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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.
jwar1976 said:
Would something like this be better ?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapter-Upgrade-MacBook-2013-2016-2013-2015/dp/B07N4HC2BK/ref=sr_1_6?crid=2ALDQCX1SJECM&keywords=ngff+m.2+nvme&qid=1555593498&s=gateway&sprefix=Ngff,aps,160&sr=8-6
Click to expand...
It looks similar to the Sintech adapter I have in another MacBook Air with an Intel 600p: http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2015-macbook-ssd-p-1143.html I've been using the small green adapter with the Intel 600p for about 1.5 years with no issues.

I have only used Sintech adapters. Others in this thread have reported success with other adapters too.
 
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Galu said:
Hello, sorry for my bad english, i'm italian.
I have a macbook air mid 2014, and i buy the Samsung 970 PRO, and this adapter

https://www.amazon.it/Adapter-Upgrade-MacBook-2013-2016-2013-2015/dp/B07N4HC2BK/ref=sr_1_6?tag=macr052-21&crid=2ALDQCX1SJECM&keywords=ngff+m.2+nvme&qid=1555593498&s=gateway&sprefix=Ngff,aps,160&sr=8-6

When i install Win 10 via bootcamp the bootcamp panel don't work. I see a lot of solution, create a non-admin account, create a shortcut, but i wanna that my pc normaly work.
If i buy the Sintech adapter the bootcamp panel will be normaly works?
Click to expand...

I can’t speak about the adapters as I have no experience with them. But having been a PC user since the 90’s, where Windows 10 is concerned, I did have trouble getting it running on Bootcamp on the regular MacBook Pro drive. What I found as a fix, was to get the latest image of Windows 10, from Microsoft and then activate like you normally would. Remember that Microsoft give so many updates, that it is quite possible that you haven’t got the latest release, which may have incompatibility with Bootcamp.
[doublepost=1555596114][/doublepost]
Audit13 said:
It looks similar to the Sintech adapter I have in another MacBook Air with an Intel 600p: http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2015-macbook-ssd-p-1143.html I've been using the small green adapter with the Intel 600p for about 1.5 years with no issues.

I have only used Sintech adapters. Others in this thread have reported success with other adapters too.
Click to expand...

Just spotted this Sintech one

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sintech-Ad...=Sintech+ngff&qid=1555595988&s=gateway&sr=8-2
 
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mbosse said:
Let' will see how he answers to these questions. I think his precise wording was 'all of today's Aura Pro...' which is an important qualifier.

I posed a few additional ones as well. If it looks good, this might be the first OWC SSD in (many) years I am seriously interested in.

Magnus
Click to expand...
OWC Larry seems to be very convinced that the x2 is the perfect drive, and it seems that OWC has solved the hibernation issue by modifying their own firmware. If this seems to be the case then it might just be the best option to upgrade, assuming the drive is reliable. OWC also mentions that it has a lower power rating than the OEM SSD drives.
 
mbosse said:
Let' will see how he answers to these questions. I think his precise wording was 'all of today's Aura Pro...' which is an important qualifier.

I posed a few additional ones as well. If it looks good, this might be the first OWC SSD in (many) years I am seriously interested in.

Magnus
Click to expand...

Larry has now saying that hibernation is an issue but they are working on a driver. I wonder if this is even possible? Seems like it really comes down to proper EFI support.
 
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I would love a solution that doesn't drain the battery but it looks like all of the less expensive aftermarket solutions have battery issues. My current plan is to get a USB Flash drive that runs at SSD speeds and just use that for additional storage until there's a solution that works or I get an OEM drive. I do see OEM drives on Craigslist but they are quite a bit more than aftermarket drives.
 
jwar1976 said:
I can’t speak about the adapters as I have no experience with them. But having been a PC user since the 90’s, where Windows 10 is concerned, I did have trouble getting it running on Bootcamp on the regular MacBook Pro drive. What I found as a fix, was to get the latest image of Windows 10, from Microsoft and then activate like you normally would. Remember that Microsoft give so many updates, that it is quite possible that you haven’t got the latest release, which may have incompatibility with Bootcamp.
[doublepost=1555596114][/doublepost]

Just spotted this Sintech one

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sintech-Ad...=Sintech+ngff&qid=1555595988&s=gateway&sr=8-2
Click to expand...
That's the adapter I have in a 2017 MacBook Air with an HP ex900.
 
