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Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe
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Which adapter are you using?
I assume you did a fresh install of Mojave? Bootrom is up to date?
Hard to tell without actually testing for it, but by the sound of it there is damage somewhere in your system.
I bought it last weekend. So chances are it's the same revision. And I've read that going forward they are likely to keep the new Phison E12s layout (and have less DRAM). I return it due to it being basically "backstabbing" the customers who might not have checked.
For comparison. Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB have 2GB of DRAM.
Also, Since I can successfully use ASPM on Samsung drives (using Lilu + NVMeFix), and thus might have even lower power consumption than Sabrent Rocket drives now. I am going back to the market leader. I only use my current Rocket due to its lower power consumption without ASPM. (970 Pros zap battery w/o ASPM on)
Sabrent 2 TB drives also consumes more power even w/ ASPM on btw.
I checked this using smartmontools installed via brew (smartctl -a disk0)
Here are results from power table from the drives: (going from most active (s0) to idle (s4))
Note that NVMe fix mostly use the S0 to S3 states only unless configured further (I think)
2TB Rocket: (11.55W, 8.12W, 6.40W, 0.0490W, 0.0018W) (wow, 11W)
1TB Rocket (current primary): (8.28W, 6.53W, 5.61W, 0.00490W, 0.0018W)
970 Pro 512GB (old primary, now on MBA 11") (6.20W, 4.30W, 2.10W, 0.0400W, 0.0050W)
All that, and the fact that Sabrent drive manager software crash half the time, no clear place to look for firmware update, and only have them as .exe once I found it. (when Samsung Magician software, with Proper ISO to boot special OS to update the SSD firmware) is a big turn off.
I will update this to include Evo Plus 2TB once I have my hands on it tomorrow.
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This might be stupid question, but whats is your OS version prior to installing new SSD ? And what is your BootRom version ?
Certain BootRom or newer are needed for it to be detected properly.
Try to get new adapter, short one, dont have to be sintech, sintech is no longer holding upper hand in adapter market, neither in speed, nor in stability, almost everybody got their wiring proper nowaday, it just whether its plated for better transmission or plain metal connector. But 99,9% out there are plated as well.
Don't.
NVME always have TRIM enabled by default, just see in system report NVME section. TRIM Value always "YES"
Word of warning to anyone considering a Crucial P5 — it doesn't seem to co-operate happily with these NVMe-compatible Macs. This is with a Sintech adapter and a 13" 2015 MacBook Pro.
First issue was that it didn't update the BootROM when installing Catalina to the new drive. I put the original drive back in and wiped and went to install Catalina again, at which point the BootROM was successfully updated. Put the drive and Sintech short adapter back in, it worked, but kernel panicked whenever it was asleep for around ten minutes.
I tried mitigating the sleep issues with the pmset command that's meant to be used for late 2013-2014 Macs, but it didn't make any difference. In the end I returned the P5 and got a P1 instead and that is working perfectly with the same adapter (I did try another just to be sure) and default power management settings.
This may not be the last word here, but thought I'd mention it to anyone considering the P5. A 15" or etc may well behave differently, but I thought people would appreciate the info.
First issue was that it didn't update the BootROM when installing Catalina to the new drive. I put the original drive back in and wiped and went to install Catalina again, at which point the BootROM was successfully updated. Put the drive and Sintech short adapter back in, it worked, but kernel panicked whenever it was asleep for around ten minutes.
I tried mitigating the sleep issues with the pmset command that's meant to be used for late 2013-2014 Macs, but it didn't make any difference. In the end I returned the P5 and got a P1 instead and that is working perfectly with the same adapter (I did try another just to be sure) and default power management settings.
This may not be the last word here, but thought I'd mention it to anyone considering the P5. A 15" or etc may well behave differently, but I thought people would appreciate the info.
You may damage it even further if a pin is bent within the mini-PCIe slot. A visual inspection (magnifying glass?) would be me first choice, cleaning with isopropyl alcohol only next. Make sure you inspect and clean both slots - on the mainboard and on the adapter, as well as the pins on the adapter and on the SSD. Allow to dry.
And make sure the first thing you do after removing the bottom cover is to disconnect the battery.
I have a 2017 MacBook Air with stock Apple 512GB SSD that I just inherited from my mother. I would like to upgrade it to 2TB. I'd rather avoid spending $349 on a Samsung EVO if I don't have to (for that price, I could buy a Feather M13 Turbo). The $250 price point is where I'd like to be. I was all excited about the Sabrent Rocket 2TB because it is currently $230 on Amazon after coupon. However, now I'm a bit concerned. Are you saying that Sabrent won't work? Or are you just saying it won't work as well as the Samsung Evo?
Other 2TB sticks I am considering are:
All of those are in my price range so price is not my deciding factor among those three or the Sabrent. So, my question is which of those four (Adata, Toshiba, Crucial, or Sabrent Rocket) should I get? Or, is there another 2TB stick in that same price that I should consider?
Thanks in advance for your input.
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I run the 2TB Adata SX8200 Pro in my Mac Pro tower and am extremely satisfied with it. This drive seems to be also a "bang for buck" winner in most tests. Haven't tried the others, though, but the charts were kinda conclusive.
