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

[madmaxmedia]

Very similar install and outcome, only I used the Sintech and the Silicon Power and hoped for the best

My NVME drive had a full length sticker over the chips and I couldn't see how any metal could contact the case so have left it as is.

My hibernation is set to 3 ... is that a problem ?

The first post describes the hibernation problem with 2013-4 models, so I set the hibernate mode to 0 which means regular sleep mode (RAM stays powered.) Actually, in reading the following link, mode 3 (safe sleep) keeps the RAM powered as well, but takes the extra step of writing RAM contents to disk as a safeguard. So in this mode you should be fine AFAIK:
https://www.lifewire.com/change-mac-sleep-settings-2260804

 

[teffers]

The first post describes the hibernation problem with 2013-4 models, so I set the hibernate mode to 0 which means regular sleep mode (RAM stays powered.) Actually, in reading the following link, mode 3 (safe sleep) keeps the RAM powered as well, but takes the extra step of writing RAM contents to disk as a safeguard. So in this mode you should be fine AFAIK:
https://www.lifewire.com/change-mac-sleep-settings-2260804

Thanks for that. I appreciate the info. I didn't have any issues with sleep last night, had no noticeable drop for 8 hours so I'm really happy so far.

 

[bluray93]

Hey everybody,
I just bought a used MBA 2013 with 128gb ssd and while looking for ssd upgrade options I came across this forum. From what I understand there is no way to get hibernation work with sintech adapter plus nvme ssd. My question is: is there a valid (fast) non nvme option? (I've seen someone mention Hyperx predator but I can't find it anywhere) I've seen that the 480gb OWC Aura N have an interesting price, does this last one actually work witch hibernation? (I've seen someone say yes while others say no about the Aura Pro, is this the same?)

Thanks in advice to everybody

 

[tulsidasji]

Updated my Mid-2014 15" MacBook Pro Retina 256GB -> 1TB with the Sabrent Rocket that was on sale for $109. Super simple steps and works very well. Thanks y'all for the comprehensive guide!

 

[Khaleal]

Updated my Mid-2014 15" MacBook Pro Retina 256GB -> 1TB with the Sabrent Rocket that was on sale for $109. Super simple steps and works very well. Thanks y'all for the comprehensive guide!

Was your battery life affected? any sleep issues?

 

[tulsidasji]

Was your battery life affected? any sleep issues?

I have been using my MacBook at home primarily on my desk and it stays lid closed, connected to displays and on the charger. However I have not noticed any sleep issues. I will test the battery and report back

 

[Audit13]

Hey everybody,
I just bought a used MBA 2013 with 128gb ssd and while looking for ssd upgrade options I came across this forum. From what I understand there is no way to get hibernation work with sintech adapter plus nvme ssd. My question is: is there a valid (fast) non nvme option? (I've seen someone mention Hyperx predator but I can't find it anywhere) I've seen that the 480gb OWC Aura N have an interesting price, does this last one actually work witch hibernation? (I've seen someone say yes while others say no about the Aura Pro, is this the same?)

Thanks in advice to everybody

All third party solutions will have hibernation problems.

I have not seen any reports of the OWC drive working with hibernation mode 25.

Does anyone know why the kernel panics happen with drives connected to Sintech adapters? What troubleshooting steps are required to find the root cause?

Panics can happen for reasons not related to the drive and/or adapter.

When a panic occurs, it's best to review the log to see what caused the panic.

 

[avdo]

Hello everybody. First off, thanks for everybody’s contributions to this thread. I am a little overwhelmed trying to pick which NVME to get and would really appreciate some suggestions based off my system and my requirements/priorities.

I am looking to upgrade my 2015 15" MBP with these specs:

• MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)
  
• 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
  
• 16GB Ram
• AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2 GB
• Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB
• Current Drive - 500GB SSD

My most important requirements:

• Stability - I use my MBP to DJ/perform with so I absolutely cannot be having random kernel panics. I need a drive that is consistently rock solid.
• 1TB or 2TB capacity
• Low Heat - I understand I will see an increase in temps with an upgraded drive, but I would prefer it to not run too hot.

Less important/nice-to-have features:

• Fast R/W speed - I will be happy as long as it performs as good as or better than the OEM Apple SSD. The increased capacity is what I really need.
• Minimal Battery Drain - I can live with a reduced battery life. It’s plugged in for the most part.

So with that info about my situation, what would you guys recommend for a stable NVME for my system? I'm willing to pay more if that's what it takes to get rock-solid stability. Thanks!

I am using a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO in my MBP 11,5.

