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

[Superhai]

do you mean at the pic slot? should I try clean it with some alcohol?

If you believe there could be debris there, clean it. But by damage I mean it is possible that there are poor connections or some component on the motherboard/adapter/drive are burnt. If another nvme drive work properly, then it is likely your drive that’s at fault, if another adapter work properly, then it is the adapter. If it is neither it is your Mac and you will have to take it to a repair shop if you don’t know how to fix it yourself. A visual inspection may reveal if something is bent, burnt or loose/don’t make contact.

 

[otosan]

The MacBook Pro/Air needs the bootrom included with High Sierra or newer.

Indeed, thats why am asking him. Just in case his bootrom is "too old"

 

[Audit13]

Indeed, thats why am asking him. Just in case his bootrom is "too old"

If the bootrom was too old, it would not be detected from what I recall when I upgraded my 13" Air.

 

[otosan]

Sorry , but its a fresh install, and I tried the test using BlackMagic disk speed test for more times during last 2days.. I haven't even copied or backed anything from my time capsule yet.. the storage as of now in ssd is the OS. thermal are very low... I don't know why this Ssd gives such low values for PCIE gen2.. the rocket 512 is almost rated at 3000MB/s but not even half of it is delivered..
Do you have any suggestions on trying this ssd on windows pc and updating the firmware from there and then reinstalling the ssd???

1300 Read sounds just fine, although a bit low. But 500 write is very low,

is your MacBook still Indexing ? Because that process will hurt IO RW performance. Wait untill the indexing is done , then only do the speed test.

 

[otosan]

If the bootrom was too old, it would not be detected from what I recall when I upgraded my 13" Air.

Indeed, again, and thats why he is questioning why his ssd wont appear in disk utility. And that is the reason am asking about his bootrom. Lol. Am not asking a question for myself, rather helping him searching for answer.

 

[Audit13]

Indeed, again, and thats why he is questioning why his ssd wont appear in disk utility. And that is the reason am asking about his bootrom. Lol. Am not asking a question for myself, rather helping him searching for answer.

Gotcha. I had to find the original post.

 

[5354]

Just done my upgrade from 128GB to 1TB with a Transcend 110S SSD. Everything looks good so far!
[automerge]1601053445[/automerge]

 

[JDJ922]

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.

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.

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

Thank you all. Last night I ordered the 2TB XPG ADATA SX8200 Pro for $229.99 (after $20 off coupon) from Amazon (along with the Sintech adapter). Delivery is expected tomorrow so I figure that upgrading the SSD in the MBA will be my weekend project. Please wish me luck.

 

[xboxbml]

Thank you all. Last night I ordered the 2TB XPG ADATA SX8200 Pro for $229.99 (after $20 off coupon) from Amazon (along with the Sintech adapter). Delivery is expected tomorrow so I figure that upgrading the SSD in the MBA will be my weekend project. Please wish me luck.

Good Luck! What version MBA you have and which OS are you running? Remember, OS has to be updated to at least High Sierra I think to update firmware to support NVMe.

 

[JDJ922]

Good Luck! What version MBA you have and which OS are you running? Remember, OS has to be updated to at least High Sierra I think to update firmware to support NVMe.

It is a 2017 MacBook Air 2.2 GHz (i7) running Catalina. I upgraded it this morning to the latest release of Catalina and less than an hour ago installed the Adata SSD. So far, so good. I presently am installing Catalina on the Adata and then will migrate data over. I'm trying to decide whether to do the migration from a Time Machine back-up made to a USB 3.0 external portable HDD or whether to migrate directly from the original SDD that I removed from the MacBook Air (I purchased a Wasmicro external case for the old SSD).

 

[Kikosan]

I sent my late 2013 MacBook Pro 15 inch to the repair shop as it was unable to download and/boot OS system even with clean install. The shop called me back to tell me that it’s a dead SSD that needs replacement.

He quoted me quite a high price for a 128GB ssd and installation fee... so I thought I’d supply him with my choice of SSD (thinking Kingston A2000 or WD SN550) with the adapter. He advised against using the adapter as he said it is unreliable, the computer will sometimes fail to boot with adapter.

