Does it overwrite or not take the update? Thanks.

 

[jimbocho]

Hi everyone,
I've just installed a Samsung 970 Evo into my 2013 13" Macbook Pro, but experiencing a couple of issues:
On boot, I am greeted with a gong and a black screen, then a second gong with a black screen, shortly followed by the Apple logo and normal boot up.
When I close the lid and open it up a while later, i only get a black screen and nothing else - I have to hold down the power button and am back to problem 1. Any ideas?

I have hibernate 0 and standby 0 for now.

Thanks in advance!

 

[dannytang]

Hi everyone,
I've just installed a Samsung 970 Evo into my 2013 13" Macbook Pro, but experiencing a couple of issues:
On boot, I am greeted with a gong and a black screen, then a second gong with a black screen, shortly followed by the Apple logo and normal boot up.

Did you try you assigning the 970 Evo as the Startup disk in System Preferences?

 

[TokMok3]

Finally the time has come to install a Samsung 970 EVO 500GB in a MacBook Pro mid 2015. I will report when the parts arrive for anyone interested in the performance before the install and after... and thanks to all the brave souls that took the risk and put their beloved machines to the test with unknown 3rd party SDD drives and share their knowledge with all of us.

 

[dannytang]

Just installed a 2TB Sabrent in my Late 2013 15" MacBook Pro... Pretty happy with the results. Lightroom feels a little snappier but it's might just be psychological, glad to finally have a 2TB internal SSD... now if only it was possible to upgrade the RAM!

 

[TokMok3]

Just installed a 2TB Sabrent in my Late 2013 15" MacBook Pro... Pretty happy with the results. Lightroom feels a little snappier but it's might just be psychological, glad to finally have a 2TB internal SSD... now if only it was possible to upgrade the RAM!

Loading apps and running virtual machines should benefit from the upgrade. Thank you for sharing!

 

[jryee]

Hello, I am trying to put standby to 0 to fix my kernel panic problem, but I'm getting an error. I am using
"sudo pmset -g standby 0" as stated in the OP and the error message I am getting is

Error: unhandled argument standby

Usage: pmset <options>

See pmset(1) for details: 'man pmset'

 

[gusto5]

Hello, I am trying to put standby to 0 to fix my kernel panic problem, but I'm getting an error. I am using
"sudo pmset -g standby 0" as stated in the OP and the error message I am getting is

Error: unhandled argument standby

Usage: pmset <options>

See pmset(1) for details: 'man pmset'

You don't want the -g:

"sudo pmset standby 0"

 

[jimbocho]

Did you try you assigning the 970 Evo as the Startup disk in System Preferences?

Yup - did that. Although it was already picked when I went into the preferences (I guess because the volumes was named the same?)

 

[jplee3]

Hey guys,

I'm thinking about grabbing the ADATA SX82000 960gb SSD and Sintech adapter for my Macbook Air Mid 2013. I'm assuming this should be OK as long as I run that command to disable the hibernation/sleep feature so I don't encounter the crash. Any other suggestions specific for the Macbook Air Mid 2013 otherwise?

 

[jplee3]

Also, can someone clarify which of these will work with 2017 MBAs/logic boards:
https://www.amazon.com/Sintech-Adapter-Upgrade-2013-2015-MacBook/product-reviews/B01CWWAENG

https://www.amazon.com/Sintech-Adapter-Upgrade-2013-2016-2013-2015/product-reviews/B07FYY3H5F

I've read several here mention that the "short" one (2nd link) is better for the 2017 model but I just read a review someone posted for the longer one where they used it in a 2017 MBA and it worked fine with the ADATA SX8200 480GB NVMe SSD

I think I read one of the posts that said the shorter adapter is best for the SSDs that are thicker - is it that the 480gb ADATA and other 500gb SSDs aren't so thick as to cause issues in the case of that reviewer? So if I were to get a 960gb or 1TB SSD, I'd want to pickup the short adapter? But if I were going with the 480gb or 500gb SSDs, I would be OK with the long adapter?