I run Ableton & Push 2 live with heavy CPU processing on multiple soft synths and I'm connected via Thunderbolt 2 to external audio interface as well.

ZERO Kernel Panics over the last 7 months. Never a problem waking from hibernation either.

Hope this helps

 

[liberace]

Does anyone know why the kernel panics happen with drives connected to Sintech adapters? What troubleshooting steps are required to find the root cause?

Agree with Audit13, panics can be occurred by many reasons, even could happen with stock drive btw look in log to understand it is related to ssd or not, than we can dig around Sintech adapter and/or specific ssd or in my guessing its mostly connected with settings (all 3 mods supposed to be 0)
Some time before i was using laptop with only hibernation 0 and everything works well even sleep with open lid but when I close it every time I gets kernel panic when open it after I set all modes to 0 and problem gone for example

 

[teffers]

Just posting my results:

A1502 Macbook Pro 13" Early 2015 - Silicon Power 512 GB / Sintech short adapter:

No sleep issues (3) and can't really notice any battery hit.



Is there any way to check the SSD temperature ? It's disappeared from HWMonitor now the Apple SSD has been removed.

 

[spukhafte Fernwirkung]

I recently experienced very similar kernel panics after my SSD upgrade:
2015 rMBP 13"
Short black Sintech adapter from Amazon
ADATA SX8200 Pro 1TB
Mojave 10.14.4 (before and after SSD upgrade)
No modification of hibernate/sleep settings.
No sleep/wake/hibernate issues, but there is 2-3% battery drain per hour while sleeping.

I have found several ways to generate panics similar to above - "nvme: "Fatal error occurred....IONVMeFamily...etc." Sounds very similar to what is discussed here, occurring with both Apple and 3rd party NVME drives:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250026626

All panics would occur 3-4 minutes after starting one of the below triggering processes, reproducibly.

I started with a clean install (booting from an external USB drive with Mojave installer).
Install went fine, but migration assistant crashed from these kernel panics every time I tried to bring in data from my Time Machine backup.
Finally I had to boot into recovery mode and 'restore from Time Machine backup', which worked without issues.
If it is relevant, the Time Machine backup disk was not encrypted and was not APFS. The MBP SSDs were APFS before and after the SSD upgrade. FileVault was off after the upgrade (unsure about before).

I next experienced the panics when trying to import my Apple Mail and Photos libraries, one at a time, during their automatic setup process.
After several crashes the imports were successful. The apps worked fine afterwards.
This seems to be related to something deeper than just transferring a lot of data. I could copy my 5 GB iPhoto library around the file system 10 times in a row back-to-back without any panics.

Finally, I noticed the issue similar to yours where there was a kernel panic several minutes after waking from sleep.
This turned out to be due to Dropbox trying to synchronize files.
When syncing was disabled, the panics stopped.
Reinstalling Mojave from internet recovery did not fix the problem.
Creating a new User and trying to sync Dropbox to this "clean" location did not fix the problem.
Completely uninstalling Dropbox and then reinstalling finally fixed the problem
This made the kernel panics stop, and proper Dropbox Syncing resumed.

I got here by reading some related discussion in Dropbox help forums and then followed their uninstall instructions below:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Ins...Dropbox-Issues-with-Mac-OS-Mojave/td-p/304593

https://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/uninstall-dropbox

Dropbox CPU usage also decreased dramatically after reinstalling.

Things appear to be running smoothly now.
I hope that this information is helpful to someone.
Anybody have any idea why I have been running into these issues?

Here is an update on the issues I experienced with kernel panics and battery drain during sleep with my system (2015 rMBP 13"/Short black Sintech adapter/ADATA SX8200 Pro 1TB/Mojave 10.14.4).

As I mentioned, reinstalling Dropbox got the machine to a usable state, but eventually the NVME kernel panics returned, causing the computer to restart twice a day. Fresh installs of MacOS and reseating the drive did not fix the issue and I finally gave up. After replacing the SX8200 Pro 1TB with a Sabrent Rocket 1TB the computer has been completely stable with zero panics. Same adapter. Additionally, switching to the Sabrent Rocket caused the "PPN001 power management system Error" to disappear from Apple Diagnostics, which is consistent with what others have noticed in this thread.

Unfortunately, I was still getting significant battery drain while the computer was sleeping (~25% overnight).
Interestingly, there was no drain during sleep when using Windows 10 with Bootcamp.
I tried many things to solve the problem, including "tcpkeepalive 0", turning off Find My Mac and iCloud, resetting PRAM/NVRAM/SMC, and others. Nothing worked.

