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

[jwar1976]

Well all the bits arrived today, ended up getting myself a 1tb Intel 660p for £106 including next day delivery. Now doing the dreaded time machine backup to a 128gb usb flash drive. The backup is just over 50gb, so will take sometime. Looking forward to actually doing this tho as have only opened up PC’s for repairs and upgrades since the late 90’s, so this is a completely new step for me.

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

there is a difference between MyDigitalSSD SBX vs BPX?
interesting about power consumption
i am trying to find the best one in this question
already have tried sx8200pro in my opinion -~30% worst battery so i sold it
about speed i am okay even with stock 128 in 2014mbp 13'

If your primary concern is battery life, why not buy a 1tb SSBUX oem apple drive off ebay and call it a day. There are plenty of them out there

Here is one example

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/264315528433
[doublepost=1557491230][/doublepost]

Well all the bits arrived today, ended up getting myself a 1tb Intel 660p for £106 including next day delivery. Now doing the dreaded time machine backup to a 128gb usb flash drive. The backup is just over 50gb, so will take sometime. Looking forward to actually doing this tho as have only opened up PC’s for repairs and upgrades since the late 90’s, so this is a completely new step for me.

The rMBP pro opening is super easy.

Plenty of guides out there.

It takes me 5 mins to do a replacement now (did it about 10x one night)

Just watch one video and you will be fine. This is a piece of cake

Just be gentle with the battery cable. Use a spudger or just do it slowly

Watch the videos first. Youtube is your friend

 

[Audit13]

I agree that it's super easy to do the swap. I recommend:

1. using high-quality screwdrivers to prevent stripping the screws;
2. keeping all metal objects away from the MacBook while the battery is connected and bottom cover removed; and
3. disconnecting the battery cable as soon as the bottom cover has been removed.

 

[liberace]

looks like phison e8 based with toshiba nand is the best options for battery life
so did somebody compare this one?
Corsair MP300 | Inland Pro. NVMe | Kingston A1000 | MDSSD SBX | Patriot Scorch
i mean in the 1st post we have Kingston A1000 and MDSSD SBX
Did somebody tried others and maybe measure battery consumption?

 

[jwar1976]

If your primary concern is battery life, why not buy a 1tb SSBUX oem apple drive off ebay and call it a day. There are plenty of them out there

Here is one example

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/264315528433
[doublepost=1557491230][/doublepost]

The rMBP pro opening is super easy.

Plenty of guides out there.

It takes me 5 mins to do a replacement now (did it about 10x one night)

Just watch one video and you will be fine. This is a piece of cake

Just be gentle with the battery cable. Use a spudger or just do it slowly

Watch the videos first. Youtube is your friend

I agree that it's super easy to do the swap. I recommend:

1. using high-quality screwdrivers to prevent stripping the screws;
2. keeping all metal objects away from the MacBook while the battery is connected and bottom cover removed; and
3. disconnecting the battery cable as soon as the bottom cover has been removed.

Thanks for the advice both of you, have looked at videos at it looks very easy to do.

 

[liberace]

This is what I bought:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V9QNAC4/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01I1EU9LG/

Somewhere around page 58 they mentioned those two items [not the specific brand]. I'll let you know if I can reliably read my chip by next week, it comes this weekend but my new SSD doesn't come until Monday so I'm not going to bother opening it.

They mentioned nothing about rigging a 3.3v battery to the reader on that page to get it to work, nor did they mention any resistors being needed.

Honestly though, not trying to be mean, but looking at your question makes me guess you don't have the knowledge to do the research and probably shouldn't try flashing anything on your devices without learning some basics about electronic circuits as well as electronic troubleshooting.

My goal for this is to [attempt] to create a software version of the mod where mid-2014 MBP owners can just flash the new image by running an application [not without its risks], but it spares doing what the person who wrote up the guide on this.

EDIT: I was very wrong in the page of this thread, here is the post with the quick outline of what to do:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...sd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/page-162#post-27299768

too matte, gonna wait for your info
i gonna improve my knowledge till you inform us by the way

If your primary concern is battery life, why not buy a 1tb SSBUX oem apple drive off ebay and call it a day. There are plenty of them out there

Here is one example

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/264315528433

i dont think that is good idea to invest ~350$ to a used lowest mbp13' mid 2014(that i get ~570$ in my country) coz of his actuality in nowadays (dual core haswell in 2019 is a "little bit" outdated and non upgradeable 8gb of ram that is extremely not enough)
comparing to idea to invest ~120$ to get out from prison of 128gb and continue come near his death
just my opinion
okay if we speak about 15 inch mbp that could continue a bit more, but anyway it goes around half of its cost,
for this money (300$ for used apple ssd) i guess you can buy more newest mbp with a bit bigger storage and be more happy

 

[RaptorSausage]

Anyone else have issues doing a Time Machine restore to the new SSD, as in failing halfway through? I've made multiple full backups to different external disks (both SSD and HD) and a network samba share, and all of them will fail about halfway through.