 

[tsugaru]

Upgraded my 2015 13" Retina MacBook Pro from it's tiny 128GB Apple SSD to an Intel 660p 1TB ($150 CAD, was a decent deal,) using a Rivo NGFF to Apple SSD Adapter. I got it from Amazon Canada for $19 CAD. I did order the Sintech Rev C adapter, but that's probably going to be a couple of weeks until it arrives.

All the things work fine (restart, sleep, didn't really test hibernate though, although I'm sure that would be fine.)

Going to swap out the Intel SSD with my old Samsung 960 Evo 500GB, as the Intel drive is overkill storage wise, and won't be quite as consistent as the 960.

After poring through countless pages on this thread, many thanks to those who found this out and worked hard to help the community with this.

 

[majonex]

I have the Sabrent which is PCIe 3 x4 NVME which is very fast and get 2600MBps read and writes with my Late 2015 27” iMac which is also PCIe 3 x4.

The same Sabrent drive in my 15” Late 2013” MacBook Pro which is PCIe 2 x4 gets 1300MBps reads and 700MBps writes. The stock OEM (SSUAX) is PCIe 2 x2 AHCI gets 700MBps read and writes. An Apple OEM PCIe 3 x4 (SSUBX) gets 1250MBps reads and 1400MBps writes so it outperforms the Sabrent.

This sounds similar to some others experience with 3rd party NVME in PCIe 2 x4 Macs. You may be better of with a used Apple SSUBX from eBay for better speed and not worry about sleep issues and battery unless. Their prices on eBay seem to be lower than in the past.





Wonder how both of you manage to have no issues without modified firmware?



You bring up a good point about idle power.

Hi @macgeek01 I was a little too fast to claim success. I started eventually getting the random reboots and double-startups. I put back the original Apple SSD and installed OS X 10.14.4. Now I have MacBookPro11,1 151.0.0.0.0 which is latest rom. In fact I have more problems now than ever before!

Here is my pmset now:

System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
 standbydelaylow      10800
 standby              0
 womp                 1
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             1
 gpuswitch            2
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 standbydelayhigh     86400
 sleep                1 (sleep prevented by coreaudiod)
 autopoweroffdelay    28800
 hibernatemode        25
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         10
 highstandbythreshold 50
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

I tried to fix restart issues with this command

sudo nvram enable-legacy-orom-behavior=1

That did not help at all. What do I do now? All sleep and hibernation issues are worse than ever. Do I have to flash the MBP to MacBookPro12,1 182.0.0.0.0 ??

### UPDATE ##
I reversed the nvram command with
sudo nvram enable-legacy-orom-behavior=1
Still it was crashing and restart every time on sleep. So I set back pmset to defaults. (also hibernatemode =3) At least I have no more restart after sleep. Still wondering what is correct values.

 

[gilles_polysoft]

I'm also curious about how @gilles_polysoft is testing the power draw.

Hi,

The most reliable method I have found is :
- install iStatMenu (or HardwareMonitor)
- monitor the "SSD" (A) sensor. Then multiply by the tension (3.3V), you have your power consumption.
- plug the MacBook Pro on the AC adapter...
Plugging the MacBook on AC adapter is mandatory : strangely, while on battery the SSD 3,3V power sensor show no consumption 0A, even during writes.

I then get power consumption graphs where I can see clearly the idle, read and write consumption (during my 100GB files write and read test).
And I pick the power during idle, read, write.

Here are examples with the HP ex920 :

idle:


read :


write :


write at the end of garbage collection :


The whole archive of my consumptions test is available here :

http://www.polysoft.fr/dl/NVMe_consumtion_test.zip
[doublepost=1554983490][/doublepost]

Can anyone comment what happens if you put back in the original drive to get an EFI update when you have flashed modified ROM with the NVME DXE driver? Does it overwrite or not take the update? Thanks.