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Hello guys !
I bought a Crucial P1 1To to install in a Macbook pro 2014 (A1398). Everything has worked fine but I have a problem with hibernation.. It's very important for me because I'm used to travel with it and let it sleep for hours.

I have readen many pages in this thread but I'm a bit lost...

I bought a CH341A programmer, I tested it on a old motherboard with success. But I would like to know what should I do precisely on my macbook motherboard ? Can someone just explain in few steps please ?

I know I have to read and backup the bootrom, then ?

Thank you a lot !
 
jackqueenking said:
Go into settings and click on energy saver, click restore defaults. Then in terminal write "sudo pmset -a standby 0 hibernate mode 25" without quotations. What this does is it forces your mac into hibernate mode instead of going to sleep (Standby = 0) and this hibernate mode will write the contents of your session to the SSD and power off all components. Using mode 3 will keep the RAM powered on which will consume battery. Leaving standby = 1 tells the Mac that it should sleep for X minutes before going into hibernate, obviously with NVME being a higher powered drive the sleep state will consume more battery than when using the OEM SSD. The only downside of this is that it may take a couple of seconds longer to wake up from hibernate because you are using mode 25 but still a lot faster than a cold boot.
Click to expand...

Thanks! This really seemed to help. Left laptop on standby/sleep overnight after a full charge and it's still 100% this morning. It took approx. 3-4 seconds for the computer to wake up but that trade-off is well-worth the no battery drain with this big Patriot SSD!
 
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jackqueenking said:
For my 2014 model, i have hibernate autopoweroff and standby all set to 0 with less power consumption than standby set to 1, if I set hibernate to 3 I get the same results only it copies an image to the ssd which i can't use because of the hibernate issues. Standby set to 0 allows your PC to go directly into hibernate mode putting the SSD off completely or in a low power state instead of waiting standbydelay(s) time before going into hibernate.
.
.
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For 2015+ models as in your case, standby 0 with hibernate 25 is the best option, for the others if you're going to leave your mac sleeping for several hours just turn off the machine, otherwise use the 0, 0, 0 configuration, or 0, 0, 3 configuration.
Click to expand...

When you say 0, 0, 0, are you saying?:

hibernate = 0
autopoweroff = 0
standby = 0
 
I can see and installing the latest OS now, not sure why it cannot work with internet recovery just now.
 
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Just wanted to share. I successfully installed Intel 660p 2tb nvme to my MacBook pro 13 mid 2014. I used Kalea-informatique adapter from amazon.de. Everything works as it should.
 
jackqueenking said:
His value for standby was also set to 0, that means on every sleep he would go directly into hibernate mode 25. If the value was set to 1 he would have to wait standbydelayhigh or standbydelaylow minutes during regular sleep before going into hibernate mode 25. Unless that's not how standby works? I had the same issue of restarting during sleep because I was testing the 151 bootrom but then I reset to default values and it worked.
Click to expand...

I believe I was being snarky with you before but now see that standby is it’s own mode like I believe you were saying before opposed to just a timer with standbydelay to go into the set hibernatemode.

You can see that after the standby delay it just doesn’t go into the hibernatemode because with 25 set you don’t see the loading bars unless you actually disable standby.

Apple notes that that standby is a lower power mode that writes to the disk but is different in my testing with lack of the losing bars.

I believe that hibernatemode only comes into play if you disable standby then it falls back in legacy hibernatemodes like Macs before stanby mode was introduced.

Standby will eventually go to hibernatemode 25 but not after the delay, only if the battery completely loses all charge.