I was able to do a fresh macOS install and then restore settings and documents from my Time Machine backups, but it looks like that method is missing everything brew related as well as a change that I made to remove a language file that was preventing Perl from compiling, possibly other things.

For reference, I have a mid-2015 Macbook Pro (MacBookPro11,5) with Mojave, and purchased the Sabrent Rocket 2TB along with the short Sintech adapter.

 

[ScreenSavers]

I purchased a 1TB Intel NVME SSD from Hat SSD on eBay for my 2015 rMBP. Read and write speeds are crazy faster. Almost double. The SSD came with macOS High Sierra already on it but it was super slow. I erased it and installed a fresh copy of Mojave and it’s unbelievable now.

 

[jwar1976]

Houston we have a problem !. I managed to get the intel 660p drive into the MBP, using the short black Sintech adapter, but nothing happens when I try to boot whilst holding down the option key. I have tried the cmd+r and eventually it gets to the option screen, but as soon as I click either restore from time machine or disk utils, it sees the usb drive but not the new SSD.

Could someone please tell me where I am going wrong ?

Many thanks

 

[halexber]

Anyone else have issues doing a Time Machine restore to the new SSD, as in failing halfway through? I've made multiple full backups to different external disks (both SSD and HD) and a network samba share, and all of them will fail about halfway through.

I was able to do a fresh macOS install and then restore settings and documents from my Time Machine backups, but it looks like that method is missing everything brew related as well as a change that I made to remove a language file that was preventing Perl from compiling, possibly other things.

For reference, I have a mid-2015 Macbook Pro (MacBookPro11,5) with Mojave, and purchased the Sabrent Rocket 2TB along with the short Sintech adapter.

I bought a Sabrent 512 and have the same problem. My solution was to make a copy of all docs (photos, music, all of them) . Fresh install Mojave and all applications. Some of the members mention something related to the sectors these drives support, but as you realize I am a newbie on this I am just telling my case. Sure out there will be someone with the appropriate knowledge willing to help you.

 

[RaptorSausage]

Houston we have a problem !. I managed to get the intel 660p drive into the MBP, using the short black Sintech adapter, but nothing happens when I try to boot whilst holding down the option key. I have tried the cmd+r and eventually it gets to the option screen, but as soon as I click either restore from time machine or disk utils, it sees the usb drive but not the new SSD.

Could someone please tell me where I am going wrong ?

Many thanks

Clear the PRAM and/or the SMC. I had to fuss with it for a while for my new SSD to show up as well, and I believe one of these is what made it show up.

EDIT: I guess I should also mention that you'll also need to format/initialize it with the Disk Utility after it shows up before you can do an install/restore to it.

 

[rando_onDaInterweb]

I am looking forward to upgrade my machine rMBP Late 2013 from 128GB to 500GB . I was thinking about Samsung Evo 970 500GB.

But after reading the whole thread it seems like there are still problems with deep sleep, battery drain. Also you have to jump through hoops to get it working (bootrom)

Is it worth the hassle?

 

[snowin]

Short and long should be same
one exception: IF you plan on getting a double sided SSD, you may choose the short one
Also, you will have to make sure your short adapter lines up properly and make sure you have good/tight connections between SSD and adapter and between adapter and apple's version of an M2 slot

Thanks for the info djang. Are the double-sided ones the one's that are actually 2 drives merged together to view as one? I was reading somewhere about that with the OTW ones, if you plan to bootcamp anything over 512GB is actually two drives conjoined somehow and that creating a bootcamp partition won't work properly.

 

[subliming]

My experience with the HP EX920 has not been good primarily due to the multiple kernel panics daily. They generally happen without warning.

Considering the tendency to crash on top of the reduced battery life I would not recommend the EX920 for upgrading any Mac.

I have been sending the crash reports to apple so who knows maybe a future update will rectify this.

I think I will go back to the apple SSD for the time being...

Are any of the other SSDs out there (like the intel 660P, Toshiba XG3/5, etc) considered less likely to cause kernel panics?