If you put back an AHCI SSD (original Apple) to get an EFI update... you get an EFI update. And the EFI update overwrite the previous BootRom, so you loose the "full" uncompressed NVMe DXE driver..;

If you are not happy with this, please contact Apple, make bug reports to then (bugreport.apple.com), so that Apple be aware of the situation and may provide future Bootrom updates with the full uncompressed NVMe DXE driver for the 2013-2014 macs.
[doublepost=1554984080][/doublepost]

Does anyone have any experience with the intel 660p and how its power consumption differs from the rest of the drives? There's been some major deals online for this drive, wondering if i should change from my 760p

Please read my charts (post #1 of this thread).
The intel 660P as the Crucial P1 are not so bad af first sight (0.6W idle, 2.7W during read/writes)... EXCEPT that after a write, those QLC drives don't go to idle power immediately...
They need to "rewrite" the SLC cache back to "QLC" form, and this process can consume up to 3W during... 30 minutes in my tests ! This is terrible.

So those QLC SSDs barely go to idle power... they consume a lot of power after each write because they need to "clear" the SLC cache and rewrite data in QLC form.
TLC drives have the same behaviour, but a lot lighter : it only last seconds and they resume to idle very fast.

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

Hi,

The most reliable method I have found is :
- install iStatMenu (or HardwareMonitor)
- monitor the "SSD" (A) sensor. Then multiply by the tension (3.3V), you have your power consumption.
- plug the MacBook Pro on the AC adapter...
Plugging the MacBook on AC adapter is mandatory : strangely, while on battery the SSD 3,3V power sensor show no consumption 0A, even during writes.

I then get power consumption graphs where I can see clearly the idle, read and write consumption (during my 100GB files write and read test).
And I pick the power during idle, read, write.

Here are examples with the HP ex920 :

idle:
View attachment 831608

read :

View attachment 831607
write :

View attachment 831610
write at the end of garbage collection :
View attachment 831609

The whole archive of my consumptions test is available here :

http://www.polysoft.fr/dl/NVMe_consumtion_test.zip
[doublepost=1554983490][/doublepost]

If you put back an AHCI SSD (original Apple) to get an EFI update... you get an EFI update. And the EFI update overwrite the previous BootRom, so you loose the "full" uncompressed NVMe DXE driver..;

If you are not happy with this, please contact Apple, make bug reports to then (bugreport.apple.com), so that Apple be aware of the situation and may provide future Bootrom updates with the full uncompressed NVMe DXE driver for the 2013-2014 macs.
[doublepost=1554984080][/doublepost]

Please read my charts (post #1 of this thread).
The intel 660P as the Crucial P1 are not so bad af first sight (0.6W idle, 2.7W during read/writes)... EXCEPT that after a write, those QLC drives don't go to idle power immediately...
They need to "rewrite" the SLC cache back to "QLC" form, and this process can consume up to 3W during... 30 minutes in my tests ! This is terrible.

So those QLC SSDs barely go to idle power... they consume a lot of power after each write because they need to "clear" the SLC cache and rewrite data in QLC form.
TLC drives have the same behaviour, but a lot lighter : it only last seconds and they resume to idle very fast.

THANK you for the informative post. Now I have a lot to learn.

 

[PLin]

OWC announced their Aura Pro X2 drives, which now offer up to 3200MB/s read and 2400MB/s write performance and uses 3D TLC. Retail price for the 1TB drive is $299.99, so it’s still more expensive than building your own solution using the Sintech adapter, but at least performance should be closer to some of the faster drives out there. It will be interesting to see if they were able to work out any of the sleep/hibernation issues and how much power they consume.

 

[Gunmoule]

It will be interesting to see if they were able to work out any of the sleep/hibernation issues and how much power they consume.

My guess is only Apple can fix it by pushing a bootrom update with full support. Truth is Aura, Transcend and alike, selling third party nvme upgrade don't tell you upfront but their drives have the exact same problems on 2013-2014 macbooks. I don't think it can be fixed on the drive side.

 

[jackqueenking]

My guess is only Apple can fix it by pushing a bootrom update with full support. Truth is Aura, Transcend and alike, selling third party nvme upgrade don't tell you upfront but their drives have the exact same problems on 2013-2014 macbooks. I don't think it can be fixed on the drive side.

Correct, a quick google search of OWC Aura Pro X hibernation will lead you to results of people experiencing the same thing as with other NVME drives. The new OWC models will likely have the same issues. The only drive you wont have problems with is the regular OWC Aura, I don't think this drives uses NVME and has read/write speeds only slightly faster than the OEM but its wicked expensive.

