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Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe
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The cheapest is eBay for that $55-$90 otherwise you could try and wire your own but you would need to buy a Hirose DF40 connector that matches your specific connector, which is the 30-pin I think.
Hi all,
I just recently installed a 500gb 970 EVO in my A1502 late 2013 and it works well, however it is having deep sleep/hibernate issues (doesn't wake and reboots twice). I had a quick look at the previous posts about flashing the EFI to fix this.
Is there any way to flash the EFI without the use of the j6100 adaptor or matt card? (Prefer not to open up the laptop every time the EFI gets updated). Also, where can I find the modified EFI to flash? (can somebody please upload a patched version with the NVME driver?)
I am running Catalina(10.15.4)
EFI Version: MBP111.88Z.F000.B00.2002052022 (Boot ROM Version: 159.0.0.0.0)
I just recently installed a 500gb 970 EVO in my A1502 late 2013 and it works well, however it is having deep sleep/hibernate issues (doesn't wake and reboots twice). I had a quick look at the previous posts about flashing the EFI to fix this.
Is there any way to flash the EFI without the use of the j6100 adaptor or matt card? (Prefer not to open up the laptop every time the EFI gets updated). Also, where can I find the modified EFI to flash? (can somebody please upload a patched version with the NVME driver?)
I am running Catalina(10.15.4)
EFI Version: MBP111.88Z.F000.B00.2002052022 (Boot ROM Version: 159.0.0.0.0)
Last edited:
Your BIOS is specific to your machine because it contains your serial number and hash signed by Apple. You would need to manually patch it with each update. Since you have 159 and still have issues then that means Apple did not fix the issue with hibernate, sadly ):
Ahh, I see, Using the UEFI tool right? There are so many posts on this thread it's hard to get a clear picture of what to do
Damn that sucks, might end up going with the matt card route just in case I brick the EFI somehow.
Just ordered a Sabrent SB-ROCKET-2TB for my macbook pro 15 mid 2015, with what looks like a Sintech adapter. I wanted to go up as 4tb but couldn't find it in France.
From what I've researched online, the difference between the Sabrent SSDs is with the technology they use in the SSD. It's either QLC technology (SB-RKTQ-2TB, little cheaper) or TLC technology (SB-ROCKET-2TB, more expensive, premium).
I should have the parts in the next few days, I'll let you know how it goes. My boot rom version says "197.0.0.0.0". I'm running Mojave 10.14.6 and don't plan on going to Catalina (Im afraid it might slow the machine).
From what I've researched online, the difference between the Sabrent SSDs is with the technology they use in the SSD. It's either QLC technology (SB-RKTQ-2TB, little cheaper) or TLC technology (SB-ROCKET-2TB, more expensive, premium).
I should have the parts in the next few days, I'll let you know how it goes. My boot rom version says "197.0.0.0.0". I'm running Mojave 10.14.6 and don't plan on going to Catalina (Im afraid it might slow the machine).
Hi all,
I recently upgraded my mid 2014 15" 11.3 (OS is Catalina 10.15.4, bootrom is 159.0.0.0.0) to a 1Tb Adata SX8200 pro with seemingly good results. I think battery life is down a little. I get estimates form istats of over 5-5:30hrs if i'm just browsing the web. Think it used to say up to 5:45 so not a big deal for me (battery health is at 90%).
The machine still sleeps and wakes from sleep normally. The only "issue" i've noticed is waking from Hibernate. I left the charger unplugged with 100% charge last night and lid closed. My girlfriend said she heard the start up chime twice this morning at around 09:00hrs with maybe 5-10 minutes between the two chimes. When i opened the laptop at 11:00 it woke instantly but i was presented with a an error report saying the machine restarted due to a problem. the report was an EFI hibernate issue....cant remember the exact details.
Can this cause any damage to the computer over time if i let it continue?
If its entirely benign then i'm don't see it being an issue for me as it woke and was ready for use jsut as fast as it normally wakes form normal sleep. plus the batter had only dropped to 98% in 11hrs.
I recently upgraded my mid 2014 15" 11.3 (OS is Catalina 10.15.4, bootrom is 159.0.0.0.0) to a 1Tb Adata SX8200 pro with seemingly good results. I think battery life is down a little. I get estimates form istats of over 5-5:30hrs if i'm just browsing the web. Think it used to say up to 5:45 so not a big deal for me (battery health is at 90%).
The machine still sleeps and wakes from sleep normally. The only "issue" i've noticed is waking from Hibernate. I left the charger unplugged with 100% charge last night and lid closed. My girlfriend said she heard the start up chime twice this morning at around 09:00hrs with maybe 5-10 minutes between the two chimes. When i opened the laptop at 11:00 it woke instantly but i was presented with a an error report saying the machine restarted due to a problem. the report was an EFI hibernate issue....cant remember the exact details.