He claimed that the SSD he was going to order for me is from Samsung and does NOT require an adapter...??? Does such a SSD exist? I thought only OWC Aura Pro X2 and original Apple currently manufactures SSD that doesn’t need the adapter. Do you think he is talking about one of those second hand, out of warranty, non-nvme old SSD? Should I go for it?

 

[Charlie Bun]

Hello! I got a Macbook Pro 2014 without an SSD, the internet recovery is for Yosemite so I'm almost sure that it doesnt have the bootrom updated, Is there a way to update the bootrom without the original SSD? I can install Yosemite in an external USB but yeah, it's not pretty

 

[herb2k]

I sent my late 2013 MacBook Pro 15 inch to the repair shop as it was unable to download and/boot OS system even with clean install. The shop called me back to tell me that it’s a dead SSD that needs replacement.

He quoted me quite a high price for a 128GB ssd and installation fee... so I thought I’d supply him with my choice of SSD (thinking Kingston A2000 or WD SN550) with the adapter. He advised against using the adapter as he said it is unreliable, the computer will sometimes fail to boot with adapter.

He claimed that the SSD he was going to order for me is from Samsung and does NOT require an adapter...??? Does such a SSD exist? I thought only OWC Aura Pro X2 and original Apple currently manufactures SSD that doesn’t need the adapter. Do you think he is talking about one of those second hand, out of warranty, non-nvme old SSD? Should I go for it?

I suspect he's sourcing a used, genuine Apple SSD.

 

[otosan]

I sent my late 2013 MacBook Pro 15 inch to the repair shop as it was unable to download and/boot OS system even with clean install. The shop called me back to tell me that it’s a dead SSD that needs replacement.

He quoted me quite a high price for a 128GB ssd and installation fee... so I thought I’d supply him with my choice of SSD (thinking Kingston A2000 or WD SN550) with the adapter. He advised against using the adapter as he said it is unreliable, the computer will sometimes fail to boot with adapter.

He claimed that the SSD he was going to order for me is from Samsung and does NOT require an adapter...??? Does such a SSD exist? I thought only OWC Aura Pro X2 and original Apple currently manufactures SSD that doesn’t need the adapter. Do you think he is talking about one of those second hand, out of warranty, non-nvme old SSD? Should I go for it?

You should just take the macbook, and install your own ssd at home, lol. Should do just fine

 

[alprio]

Hello,
I have a MBA 2017 and I bought the sintech adapter. the long one.
I have to buy the ssd now. I read that MBA can do only 1500 Read / Write speeds.
What do you suggest ? I need battery life to be as close as the original ssd with the nvme speeds.
Should I get Adata sx6000? or Kingston A2000 ? or something else ?


Thanks in advance

 

[Audit13]

Hello! I got a Macbook Pro 2014 without an SSD, the internet recovery is for Yosemite so I'm almost sure that it doesnt have the bootrom updated, Is there a way to update the bootrom without the original SSD? I can install Yosemite in an external USB but yeah, it's not pretty

You need an original internal SSD to update the bootrom.

 

[mo5214]

I sent my late 2013 MacBook Pro 15 inch to the repair shop as it was unable to download and/boot OS system even with clean install. The shop called me back to tell me that it’s a dead SSD that needs replacement.

He quoted me quite a high price for a 128GB ssd and installation fee... so I thought I’d supply him with my choice of SSD (thinking Kingston A2000 or WD SN550) with the adapter. He advised against using the adapter as he said it is unreliable, the computer will sometimes fail to boot with adapter.

He claimed that the SSD he was going to order for me is from Samsung and does NOT require an adapter...??? Does such a SSD exist? I thought only OWC Aura Pro X2 and original Apple currently manufactures SSD that doesn’t need the adapter. Do you think he is talking about one of those second hand, out of warranty, non-nvme old SSD? Should I go for it?

I would say that what your repair shop is untrue, But since I tinker. It could be just a customer-facing person at the repair shop could've said that to prevent any potential issues.

Unless you get shoddy adapters. It should provide (See first page of this thread, this one is recommended)

The only issues with using newer NVMe drives are:
1. More power consumption (Without Fix)
- Fix using NVMeFix kext with LiLu.

