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Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe
- Thread starter maxthackray
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Hello.
My English is very, very bad. I'm writing with the help of an Google Translate. I am sorry.
First of all, thank you all for your research. I read the topic from the beginning, it helped me with the choice of SSD. But with a choice, I think I was wrong.
I have a MacBook Air 13.3 "in 2015, SSD is an OCZ RD400.
1. The problems started during the installation of SSD in Mac. The adapter and OCZ SSD are slightly larger than the Apple SSD.
2. The High Sierra installer did not want to mark the disk. Divided with the help of Sierra Disk Utility.
3. When the system reboots, the disk is not detected. Only with a cold start.
4. Sleep also does not work. Only hibernatemode 25.
Is there a problem with the adapter? Or in the OCZ SSD?
Thank you in advance for your answers.
My English is very, very bad. I'm writing with the help of an Google Translate. I am sorry.
First of all, thank you all for your research. I read the topic from the beginning, it helped me with the choice of SSD. But with a choice, I think I was wrong.
I have a MacBook Air 13.3 "in 2015, SSD is an OCZ RD400.
1. The problems started during the installation of SSD in Mac. The adapter and OCZ SSD are slightly larger than the Apple SSD.
2. The High Sierra installer did not want to mark the disk. Divided with the help of Sierra Disk Utility.
3. When the system reboots, the disk is not detected. Only with a cold start.
4. Sleep also does not work. Only hibernatemode 25.
Is there a problem with the adapter? Or in the OCZ SSD?
Thank you in advance for your answers.
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I think you mixed up OCZRD400 and OWC( other world computing). OCZ is NVMe so the issues are expected unless you do the work around discussed in this thread earlier. OWC should not have any issues as they are legit apple approved alternatives but expensive. So if you have RD400 the fastest drive on the market! it is not faulty do post the read and write speed here for people to comment. The problem is with Apple driver or the adapter.
Thank you.
Yes, I have OCZ.
NVRAM and SMC dropped - does not help. Insulating tape, too, pasted. It remains only to try the third-party bootloader.
The speed will be measured later, as now the disk is encrypted.
Done. Under Windows, the speed is higher. The highest indicators are PC.
And one more thing: the block size is set to 4K.
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hello,
i ordered two adapters from sintech and plan to try to upgrade my macbook pro 13' early 2015 and one of two mac mini 2014 that serve home ;p
question:
as far as it goes - nvme sometime have problems... and it consume lots of power. would it be a better option to get 850 evo (pci-e ahci) or any other (any recommendation?) sata based pci-e drive?
i do not care about performance much on pci-e drives (since all of them are fast enough for me) but about capacity i could get, power consumption and stability.
thank you.
i ordered two adapters from sintech and plan to try to upgrade my macbook pro 13' early 2015 and one of two mac mini 2014 that serve home ;p
question:
as far as it goes - nvme sometime have problems... and it consume lots of power. would it be a better option to get 850 evo (pci-e ahci) or any other (any recommendation?) sata based pci-e drive?
i do not care about performance much on pci-e drives (since all of them are fast enough for me) but about capacity i could get, power consumption and stability.
thank you.
NVMe is stable. Just don't let your computer hibernate and shut down instead of sleep. The performance gain is too huge to ignore and is so much cheaper than ACHI. AHCI SATA is like car versus NVMe Jet. Sintech's adapter is not a real true solution as I still got those bugs. Problem is with Apple's software/firmware lock down of PCI-E no hardware can fix it i think.
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but ... but ...
i think that i am okay with AHCI SATA drive as long as it is 'problem-less' and have lower power consumption.
speed does not matter much.
only thing i am worried about - there is just samsung 960 pro 2T drive... and no other way to get 2T of decent pci-e storage on macbook
i -need- macbook to perform all that hours from battery and NVME is probably gonna kill dat battery ;D
but ... but ...
i think that i am okay with AHCI SATA drive as long as it is 'problem-less' and have lower power consumption.
speed does not matter much.
only thing i am worried about - there is just samsung 960 pro 2T drive... and no other way to get 2T of decent pci-e storage on macbook
i -need- macbook to perform all that hours from battery and NVME is probably gonna kill dat battery ;D
NVMe drive you only loose about 1/5 of battery life I found. I think you might want to consider getting an external thunderbolt drive (then swap in the fastest NVMe) which can boot super fast like internal.
[doublepost=1510561297][/doublepost]Noticed something interesting. The Sintech adapter (newer version) seemed to half the speed of my drive but then allows you to reboot without problems. My XG3 released few month back in 2017 was achieving the same speed using the old adapter compared to OCZR400 now runs half the speed using the new adapter but can reboot. Any engineers here know why? or is my adapter faulty?
Oscarxvita would you be able to post detailed pictures on where and how you taped yours? I must have taped my drive all wrong and what did you do with the lid popping out by the new Sintech adapter did you force it back by screwing tight?
Interesting observation.
If you boot into Windows and reboot - the RD400 is visible in the EFI boot manager.
If you boot into macOS and reboot - the RD400 does not appear in the boot manager.