 

[1146331]

For all wanting to do the rom modification, I recommend reading this to learn a little about the Mac boot process. I found this in another threat on MR:

https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike_31c3

While the number of people that would need to do the mod is extremely small, it would be nice to have a Thunderbolt device that can flash the boot rom rather than hooking up an SPI programmer.

 

[Audit13]

My experience with the HP EX920 has not been good primarily due to the multiple kernel panics daily. They generally happen without warning.

Considering the tendency to crash on top of the reduced battery life I would not recommend the EX920 for upgrading any Mac.

I have been sending the crash reports to apple so who knows maybe a future update will rectify this.

I think I will go back to the apple SSD for the time being...

Are any of the other SSDs out there (like the intel 660P, Toshiba XG3/5, etc) considered less likely to cause kernel panics?

What is the model number? Which os is being used?

 

[jwar1976]

Clear the PRAM and/or the SMC. I had to fuss with it for a while for my new SSD to show up as well, and I believe one of these is what made it show up.

EDIT: I guess I should also mention that you'll also need to format/initialize it with the Disk Utility after it shows up before you can do an install/restore to it.

Thank you for that information I will look into doing that. Am I right in thinking that non Apple approved drives won’t show up from internet recovery and that as I created time machine and saved it directly to the flash drive, it won’t boot as it hasn’t got the boot files, ie super duper etc, Could it be that because it isn’t acknowledging the usb to boot from due to the missing files ?

 

[subliming]

What is the model number? Which os is being used?

2015 13" Macbook Pro A1502, Mojave

I updated Mojave to get the most current bootrom before installing the EX920

 

[Audit13]

2015 13" Macbook Pro A1502, Mojave

I updated Mojave to get the most current bootrom before installing the EX920

I'm using the HP ex900 in a 2017 Air and have not experienced any panics.

Perhaps try a different brand?

 

[RaptorSausage]

Thank you for that information I will look into doing that. Am I right in thinking that non Apple approved drives won’t show up from internet recovery and that as I created time machine and saved it directly to the flash drive, it won’t boot as it hasn’t got the boot files, ie super duper etc, Could it be that because it isn’t acknowledging the usb to boot from due to the missing files ?

As long as the computer detects the SSD, it should show up in the Destination list for Internet Recovery. If it doesn't, then make sure that it's Initialized/Formatted first in Disk Utility.

 

[jwar1976]

As long as the computer detects the SSD, it should show up in the Destination list for Internet Recovery. If it doesn't, then make sure that it's Initialized/Formatted first in Disk Utility.

That is the problem the only thing that is showing in disk utility is the usb drive and not the new ssd, cannot even see an option to initialise it.

 

[RaptorSausage]

That is the problem the only thing that is showing in disk utility is the usb drive and not the new ssd, cannot even see an option to initialise it.

And this is after clearing the PRAM and SMC? Have you tried re-seating the SSD in the adapter and the adapter in the slot?

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

looks like phison e8 based with toshiba nand is the best options for battery life
so did somebody compare this one?
Corsair MP300 | Inland Pro. NVMe | Kingston A1000 | MDSSD SBX | Patriot Scorch
i mean in the 1st post we have Kingston A1000 and MDSSD SBX
Did somebody tried others and maybe measure battery consumption?

Anyone else have issues doing a Time Machine restore to the new SSD, as in failing halfway through? I've made multiple full backups to different external disks (both SSD and HD) and a network samba share, and all of them will fail about halfway through.

I was able to do a fresh macOS install and then restore settings and documents from my Time Machine backups, but it looks like that method is missing everything brew related as well as a change that I made to remove a language file that was preventing Perl from compiling, possibly other things.

For reference, I have a mid-2015 Macbook Pro (MacBookPro11,5) with Mojave, and purchased the Sabrent Rocket 2TB along with the short Sintech adapter.

I have that exact setup ( I had!) except I used the LONG adapter

Worked no problem at all (look at my post history).

It would be very difficult to pinpoint where lies the problem.

You could clone your original SSD via Macrium? Carbon Copy and then try booting from the installed (cloned to) SSD??

 

[jwar1976]

And this is after clearing the PRAM and SMC? Have you tried re-seating the SSD in the adapter and the adapter in the slot?

Yes have done all of that, am just hoping it is something that I have missed and not faulty hardware. Another thing is that the time machine backup on the usb flash drive was just of folders and not an image file.

I’m guessing the other thing I could try is to buy an usb 3 enclosure for the Nvme drive so I can at least see if the Mac detects the drive, so can see if the Nvme is faulty or not.