I did not want to use hibernate mode 25 because of the longer wake times required for data to be loaded from the SSD back to the RAM (gray screen with progress bars). I finally fixed it by leaving the computer in the default hibernate mode 3, but changing the following settings with terminal commands:

sudo pmset -a standbydelaylow 600
sudo pmset -a standbydelayhigh 600

This causes the computer to wait 600 seconds/10 minutes before copying the RAM contents to the SSD, then enter standby mode. After entering standby, the SSD must either draw significantly less power or be powered down because battery loss is now <1% overnight. Also, the computer wakes in under 1 second and without the progress bars, so the RAM must be powered and it seems to be a deep sleep rather than full hibernation. I don't know if this will work with 2013/2014 models, but it resolved the issue for my early 2015 rMPB 13". For others who have experienced overnight battery drain, let me know if this helps!

 

[juan985_Spain]

Just posting my results:

A1502 Macbook Pro 13" Early 2015 - Silicon Power 512 GB / Sintech short adapter:

No sleep issues (3) and can't really notice any battery hit.

View attachment 846619

Is there any way to check the SSD temperature ? It's disappeared from HWMonitor now the Apple SSD has been removed.

For ssd temperature I use Drive DX. You can also measure some other parameters with this app.

Regards.

 

[juan985_Spain]

Hi Everyone,

I have recently updated my 256 ssd drive in my macbook pro 15" mid 2015. I went for the Sabrent Rocket SSD 1TB based on the amazon reviews and this thread opinions. I think is the best cost/performance option so far.

I havent had any issues during instalation.

Steps:

Created a time machine back up.
Replaced the ssd
Installed fresh copy of Mojave and the used Migration Assistant to recover my info.

So far no kernel panic or any other fail whatsoever.

Sorry for my english and thank you all for sharing

Here are some speed test:

Hi, Regarding battery life, Im getting 6,5 hours of playback video with headphones and low screen brightness. I dont know if this is much less than before because I havent made any test before the ssd upgrade. For me its ok. I use the laptop mainly plugged in and attached to an external monitor.

It would be nice I some of you share you battery life with this same Sabrent 1TB SSD.

Happy Friday to everyone.

 

[fanfzero]

So my programmer and the korean cable just arrived (for my early 2014 macbook already with a nvme drive and long syntech adapter), my question is, on the guide the bootrom is extracted from the high sierra installer, right now i'm on mojave, should i use mojave installer or high sierra installer? Also, do I need to re-install the os after updating the efi?

 

[teffers]

Hi, Regarding battery life, Im getting 6,5 hours of playback video with headphones and low screen brightness. I dont know if this is much less than before because I havent made any test before the ssd upgrade. For me its ok. I use the laptop mainly plugged in and attached to an external monitor.

It would be nice I some of you share you battery life with this same Sabrent 1TB SSD.

Happy Friday to everyone.

Having done a little more testing I think I'm seeing a small amount of battery hit, but nothing that would detract from the benefit of the larger drive.

My battery is @ 82% health (3 years old) and I get about 6-7 hours browsing / general use (Early 2015 13").

 

[busterje]

Hello,
I can confirm that Macbook Air 13" early 2015 bootroom got updated from 178 to 186 using sx8200 pro on mojave 10.14.5.

Sleep working fine, but i noticed that battery dropped 5% overnight in 10-11h. Is that normal?

 

[liberace]

Hello,
I can confirm that Macbook Air 13" early 2015 bootroom got updated from 178 to 186 using sx8200 pro on mojave 10.14.5.

Sleep working fine, but i noticed that battery dropped 5% overnight in 10-11h. Is that normal?

if yo didn't put hibernate mode to 25 than yes

 

[markintosh13]

Picked up a 13" Macbook Pro Retina Early 2015 i7 3.1Ghz 16GB 256GB as an upgrade to my 13" MBP Late 2013 2.6 Ghz i5 8GB

I had no need of the onboard SSD, as I wanted to upgrade it to 2TB anyway, but was amused to find the original had been replaced with short adapter and a super cheap 256GB nvme Patriot Scorch M2. No matter, that's now on a shelf.

Got one of these for $360 Cdn:

and did a quick MacOS Internet Restore / Time machine restore, and it's all good.

 

[busterje]

Previously on clean install mojave i got 1300-1400 down/write. I did restore from my old system and down dropped to 400-500. Any ideas why and what to do? Link width is x4 and Link speed 5.0 GT/s, so all should be fine.

 

[fanfzero]

Can't get blue light on the adapter, i've tried flashrom on a hackintosh with high sierra and on a hacked 2007 macbook with el capitan, both give me error

I've tried both with sudo and without sudo, this is my adapter
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/323438231470

EDIT: After giving up the mac does not boot, what can I do?