Can this cause any damage to the computer over time if i let it continue?
If its entirely benign then i'm don't see it being an issue for me as it woke and was ready for use jsut as fast as it normally wakes form normal sleep. plus the batter had only dropped to 98% in 11hrs.
Did you read the very first post?Ahh, I see, Using the UEFI tool right? There are so many posts on this thread it's hard to get a clear picture of what to do
Damn that sucks, might end up going with the matt card route just in case I brick the EFI somehow.
I ve also got this error report in fact the laptop has rebooted.
I m not using a sintech adapter it may be the issue?!
It should not do any damage to the computer since the MacBook is panicking and restarting.
Did you change any of the sleep settings after installing Catalina?
Quick update : just performed the upgrade. I also cleaned and changed the CPU/GPU thermal paste.
So far so good. Running Sabrent 2TB and a Sintech adapter. I always use my macbook plugged in, so I won't be bothered if there's more power draw. Here's a snapshot of a disk speed test I just performed.
Did you let the Speedtest run for a while? After a bit mine starts dropping in speed.
MacBook Air (6,2) 13" mid 2013 (daily driver since 2014)
OS: macOS Catalina 10.15.4
Boot-ROM: 120.0.0.0.0
CPU: 1,4 GHz Core i5
RAM: 8 GB
Charge cycles: 1198
New SSD: 480 GB Corsair MP510 (CSSD-F480GBMP510B)
Installed the SSD yesterday, deactivated hibernation and activated TRIM. Closed the lid with a battery charge of 59% and woke up to 54%, which seems to be good. But yesterday I noticed the rapid discharge while using the device, that didn't seem to be normal to me. Maybe macOS was doing some stuff in the background, because I had to reinstall lots of apps. I think I'll transfer my important stuff from my external HDD back to the device and let the system do it's thing for a day and then test the battery life afterwards, should get more reliable results.
Since my battery has exceeded the limit of 1000 cycles, I was planning to get it swapped by Apple for 139€ but I also took into consideration to do it myself with an iFixit battery (90€). Can anyone recommend the iFixit batteries for the MacBook Air 6,2?
OS: macOS Catalina 10.15.4
Boot-ROM: 120.0.0.0.0
CPU: 1,4 GHz Core i5
RAM: 8 GB
Charge cycles: 1198
New SSD: 480 GB Corsair MP510 (CSSD-F480GBMP510B)
Installed the SSD yesterday, deactivated hibernation and activated TRIM. Closed the lid with a battery charge of 59% and woke up to 54%, which seems to be good. But yesterday I noticed the rapid discharge while using the device, that didn't seem to be normal to me. Maybe macOS was doing some stuff in the background, because I had to reinstall lots of apps. I think I'll transfer my important stuff from my external HDD back to the device and let the system do it's thing for a day and then test the battery life afterwards, should get more reliable results.
Since my battery has exceeded the limit of 1000 cycles, I was planning to get it swapped by Apple for 139€ but I also took into consideration to do it myself with an iFixit battery (90€). Can anyone recommend the iFixit batteries for the MacBook Air 6,2?
Yep I let it run for a while. Numbers are better right after startup though.
I have quite a bit of experience with these and for this machine it is just PL4 (10 screws) on the back case and T5 (5 screws) for the battery. I would go to eBay and buy a genuine one from a reputable seller. You can probably get them for about $50. Look at the pictures in the listing and verify they are genuine. I have yet to be burned going this route and I've bought a lot. No need to pay 90 euros for something that should only cost you 50 euros. Also, having a bad battery will cause your macbook to slow down. The batteries are good for 1,000 cycles but I have seen OEM ones fail around 300 before. I hope that helps you!
Since my J6100 Adapter was broken, I didn't want to spend another 50 Euros for a new one. I just bought a SOIC-Test-Clip for 5 Euros and successfully patched my 159.0.0.0.0, which was upgraded with 10.15.4 update even without original SSD.
I think there is no need buying the expensive cable, unless you are professional and patch BootROMs regularly.
I have a Mid 2014 15 inch MBP.
Does anybody know how I can avoid BootROM-Upgrades in the future without missing macOS Upgrades? Or do I have to re-patch every time a macOS Update comes.
I think there is no need buying the expensive cable, unless you are professional and patch BootROMs regularly.
I have a Mid 2014 15 inch MBP.
Does anybody know how I can avoid BootROM-Upgrades in the future without missing macOS Upgrades? Or do I have to re-patch every time a macOS Update comes.