If you boot into Windows and reboot - the RD400 is visible in the EFI boot manager.
If you boot into macOS and reboot - the RD400 does not appear in the boot manager.
APPLE SSD SM2048L
Hi gilles_polysoft, a bit off-topic, but what are the benchmarks for such APPLE SSD SM2048L 2TB (sequential MB/s and random IOPS for read/write)? Could you share also a picture of the other side of the SSD? Thanks.
Hi gilles_polysoft, a bit off-topic, but what are the benchmarks for such APPLE SSD SM2048L 2TB (sequential MB/s and random IOPS for read/write)? Could you share also a picture of the other side of the SSD? Thanks.
Please, I know that this entire thread is very long but don't get confuse by the different norms here.
The subject has already been threaten, but as for M.2 SSDs :
- there are AHCI Sata M.2 SSDs (like Intel S5, Crucial MX300). They don't work in any 2013-2015 mac.
- there are AHCI PCIe M.2 SSDs (like Kingston HyperDrive Predator). They do work with sintech adaptor
- there are NVMe PCIe M.2 SSDs which support 4K blocs and other which only support 512B blocs..
only thing i am worried about - there is just samsung 960 pro 2T drive... and no other way to get 2T of decent pci-e storage on macbook
i -need- macbook to perform all that hours from battery and NVME is probably gonna kill dat battery ;D
No 2 TB M.2 PCIe AHCI SSD exist, to my knowledge.
As for 2TB NVMe SSDs, you have the choice between :
- Apple original SM2048L (which come in the iMac 2017), which is expensive but has no issue so far
- Samsung 960 Pro 2 TB, which works perfectly under BootCamp - Windows 10, but has, like other 512B formatted SSDs, some issues as of High Sierra 10.13.1. Time will tell if Apple corrects is IONVMeFamily kext one day...
[doublepost=1510582107][/doublepost]
It's quite in topic in fact...
Those SSD are Samsung Polaris NVMe, manufactured for Apple. I bought one in july and that's because it worked very well that I decided to give the 960 evo and Pro a try..
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thank you
could basically we could format that NVME drives with 4k offset and be done?
i can easily find NVME drive locally but other is kind of impossible to come by (in a high capacity)... 960 evo and 960 pro is easily available tho.
so if i get 960 evo or pro 1T and install with last sintech adapter in early 2015 mbp... would that mean that i could not update firmware of mac and there will reboot + sleep issues natively (unless i disable hibernate and stop rebooting?)?
how about long boot and need to hold alt key? is it applicable only for 2014 and earlier macbooks?
could basically we could format that NVME drives with 4k offset and be done?
i can easily find NVME drive locally but other is kind of impossible to come by (in a high capacity)... 960 evo and 960 pro is easily available tho.
so if i get 960 evo or pro 1T and install with last sintech adapter in early 2015 mbp... would that mean that i could not update firmware of mac and there will reboot + sleep issues natively (unless i disable hibernate and stop rebooting?)?
how about long boot and need to hold alt key? is it applicable only for 2014 and earlier macbooks?
macOS is supposed to work on 4K blocks natively. I never modded my 960 EVO, I'd would think if you don't perform any arguments in the terminal and do it straight from Disk Utility, the default format is 4K anyway?
AHCI parts are getting harder and harder to find since the industry turned its back on them and most everyone has gone to the NVMe protocol. Of course they will be the most stable as Apple still shipped an AHCI SSD even on the Early 2015 rMBP's.
If you get an adaptor and decide not to tape it, I would like to remind you of what the SSD slot looks like:
Shot is from the 13-inch 2015 rMBP, but it's the same on all rMBP's back to the original Late 2013 models.
So basically the SSD slot is covered by a big metal shield. Gee, I wonder why?
Sintech / CableCC / all the rest probably don't want the added cost of sticking on a shield, especially when there's Kapton tape or other RF blocking nonconductive solutions like the silicate compound mentioned earlier.
On the 2016 Function Key 13-inch rMBP, the SSD is still removeable but it's a proprietary slot format AND it's literally encased in its own special metal shielding. On TouchBar 2016 rMBPs and all 2017 rMBPs, the SSD is part of the logic board so good luck trying to upgrade those.
AHCI parts are getting harder and harder to find since the industry turned its back on them and most everyone has gone to the NVMe protocol. Of course they will be the most stable as Apple still shipped an AHCI SSD even on the Early 2015 rMBP's.
If you get an adaptor and decide not to tape it, I would like to remind you of what the SSD slot looks like:
Shot is from the 13-inch 2015 rMBP, but it's the same on all rMBP's back to the original Late 2013 models.
So basically the SSD slot is covered by a big metal shield. Gee, I wonder why?
Sintech / CableCC / all the rest probably don't want the added cost of sticking on a shield, especially when there's Kapton tape or other RF blocking nonconductive solutions like the silicate compound mentioned earlier.