 

[Quasitinker]

Using 2TB HP EX 950 and the short Sintech adapter, I've been getting random kernel panics and restarts, usually one every couple of days, but sometimes 2 or 3 in a single day. I've reinstalled the system software and reset both the NVRAM and the SMC to no avail. I see a couple of others have had trouble with the EX920.

My old SSD died while running System 10.14.1, so perhaps the ROM's are to blame? Or could there be a slight problem with the seating of the SSD or the tape over the connecting end of the adapter?

Computer: Early 2015 Macbook pro, 13", 2.7 MHz, 8GB RAM.
System: Now running 10.14.4, but last had its ROM's upgraded under 10.14.1
ROM: 180.0.0.0.0 (According to apple menu system report)
EFI: MBP121.88Z.0178.B00.1809171422
Adapter: short Sintech, ordered from Amazon in march this year.
SSD: 2TB HP EX950

The overwhelming majority of kernel panics produce a report like this:

*** Panic Report ***

panic(cpu 1 caller 0xffffff801eebbdcf): initproc exited -- exit reason namespace 2 subcode 0xa description: none


Thread 2 crashed


RAX: 0x00007fc7700d4740, RBX: 0x0000000000000000, RCX: 0x0000000101771720, RDX: 0x0000000000128efc

RSP: 0x0000700001586c30, RBP: 0x0000700001586c40, RSI: 0x0000000000000008, RDI: 0x0000700001586c18

R8: 0x0000000000596b1f, R9: 0x0000000000000040, R10: 0x0000000000000028, R11: 0x0000000000000206

R12: 0x00007fc76e4b3928, R13: 0x00007fc76e4b3928, R14: 0x0000000000007703, R15: 0x00007fc76e4b3964

RFL: 0x0000000000010202, RIP: 0x00000001017589b5, CS: 0x000000000000002b, SS: 0x0000000000000023


Thread 0: 0xffffff80328ddbf0

0x00007fff7975c126

0x00007fff795e5ede

0x0000000000000000


Thread 1: 0xffffff803896d540

0x00007fff7977729e

0x00007fff795d8de6

0x00007fff795e7f42

0x00007fff795dc792

0x00007fff795dd396

0x00007fff795e56ed

0x00007fff79810611

0x00007fff798103fd

0x0000000000000000


Thread 2: 0xffffff8037c2d540

0x00000001017589b5

0x0000000101758980

0x000000010173094f

0x0000000101730a7b

0x0000000101759b99

0x00007fff79864b43

0x000000010175a3b2

0x000000010175a242

0x00007fff795d66dd

0x00007fff795eb0d6

0x00007fff795dc792

0x00007fff795ebc19

0x00007fff795dc792

0x00007fff795dd396

0x00007fff795e56ed

0x00007fff79810611

0x00007fff798103fd

0x8000120000000000


Thread 3: 0xffffff8037c27510

0x0000000000000000


Thread 4: 0xffffff8037c2b6e0

0x0000000000000000



Mac OS version:

18E227


Kernel version:

Darwin Kernel Version 18.5.0: Mon Mar 11 20:40:32 PDT 2019; root:xnu-4903.251.3~3/RELEASE_X86_64

Kernel UUID: 4170BF94-38B6-364F-A1B0-2F7C2C30F9A9

System model name: MacBookPro12,1 (Mac-E43C1C25D4880AD6)


EOF

Model: MacBookPro12,1, BootROM 180.0.0.0.0, 2 processors, Intel Core i5, 2.7 GHz, 8 GB, SMC 2.28f7

Graphics: kHW_IntelIris6100Item, Intel Iris Graphics 6100, spdisplays_builtin

Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 4 GB, DDR3, 1867 MHz, 0x02FE, 0x4544464132333241324D412D4A442D460000

Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 4 GB, DDR3, 1867 MHz, 0x02FE, 0x4544464132333241324D412D4A442D460000

AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x133), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.77.61.2 AirPortDriverBrcmNIC-1305.8)

Bluetooth: Version 6.0.11f4, 3 services, 27 devices, 1 incoming serial ports

Network Service: Wi-Fi, AirPort, en0

USB Device: USB 3.0 Bus

USB Device: Internal Memory Card Reader

USB Device: Shadow

USB Device: USB3.0 Hub

USB Device: Expansion Desk

USB Device: USB3.0 Hub

USB Device: Backup+ Desk

USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller

USB Device: USB2.0 Hub

USB Device: USB2.0 Hub

Thunderbolt Bus: MacBook Pro, Apple Inc., 27.1