The other reason for buying the J6100 which is only a Hirose DF40 connector is because on the Macbook Airs the EFI/BIOS is on the reverse of the board, meaning you have to take the board out. This can be painful for those that can't do it in less than 5 mins. For me I use the J6100 connector all of the time but yet I have like 20 macbooks looking back at me currently and another 6 on the bench, lol.
Last night I tried an experiment and it seems that while my NVME drive worked at first with the short sintech adapter it stopped working completely after a couple of hours. I need to try that drive in a different machine to make sure it didn't kill my NVME drive. Anyhow, I was updating a MBA 2015 from Sierra to Mojave (188.0.0.0) with original Apple SSD. I then tried to use the NVME with a windows partition on it and it worked at first and died later, described above. So I took out my 480GB OWC drive (NVME with built-in Apple adapter) and used that to install 10.15.4 Catalina and it updated the boot rom to (193.0.0.0). So it seems that in fact you no longer need an Apple SSD (post-High Sierra) to get the latest boot rom. I was trying to do that test with that NVME drive with short sintech adapter so I have no idea what's going on with that. After my experience so far I cannot recommend to my customers to upgrade to NVME drives using these adapters.
So.. with the Transcend Jetdrive 820 with 240GB I managed to update the BootRom to the latest version, and now it boots speedly without boot hang.
But the random shutdown problem still exists.
I have checked the hardware specs in ASD as you said, and everything seems right, it still detects SSD sensor errors, but I think that it's not the SSD the fault of the random shutdowns and the wifi signal losses. I've holes checked the hinge and the cables and everything seems right, a bit dusty but right.
Then I've surfed the web for other people with my 2014 A1398 having the same issue and it seemed common to have this problem:
MacBook Pro 15" Retina mid 2014 random shutdowns
My MacBook Pro (15-inch, Retina, Mid 2014, macOS 10.13.1) shuts down randomly. It shuts down suddenly when on battery It shuts down a little more rare when connected to AC It works almost fine whe...
A lot of forums and pages suggest to delete the AppleThunderboltNHI.kext
I've tried to. It doesn't solve the problem, but it now seems as it passes more time between each random shutdown. If before it shut down every 8 hours, now it takes 12 hours or so..
My idea is to try and disable as many kexts that have functionalities that I don't often use (like Bluetooth, thunderbolt, hdmi...) and see if it actually improves even more, cause in my head "it would make the kernel panic less".
Don't know...
the fact that Apple made Catalina upgrade the BootRom even on tiers NVMe SSD, without providing a full NVMe driver on genuine bootrom is not a good knews.
To this date, it seems that under Mojave a BootRom patched for NVMe hibernation is still left untouched by upgrades...
very well could a bad adapter, I've been using amazon purchased short sintech adapter (link below) since 09/19 with no issues whatsoever, possible fake ones? i don't know.
Sintech NGFF M.2 nVME SSD Adapter Card for Upgrade MacBook Air(2013-2016 Year) and MacBook PRO(Late 2013-2015 Year)
NOTICE:because too many customers can use it,I suggest you to try it again if your MAC can't detect nVME SSD. Pls notice to insert card fully into SSD slot and you must prepare bootable USB disk(see third point) with High Sierra to format M.2 SSD first, it can't support recover from internet. mai...
www.amazon.com
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Apparently that is the exact same as the one I have:very well could a bad adapter, I've been using amazon purchased short sintech adapter (link below) since 09/19 with no issues whatsoever, possible fake ones? i don't know.
Sintech NGFF M.2 nVME SSD Adapter Card for Upgrade MacBook Air(2013-2016 Year) and MacBook PRO(Late 2013-2015 Year)
NOTICE:because too many customers can use it,I suggest you to try it again if your MAC can't detect nVME SSD. Pls notice to insert card fully into SSD slot and you must prepare bootable USB disk(see third point) with High Sierra to format M.2 SSD first, it can't support recover from internet. mai...www.amazon.com
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Place a flashlight behind the Apple and see if there is an image. If there is an image and no backlight then you have liquid damage on the logic board. You can either try to fix it yourself (watch about 20-50 youtube videos about it, along with studying schematics / boardview) or pay someone else to fix it for you. You can DM me for a quote as I do this professionally.
If you place a flashlight behind the Apple and there is no image try moving a magnet around the left side of the case near the USB port and audio port. If there is any change then the SMC_LID sensor is bad and that circuit needs to be checked. If that doesn't work take apart the laptop and inspect the logic board under a 5-15x microscope and look for corrosion. Sometimes the corrosion could even be on the cable between the logic board and I/O board (a case that I literally have as of this morning). There could also be corrosion around the LCD connector and/or on the cable itself (another case I had last week).
Is there a green light on the charger when the battery is full or is it orange?
I hope that helps, enjoy!