On the 2016 Function Key 13-inch rMBP, the SSD is still removeable but it's a proprietary slot format AND it's literally encased in its own special metal shielding. On TouchBar 2016 rMBPs and all 2017 rMBPs, the SSD is part of the logic board so good luck trying to upgrade those.
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So where do you think the shield or tape should go? entire Ssd adapter plus the metal?
Many thanks, gilles_polysoft. I meant the other side of the APPLE SSD SM2048L 2TB blade stick. Could you please share that as well? On the other hand, do you have also the benchmarking of Samsung 960 EVO and Samsung 960 Pro for comparison with APPLE SSD SM2048L 2TB? Thanks again.
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It's right in giles's post earlier quoted:
Upgrading 2013/2014 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe
Specifically, look at 3479_2.. tape should cover the top plastic and cover the one level of exposed pins, mine is covered in Kapton in the pictured manner and while I get the 30 second boot I never have problems rebooting or doing non-hibernation sleep.
Next time my rMBP is open I'll try to take a pic of my Sintech/960..
If the tape touches the pins would the glue on tape melt or make it sticky? Should i worry?
No, because Kapton tape and its adhesive are rated to work at ridiculously low / high temperatures and is often used in satellites where the temperature range inside the metal shell can vary tremendously. It's also non conductive which makes it the perfect tape to use inside electric equipment. Unless the inside of your laptop has worse conditions than Earth orbit, it'll be fine.
Typical description of Kapton tape:
This single sided tape consists of a Kapton® polyimide film with a silicone adhesive, compatible with a wide temperature range. Kapton® tape with silicone adhesive exhibits better adhesion to "difficult surfaces", but at the same time the high adhesive film bond greatly reduces adhesive transfer to leave a cleaner surface. This tape can be used in harsh environments and has a specified temperature use range is -75° to +260°C (-100° to +500°F). However, successful applications have been reported in the temperature range of -196° to +400°C (-321° to +752°F). Kapton® film thickness is 1.0mil (0.03mm), total tape thickness with adhesive is 2.7 mil (0.07mm). Standard 76mm (3") plastic core.
Hi I just spent about 1.5 hours reading this whole forum, and I have a rMBP 13" Early 2015 (A1502) running MacOS High Sierra, and I was just wondering, I ordered an SM951 (NVMe) 512gb SSD and a Sintech adapter, what potential issues will I run into? Also I plan on putting Kapton tape on the adapter.
Also thank you @gilles_polysoft you're posts are incredibly helpful I really appreciate it!
Also thank you @gilles_polysoft you're posts are incredibly helpful I really appreciate it!
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The SSD won't be recognized until you flash your rMBP to BootROM version MBP121.0171.B00.
That can only be done with either an OEM Apple SSD, or an AHCI SSD.
If the machine was already flashed, then you just have to do the Disk Utility X 2 trick; run it once while booted from the USB High Sierra installer, quit, run it again and it should be visible.
Some people report faster booting if you issue the Terminal command to keep the SSD in JHFS+ format.
That can only be done with either an OEM Apple SSD, or an AHCI SSD.
If the machine was already flashed, then you just have to do the Disk Utility X 2 trick; run it once while booted from the USB High Sierra installer, quit, run it again and it should be visible.
Some people report faster booting if you issue the Terminal command to keep the SSD in JHFS+ format.
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no problem at all. I'm still using this SSD since 2 weeks ago. see my post https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/page-15#post-25330961
note that i'm not applying any kapton tape on my "Chenyang" adapter. plug, format, and boom work like charm
. at first i also planned to apply kapton tape on my adapter, but i didn't. Because until this weeks i don't have any issue at all, so i don't have to do that anymore.
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Do you have issues with sleep, hibernation or something else?
Or can you state there is no difference to the original apple SSD?
Martin
Or can you state there is no difference to the original apple SSD?
Martin
Thank you Earl,
Awesome, are you using the new APFS filing system? Also, could you give an in depth tutorial on how to install MacOS High Sierra onto the SM951 NVME drive with terminal because I don't wanna mess it up, and we also have the same model rMBP and SSD model (and capacity)? And lastly, do you notice any differences even slight differences between the SM951 NVME and the OEM SSD? Thank You for all your help @ghifar
no problem at all. I'm still using this SSD since 2 weeks ago. see my post https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/page-15#post-25330961
note that i'm not applying any kapton tape on my "Chenyang" adapter. plug, format, and boom work like charm
Awesome, are you using the new APFS filing system? Also, could you give an in depth tutorial on how to install MacOS High Sierra onto the SM951 NVME drive with terminal because I don't wanna mess it up, and we also have the same model rMBP and SSD model (and capacity)? And lastly, do you notice any differences even slight differences between the SM951 NVME and the OEM SSD? Thank You for all your help @ghifar
Hi Gilles,
thank you so much for your posts, you saved me from Apple's original expensive parts...
I can't understand your "Yes it does"... can my MBPr late 2013 with a 960EVO support Yosemite?
Because a bunch of problems for software and hardware compatibility in my work.
I installed it with the CHENYANG adapter, but now I'm waiting for the Sintech one, and I'm stuck in HS.