Thanks for confirmation on the Adata. That was the one I was leaning toward until I discovered the Sabrent Rocket, which seemed to be at the top of the charts, was $50 off today. The only think holding me back on the Adata is that several years ago I had a bad experience with one of their USB thumb drives that went bade.
I should have mentioned in my original post that I am not a gamer and don't do much in the way of video editing (other than very occasionally as a hobby, but I haven't had time for that in years). Consequently, I don't need the fastest SSD out there. I'm most concerned with reliability and very much need the space (I'll be migrating from a 2015 MacBook Pro that has two internal SATA SSDs, one that is 2TB and one that is 1TB. The 1TB is an old drive that I don't use much any more so I'm confident that 2TB for the MBA will work for me; I don't think I can get away with only 1TB in the MBA.
The 2015 MacBook Pro (13 and 15) have PCIe AHCI drives and don't work with internal SATA at all.
Oops. I had a senior moment when I typed that. I meant "2012" for my MBP, not "2015." I forgot just old of a laptop I've been working with. I actually bought it from Apple as a refurb after the 2012 line was discontinued. I specifically wanted a MBP that had an internal drive that could be upgraded since SSD storage was so expensive at that time.
For your Macbook Air.
Please note that your machine will at most do ~1400MB/s read/write. As the board can only handle PCIe Gen2 x4 lanes. There will be no reason to get a drive that perform better than that, as the bottleneck will be that.
What you might want to look into more is sustained write performance. (Bigger the DRAM cache ratio vs Capacity the better) You would also want to look into power consumption characteristics. For my main machine (rMBP 2015 15") It can do up to 3000MB/s due to it having PCIe Gen3 x4 slot. So I'm getting the most performing drive for it.
I'm not sure on which drives you listed use what controller. I'd research into what NAND they used, what endurance they are rated for. And how 'reliable' they are by glancing forums.
Now the sabrent had been a go-to for a lot of ppl here in this thread. But Samsung is the market leader when it comes to SSD. (their flagships are usually the ones that has fastest read/write, most IOPs, rated for most writes (?) for example; 1200TB rated for 2TB 970 evo plus)
Personally, I've always used Samsung drives for my past Macbooks (starting with 840 Pro for my first MBP late 2008)
I switched away from them (970 Pro 512GB) on my current 15" due to its tendency to hog power when ASPM is disabled. (It basically halved my battery runtime) But now that I can use them with ASPM. That's no longer the issue, and it makes Samsung drives one of the most efficient SSD around again.
For reference:
(I managed 6+ hr on a 11" MBA 2015 I delegated my 970 Pro with ~3-4W idle power, which is a significant improvement from before NVMeFix kext ~9W idle)
The 2TB Sabrent turns out to be quite the power hog also, with 11W consumption for active load (my 1TB Sabrent only has 8W load). (I pulled this number from smartmontools Power stat table) check my earlier comments for stats.
The other factor is the support that comes with the drives.
Samsung has its own Chip, with its own software, with a pretty decent firmware update utility/dedicated ISO.
Which is arguably pretty stable/mature. While Sabrent drives are basically another Phison-E12 based drives like a lot of other brands.
Now there is nothing wrong with that, but it makes it pretty confusing when it comes to firmware upgrade (firmware numbers are all over the place w/ different version with some cross-compatible, and some are not)
Also, different vendor may/maynot push firmware updates or push them slower/faster than another on essentially the same drive designs)
Furthermore, Sabrent utilities crashed on me 50% of the time I try to use it (When it worked. it tried to tell me it Doesn't know info about the newer 2TB drive with their latest utility I downloaded) that's not exactly re-assuring to me.
Don't get me wrong, Sabrent drives are pretty good (My primary had been running on Sabrent Rocket 1 TB for a year and it never failed me so far). But considering that they 'silently pushed' a significantly nerfed newer SKUs with basically 1/4th the DRAM cache it supposed to have. (ratio should be at least 1GB of DRAM per 1TB of storage)
(For comparison, 970 Evo plus 2 TB has 2GB of DRAM cache, as well as Sabrent's 2TB earlier revisions, but now only have 512MB!!) (cue the horror on my face when I realized that)
From realizing this, I felt betrayed. And I am most likely would not continue buying their drives (Or any Phison-based drives) into the future, due to potentially lower sustained performance, espc once DRAM is full.
I suppose it could be brand loyalty thing. But I have more trust in Samsung's SSD.
EDITED 3 times for typo, and better sentence arrangements.
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I also run the 2TB XPG ADATA SX8200 Pro in my 2015 MBA. I paid about 287$ with the Sintech short adapter. Granted, I've only been running it a week.. but it seems to work well.. It may use slightly more power than the Apple drive, but I get about double the read/write numbers than the Apple 512gb I put in this after I bought it used.. I have enough space for ALL my movies, music, and full size pics from iCloud. I still have 1.5tb free.. It has a 5 year warranty. Can't get that from a used Apple drive.. I'm not a gamer or hard video editor so MBA 1.6ghz I5 8gb ram with 2tb of space?... I'm set for several more years with this little box.. notice "box"?...lol
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I don't believe there are any EFI updates contained in 10.15.7.