2. Lack of Hibernation support (On your particular Model)
- Work around exists (either change hibernatemode or flash new BootROM (HARD) )

3. You would have to make sure your machine has recent BootROM to support it
- Should be a non-issue if your machine already has High Sierra installed or Above prior to your original SSD dying

Otherwise you should see up to 1300MB/s-1400MB/s read/write, roughly 2X of your stock SSD.

Now there are some SSDs out there that are not NVMe (and is Sata Express) and has the compatible adapter with the Macbook Pro But those are either old, (not in production anymore and you would get one w/o warranty), expensive (for the performance involved) or both.

So either you get new NVMe (faster, more power used) or old OEM SSDs off eBay. (dubious quality/life expectency, lower power consumed)

I'd advise you not to get these:
(Fledging, OWC)

For recommendation of which SSD you get:
Personally Samsung 970 Evo Plus (or Pro) Sabrent Rocket 1TB (not 2TB)

But TBH. You need to do some research as which is the best to get in your use-case. Balance between what your system can do, vs how much storage vs your budget.

Also, for your model chances are that the bottleneck would be the 1300-1400MB/s limit from PCIe Gen2 x4 link to the ssd slot. So price your SSD accordingly. (You can look around in this forum also)

 

[mo5214]

Hey guys, I have a Question. I just noticed that late 2013-2014 15" Pros somehow can't do PCIe Gen 3x4 for SSD while technically having a very similar (If not the same) Haswell/Crystalwell architecture with 2015 15". I wonder if it's the different PCH Revisions or just BootRom Limitation. This is a result of a lspci I installed on my 2015 15" (https://mj.ucw.cz/sw/pciutils/) Can someone check with their late 2013-2014 15" to see if this is actually the case?

 

[vince22]

I would say that what your repair shop is untrue, But since I tinker. It could be just a customer-facing person at the repair shop could've said that to prevent any potential issues.

Unless you get shoddy adapters. It should provide (See first page of this thread, this one is recommended)

The only issues with using newer NVMe drives are:
1. More power consumption (Without Fix)
- Fix using NVMeFix kext with LiLu.

2. Lack of Hibernation support (On your particular Model)
- Work around exists (either change hibernatemode or flash new BootROM (HARD) )

3. You would have to make sure your machine has recent BootROM to support it
- Should be a non-issue if your machine already has High Sierra installed or Above prior to your original SSD dying

Otherwise you should see up to 1300MB/s-1400MB/s read/write, roughly 2X of your stock SSD.

Now there are some SSDs out there that are not NVMe (and is Sata Express) and has the compatible adapter with the Macbook Pro But those are either old, (not in production anymore and you would get one w/o warranty), expensive (for the performance involved) or both.

So either you get new NVMe (faster, more power used) or old OEM SSDs off eBay. (dubious quality/life expectency, lower power consumed)

I'd advise you not to get these:
(Fledging, OWC)

For recommendation of which SSD you get:
Personally Samsung 970 Evo Plus (or Pro) Sabrent Rocket 1TB (not 2TB)

But TBH. You need to do some research as which is the best to get in your use-case. Balance between what your system can do, vs how much storage vs your budget.

Also, for your model chances are that the bottleneck would be the 1300-1400MB/s limit from PCIe Gen2 x4 link to the ssd slot. So price your SSD accordingly. (You can look around in this forum also)

I agree, Sabrent rocket 1TB loves Lilu kext average 0.1A now, still waiting for Hynix P31 gold updated firmware.

 

[xboxbml]

It is a 2017 MacBook Air 2.2 GHz (i7) running Catalina. I upgraded it this morning to the latest release of Catalina and less than an hour ago installed the Adata SSD. So far, so good. I presently am installing Catalina on the Adata and then will migrate data over. I'm trying to decide whether to do the migration from a Time Machine back-up made to a USB 3.0 external portable HDD or whether to migrate directly from the original SDD that I removed from the MacBook Air (I purchased a Wasmicro external case for the old SSD).