I think the drives are fine, its a bootrom issue. You can actually test this yourself if you have access to the parts. The 2016 Generation 5 Macbook Pro models use NVME based SSD storage with the 12+16 pin adapter so they are compatible with the 2013/2014/2015 models. If hibernate mode breaks with these SSDs then it definitely can't be fixed on the drive side.
[doublepost=1554989664][/doublepost]

Hi,

The most reliable method I have found is :
- install iStatMenu (or HardwareMonitor)
- monitor the "SSD" (A) sensor. Then multiply by the tension (3.3V), you have your power consumption.
- plug the MacBook Pro on the AC adapter...
Plugging the MacBook on AC adapter is mandatory : strangely, while on battery the SSD 3,3V power sensor show no consumption 0A, even during writes.

I then get power consumption graphs where I can see clearly the idle, read and write consumption (during my 100GB files write and read test).
And I pick the power during idle, read, write.

Here are examples with the HP ex920 :

idle:
View attachment 831608

read :

View attachment 831607
write :

View attachment 831610
write at the end of garbage collection :
View attachment 831609

The whole archive of my consumptions test is available here :

http://www.polysoft.fr/dl/NVMe_consumtion_test.zip
[doublepost=1554983490][/doublepost]

If you put back an AHCI SSD (original Apple) to get an EFI update... you get an EFI update. And the EFI update overwrite the previous BootRom, so you loose the "full" uncompressed NVMe DXE driver..;

If you are not happy with this, please contact Apple, make bug reports to then (bugreport.apple.com), so that Apple be aware of the situation and may provide future Bootrom updates with the full uncompressed NVMe DXE driver for the 2013-2014 macs.
[doublepost=1554984080][/doublepost]

Please read my charts (post #1 of this thread).
The intel 660P as the Crucial P1 are not so bad af first sight (0.6W idle, 2.7W during read/writes)... EXCEPT that after a write, those QLC drives don't go to idle power immediately...
They need to "rewrite" the SLC cache back to "QLC" form, and this process can consume up to 3W during... 30 minutes in my tests ! This is terrible.

So those QLC SSDs barely go to idle power... they consume a lot of power after each write because they need to "clear" the SLC cache and rewrite data in QLC form.
TLC drives have the same behaviour, but a lot lighter : it only last seconds and they resume to idle very fast.

Thank you sir, the information about QLC drives is a lot more clear!!

 

[Earl Urley]

OWC announced their Aura Pro X2 drives, which now offer up to 3200MB/s read and 2400MB/s write performance and uses 3D TLC.

Ha ha, nice of them to obliterate any info about the chipsets they're using.

To me, it looks like they're jumping on the Phison E12 bandwagon, it's a controller that promises those same exact speeds but I'm not really sure about power management. A ton of these SSDs with Phison E12 controllers and Toshiba-built 3D NAND are coming out- the Sabrent Rocket, the Seagate Firecuda 510, the MyDigital BPX Pro, the Gigabyte Aorus, the Silicon Power 34A80, and the Inland Premium.

If I know OWC, they're just going with the standard firmware being shipped with every other brand, if they actually did any tweaking, then I'm the Czar of all the Russians.

 

[The_Moves]

I'm confused with the partition scheme. Just installed a MyDigitialSSD BPX Pro 960GB, fresh install of Mojave with APFS. I had assumed it would do 4k by default, however my diskutil provided results are not clear. It looks like the overall APFS FS is at 512, but the APFS Container is at 4k. So, do I need to reload to get 4k/4k? I just migrated all my data from my old MacBook, but I can do that again if I need to reformat.

diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         960.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         960.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +960.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh SSD           502.8 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 47.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                522.7 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      8.6 GB     disk1s4

diskutil info /dev/disk0

   Device Identifier:         disk0
   Device Node:               /dev/disk0
   Whole:                     Yes
   Part of Whole:             disk0
   Device / Media Name:       BPXP

   Volume Name:               Not applicable (no file system)
   Mounted:                   Not applicable (no file system)
   File System:               None

   Content (IOContent):       GUID_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:       No
   Media Type:                Generic
   Protocol:                  PCI-Express
   SMART Status:              Not Supported