 

[Trunkz]

Im still getting severe battery drain when my macbook is left to sleep. I’ve got a late 2013 13” mbp with a 1tb intel 760p and the short sintech adapter. pmset as follows:

standbydelaylow 60
standby 1
halfdim 1
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage
powernap 1
gpuswitch 2
disksleep 1
standbydelayhigh 60
sleep 0 (sleep prevented by AddressBookSourceSync)
autopoweroffdelay 28800
hibernatemode 0
autopoweroff 0
ttyskeepawake 1
displaysleep 15
highstandbythreshold 50
acwake 0
lidwake 0

Not sure what else can be done. I closed the lid when the battery was around 80% and started the laptop back up three hours later and it had gone down to 56%..

 

[mbosse]

late 2012 are retinas and are PCIe/NVMe.

Wrong. Late 2012s are still SATA as are early 2013s.

 

[jackqueenking]

Im still getting severe battery drain when my macbook is left to sleep. I’ve got a late 2013 13” mbp with a 1tb intel 760p and the short sintech adapter. pmset as follows:

standbydelaylow 60
standby 1
halfdim 1
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage
powernap 1
gpuswitch 2
disksleep 1
standbydelayhigh 60
sleep 0 (sleep prevented by AddressBookSourceSync)
autopoweroffdelay 28800
hibernatemode 0
autopoweroff 0
ttyskeepawake 1
displaysleep 15
highstandbythreshold 50
acwake 0
lidwake 0

Not sure what else can be done. I closed the lid when the battery was around 80% and started the laptop back up three hours later and it had gone down to 56%..

 

[jackqueenking]

Here is an update on the issues I experienced with kernel panics and battery drain during sleep with my system (2015 rMBP 13"/Short black Sintech adapter/ADATA SX8200 Pro 1TB/Mojave 10.14.4).

As I mentioned, reinstalling Dropbox got the machine to a usable state, but eventually the NVME kernel panics returned, causing the computer to restart twice a day. Fresh installs of MacOS and reseating the drive did not fix the issue and I finally gave up. After replacing the SX8200 Pro 1TB with a Sabrent Rocket 1TB the computer has been completely stable with zero panics. Same adapter. Additionally, switching to the Sabrent Rocket caused the "PPN001 power management system Error" to disappear from Apple Diagnostics, which is consistent with what others have noticed in this thread.

Unfortunately, I was still getting significant battery drain while the computer was sleeping (~25% overnight).
Interestingly, there was no drain during sleep when using Windows 10 with Bootcamp.
I tried many things to solve the problem, including "tcpkeepalive 0", turning off Find My Mac and iCloud, resetting PRAM/NVRAM/SMC, and others. Nothing worked.

I did not want to use hibernate mode 25 because of the longer wake times required for data to be loaded from the SSD back to the RAM (gray screen with progress bars). I finally fixed it by leaving the computer in the default hibernate mode 3, but changing the following settings with terminal commands:

sudo pmset -a standbydelaylow 600
sudo pmset -a standbydelayhigh 600

This causes the computer to wait 600 seconds/10 minutes before copying the RAM contents to the SSD, then enter standby mode. After entering standby, the SSD must either draw significantly less power or be powered down because battery loss is now <1% overnight. Also, the computer wakes in under 1 second and without the progress bars, so the RAM must be powered and it seems to be a deep sleep rather than full hibernation. I don't know if this will work with 2013/2014 models, but it resolved the issue for my early 2015 rMPB 13". For others who have experienced overnight battery drain, let me know if this helps!

I tried this with my 2014 and it doesn't work. It seems that even if I enable standby = 1 and leave hibernate mode to 0 I still get the double restart issue. I changed my high and low values to 30 seconds just t quickly test the solution. I did some digging on the internet about what standby mode actually does and it seems to be different than leaving it off and keeping hibernate mode 0. It apparently puts all components in a low powered state and in specific cases copies the contents of RAM to the SSD but in my case with mode 0 it shouldn't do that and I STILL got the double restart.

Looks like the problem with NVME drives on 2013/2014 is not restoring the session but rather waking up the drive even if the contents are stored only in RAM. These results would most definitely explain the battery drain issues people are having on pre-2015 models since apparently disabling standby prevents putting components in low powered state even with hibernate mode 0.

Can someone else validate these results?

 

[busterje]

Fun thing, after restoring my old system, write drop to 400-500, but sleep now working fine, and after 16h of sleep it only dropped to 99%! After 8h of sleep today it still remain 100%. But what happened to this write? On clean system i was getting 1400-1500. Could that be problem with using extended partition not APFS?