Oh wow, ok.. I did the Time Machine. Worked fine. If that case works with Apple drive, go for it.. You can do the restore from it if you know how, which is basically a clone. No need for 3rd party cloning sfw.. but I'd be interested if it works ok that way. I've read and seen it does, but never done myself. I didn't want to spend more money on this.. I just used my time machine backup on my external usb3 2tb drive..

 

[herb2k]

Hey guys, I have a Question. I just noticed that late 2013-2014 15" Pros somehow can't do PCIe Gen 3x4 for SSD while technically having a very similar (If not the same) Haswell/Crystalwell architecture with 2015 15". I wonder if it's the different PCH Revisions or just BootRom Limitation. This is a result of a lspci I installed on my 2015 15" (https://mj.ucw.cz/sw/pciutils/) Can someone check with their late 2013-2014 15" to see if this is actually the case?View attachment 960240

From what I read on everymac.com about the models, those years are all limited to PCIe 2.0 (x2):

MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.0 15" Late 2013 (IG) Specs (Retina Late 2013 15", ME293LL/A, MacBookPro11,2, A1398, 2674): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.0 15" Late 2013 (IG). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Late 2013 (IG) Specs (Retina Late 2013 15", BTO/CTO, MacBookPro11,2, A1398, 2674): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Late 2013 (IG). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

It may not be because of the CPU/PCH/chipset, but because the SSD interface doesn't have 4 physical lanes hooked up to it.

 

[mo5214]

From what I read on everymac.com about the models, those years are all limited to PCIe 2.0 (x2):

MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.0 15" Late 2013 (IG) Specs (Retina Late 2013 15", ME293LL/A, MacBookPro11,2, A1398, 2674): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.0 15" Late 2013 (IG). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Late 2013 (IG) Specs (Retina Late 2013 15", BTO/CTO, MacBookPro11,2, A1398, 2674): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Late 2013 (IG). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

It may not be because of the CPU/PCH/chipset, but because the SSD interface doesn't have 4 physical lanes hooked up to it.

Check again. They all have PCIe X4 lanes (as you can see from either my lspci output) and by calculating the max read/write speed those machines can achieve as well. Alternatively, you can check intel’s ARK info for HM87 chipset that the ssds will talk to, and see there that they support PCIe 2.0 at either x1, x2, x4 lanes. What I don’t know however, is what had Apple pulled off to get HM87 chipset to support PCIe Gen 3 speed on the 2015 15” as its not within the spec.

 

[herb2k]

Check again. They all have PCIe X4 lanes (as you can see from either my lspci output) and by calculating the max read/write speed those machines can achieve as well. Alternatively, you can check intel’s ARK info for HM87 chipset that the ssds will talk to, and see there that they support PCIe 2.0 at either x1, x2, x4 lanes. What I don’t know however, is what had Apple pulled off to get HM87 chipset to support PCIe Gen 3 speed on the 2015 15” as its not within the spec.

I'm going by what they note under 'Storage'. I know the i7-4xxx support x4 lanes, but it does require x4 to be hooked up at the physical interface. It is possible Apple did not wire all 4 lanes to the interface connector.

 

[Superhai]

From what I read on everymac.com about the models, those years are all limited to PCIe 2.0 (x2):

They support x4 both 13 and 15. So it is somewhere in the path some components which limits to pice v2.

 

[Stratus Fear]

From what I read on everymac.com about the models, those years are all limited to PCIe 2.0 (x2):

MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.0 15" Late 2013 (IG) Specs (Retina Late 2013 15", ME293LL/A, MacBookPro11,2, A1398, 2674): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.0 15" Late 2013 (IG). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Late 2013 (IG) Specs (Retina Late 2013 15", BTO/CTO, MacBookPro11,2, A1398, 2674): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Late 2013 (IG). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

It may not be because of the CPU/PCH/chipset, but because the SSD interface doesn't have 4 physical lanes hooked up to it.

All 15” 2013-2015 have four lanes to the SSD slot. What he’s wondering is why the 2015 has PCIe 3.0 support and the 2013-2014 do not, when they apparently have the same Crystal Well chipset. Indeed, another post points out that the HM87 chipset doesn’t support 3.0 according to Intel’s spec sheet. So people are wondering what Apple did with the 2015.