   Disk Size:                 960.2 GB (960197124096 Bytes) (exactly 1875385008 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:         512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:           No
   Read-Only Volume:          Not applicable (no file system)

   Device Location:           Internal
   Removable Media:           Fixed

   Solid State:               Yes
   Hardware AES Support:      No

diskutil info /dev/disk1

   Device Identifier:         disk1
   Device Node:               /dev/disk1
   Whole:                     Yes
   Part of Whole:             disk1
   Device / Media Name:       BPXP

   Volume Name:               Not applicable (no file system)
   Mounted:                   Not applicable (no file system)
   File System:               None

   Content (IOContent):       EF57347C-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   OS Can Be Installed:       No
   Media Type:                Generic
   Protocol:                  PCI-Express
   SMART Status:              Not Supported
   Disk / Partition UUID:     A05A14D1-3A23-4AAA-9BA2-A52FABD9FCB0

   Disk Size:                 960.0 GB (959987367936 Bytes) (exactly 1874975328 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:         4096 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:           No
   Read-Only Volume:          Not applicable (no file system)

   Device Location:           Internal
   Removable Media:           Fixed

   Solid State:               Yes
   Virtual:                   Yes

   Hardware AES Support:      No

 

[jimbocho]

Hi everyone,
I've just installed a Samsung 970 Evo into my 2013 13" Macbook Pro, but experiencing a couple of issues:
On boot, I am greeted with a gong and a black screen, then a second gong with a black screen, shortly followed by the Apple logo and normal boot up.
When I close the lid and open it up a while later, i only get a black screen and nothing else - I have to hold down the power button and am back to problem 1. Any ideas?

I have hibernate 0 and standby 0 for now.

Thanks in advance!

Did you try you assigning the 970 Evo as the Startup disk in System Preferences?

Yup - did that. Although it was already picked when I went into the preferences (I guess because the volumes was named the same?)

Does somebody have an idea?
Also, when the Macbook runs out of power it's unable to start up again - black screen.

 

[axx0]

Thanks for all the valuable information in this thread, it helped me a lot!

I've upgraded my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) with a 1TB HP EX920, using the Sintech adapter. After disabling standby everything works fine.

Disk speed (Blackmagic tool):
1200 MB/s read, 1450 MB/s write

Power consumption with Mail,Safari,Terminal,PHPStorm started, but idle. Medium display brightness, no background jobs (spotlight indexing...) running:
Apple 512GB: 80% after 2:30
HP 1TB EX920: 65% after 2:30

Power consumption when sleeping, after 1/2/3 days:
Apple 512GB: 98% / 96% / 94%
HP 1TB EX920: 94% / 85% / 77%
(checked once per day)

 

[PLin]

Ha ha, nice of them to obliterate any info about the chipsets they're using.

To me, it looks like they're jumping on the Phison E12 bandwagon, it's a controller that promises those same exact speeds but I'm not really sure about power management. A ton of these SSDs with Phison E12 controllers and Toshiba-built 3D NAND are coming out- the Sabrent Rocket, the Seagate Firecuda 510, the MyDigital BPX Pro, the Gigabyte Aorus, the Silicon Power 34A80, and the Inland Premium.

The spec sheet says it uses a Silicon Motion SM2262EN controller.

 

[mandamus]

After viewing this forum and performing the upgrade I thought I would share my experience.

Macbook air 6,1

Bootrom 110.0.0

High sierra

Sintech long adapter https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CWWAENG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Crucial CT500P1SSD8 P1 500 GB https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07J2WBKXF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Having seen the use of kapton tape on previous posts I thought it was worth showing that this adapter comes with the pins already taped over.

All seems to work as expected for Mac OS with the same hibernation caveats as described by others.

The issue that seems different to any other previous post is with installing Windows via Boot Camp.

The process works fine up to booting from the install disk and selecting the drive for install but after this the screen goes blank.

This happens for all versions of Windows I have attempted 7,8 and 10.

On the stock drive with the same boot ROM and OS version process works fine and I also tried Winclone to restore the Windows partition to the new drive but when I boot into Windows the same blank screen occurs.

 

[Earl Urley]

Oh, so literally the same as the HP EX920 / ADATA 8200..