Also thanks to @dobrink for determing this. I now see that most of the articles I was going off online were incorrect. It reminds me to never be too confident without doing my own testing, my apologies.

Having said all this Macs without the NVME DXE driver in firmware only support sleep and not standby or hibernate which are two different modes.
 
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themiller12 said:
Hello guys !
I bought a Crucial P1 1To to install in a Macbook pro 2014 (A1398). Everything has worked fine but I have a problem with hibernation.. It's very important for me because I'm used to travel with it and let it sleep for hours.

I have readen many pages in this thread but I'm a bit lost...

I bought a CH341A programmer, I tested it on a old motherboard with success. But I would like to know what should I do precisely on my macbook motherboard ? Can someone just explain in few steps please ?

I know I have to read and backup the bootrom, then ?

Thank you a lot !
Click to expand...


I just did mine. you need 2 computers (both mac's is easiest!)

I have a mid 2014.

Unplug the battery.
Unplug power.
Connect your SOIC 8 pin clip to the chip MX25L6406E (to the right of the battery connector)
Pin 1 goes to the dot.

plug the other end into your CH341 adaptor
note that pin 1 goes the other way in the CH341a adaptor.
(see the red pin in the middle, as its a 25xx chip)

upload_2019-4-20_18-55-19.jpeg


use flashrom and dump the rom.
use homebrew (brew.sh) and
brew install flashrom ..

may need to fiddle with the soic adaptor positioning.

My chip was a MX25L6406E, so i dumped repeatedly for safety
eg

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r rom.bin -c "MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E"
flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r rom1.bin -c "MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E"
flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r rom2.bin -c "MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E"

suggest read / dump 2-3 times, then diff between the dumps so you can confirm a good dump.

then
diff rom.bin rom1.bin
diff rom2.bin rom.bin
or md5 *.bin

should be identical, if not, then DON'T PROCEED, check cabling and retry till you have good dumps..

Next get the uefitool from here - https://github.com/LongSoft/UEFITool/releases/

You'll need to use the non Axx version, eg 0.26.0 (currently), as that allows writing.

Grab the 2015 efi from here - https://github.com/gdbinit/firmware_vault/tree/master/EFI/MacBookPro
( MBP114_0183_B00.fd )

use UEFItool and open the fd version, and open a new window and open your dump

in the fd file, search for guid 5111 (APPLE F to search), select it in the search results to open the guid
then right click the guid and export to ffs file.

in the dump search for guid 5111 (apple f to search), select it in the search to open the guid
right click the guid and import the ffs file.

save your rom as modified.rom

reflash with flashrom.
eg flashrom -p ch341a_spi -w modified.rom -c "MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E"

unplug, and test.

If you go wrong, you can always revert the saved rom file and try again.

The instructions at the beginning have more details.

Good luck!
 
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macgeek01 said:
I believe I was being snarky with you before but now see that standby is it’s own mode like I believe you were saying before opposed to just a timer with standbydelay to go into the set hibernatemode.
Click to expand...

I apologize if this has already been covered, but I need a quick refresher on this topic.

Is there a way to set the parameters such that, closing the lid will cause the Mac to go into regular standby for x minutes (eg. 20 minutes) with rapid wakeup when opening the lid, and after that period of user inactivity, then go into the hibernate?

I don't mind the battery drain for short periods like 20 minutes. It's the battery drain over extended time periods that I really want to avoid.

(Early 2015 MBP here)

Thanks!!
 
Audit13 said:
That's the adapter I have in a 2017 MacBook Air with an HP ex900.
Click to expand...
HI
could you write what the battery life is in your configuration?
A few weeks ago I placed Adata sx8200 (not pro) on my Air 2017 (long sintech), and I was not satisfied with battery. Battery drain in normal usage (internet browsing, movies ...) was over 30% bigger (8h Adata, 11-12h on the original Apple SSD).
That is why I decided to do back to original apple ssd. But I whould like to have some more disk space...
Maybe I will try a different configuration: ex900, sabrent ?? Any advice to have bigger disk capasity and
similar battery life??
 
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