Anyone know of any reasons why my MacBook is running way slower after the SSD ugprade? When I had the original apple SSD everything ran faster. I don't understand what reasons the new ssd would be slower because when I ran the blackmagic test on my ADATA SSD it doubled the speed of my original apple one. My apple one was reading around 300-400. These are the stats and speeds of the current installed ADATA SSD.
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Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe
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Hey guys! I've been searching for the past few hours now, trying to look for a solution for my setup as well. Hopefully, someone can help me. As I read someone's post say, I'm sure it's in this thread, but it's very long. I've been sifting through page after page, going backward as suggested, but still no luck.
In addition to receiving help, I will be giving some as well, and I hope my contribution will answer someone else's question out there.
Here's my question: I have a mid 2015 MacBook Pro 15 inch. I'd like to install either a 1 or 2 TB hard drive. I was wondering if someone could guide me in the best set up, as well as what steps I need to take, and what hard drives, adapters, etc. I will need. I even read that I might need a 12+16 point converter or something along those lines. Thanks a lot.
Here is a possible solution I found for the kernel panic that I see people are experiencing: I was on a blog and came across someone who had a resolution for said issue. I'll copy and paste what was written there, and I'll also add the link to the site I found it from.
Again, I hope this helps someone out there. There's a ton of information in there, but I'm just copying and pasting the key part about the KP. This post seems to be more targeted towards MacBook Air users, but they do mention MacBook Pros amongst other Apple products for upgrade purposes.
LINK TO SITE: How to use an NVMe drive to upgrade your Mac's SSD
Apple has different power management modes for increasing battery life. One of those can cause a problem for users who upgrade to an NVMe drive in a 2013-2014 machine.
Some of these machines will kernel panic when attempting to go into standby mode. Standby is where the computer records a snapshot of the current state of your computer to the flash drive, usually after about 3 hours. A Mac on Standby can stay charged for up to 30 days without being plugged in.
The solution is to prevent the computer from going into Standby
Here's how to do it.
2015 and later machines need no modifications like this at all.
In addition to receiving help, I will be giving some as well, and I hope my contribution will answer someone else's question out there.
Here's my question: I have a mid 2015 MacBook Pro 15 inch. I'd like to install either a 1 or 2 TB hard drive. I was wondering if someone could guide me in the best set up, as well as what steps I need to take, and what hard drives, adapters, etc. I will need. I even read that I might need a 12+16 point converter or something along those lines. Thanks a lot.
Here is a possible solution I found for the kernel panic that I see people are experiencing: I was on a blog and came across someone who had a resolution for said issue. I'll copy and paste what was written there, and I'll also add the link to the site I found it from.
Again, I hope this helps someone out there. There's a ton of information in there, but I'm just copying and pasting the key part about the KP. This post seems to be more targeted towards MacBook Air users, but they do mention MacBook Pros amongst other Apple products for upgrade purposes.
LINK TO SITE: How to use an NVMe drive to upgrade your Mac's SSD
The problem with Standby
When we write, "with good results," there is a caveat. 2013-2014 machines treat hibernation differently than 2015 and later machines.Apple has different power management modes for increasing battery life. One of those can cause a problem for users who upgrade to an NVMe drive in a 2013-2014 machine.
Some of these machines will kernel panic when attempting to go into standby mode. Standby is where the computer records a snapshot of the current state of your computer to the flash drive, usually after about 3 hours. A Mac on Standby can stay charged for up to 30 days without being plugged in.
The solution is to prevent the computer from going into Standby
Here's how to do it.
- Open the Terminal app
- Type sudo pmset -a standby 0
- Press Return
- Quit the Terminal
2015 and later machines need no modifications like this at all.
Supported OS
You can run a range of macOS using these NVMe drives:- High Sierra
- Mojave
- Catalina
- Big Sur (probably)
From the reviews I checked, WD SN550 performs and ranks better than Crucial P2 except idle power consumption. The manufacturer's guaranteed endurance 600 TBW over 5 years (WD SN550 1TB) vs 300 TBW over 5 years (Crucial P2 1TB) says it clear and loud that the DRAMless "technology" inside WD/Sandisk controller is more advanced than Phison's E13T in this generation.
Do note that above reviews are done on PC with Windows. If you care about idle power consumption in Mac's, you should prioritise P2 (0.01A) over SN550 (0.16-0.18A), both with ssdpmEnabler. The difference is quite phenomenal. The best hope for SN550 owners is that a future firmware upgrade from WD will address the idle power "glitch".
Thanks. Indeed was referring to your report. I've fixed the data in the table, Confirmed working Mac & SSD models.
@BoPl How is your Crucial P2 doing?
@crystalwonders
A fresh install of MacOS requires sometime to "break in", lots of background jobs going on and trying to make your Mac run faster. Check again after the jobs are finished. If you aren't sure, just leave your MBA turned on for a day or overnight.
Btw, is 0.22A for your SSD with ssdpmeEnabler installed?
kvic,
I will receive P2 next week. Before that I'm planning to upgrade firmware on my Corsair Force MP510 SSD to new ECFM22.7 and try to install the SsdPmEnabler. And waiting for megaco reply to confirm what is his Sabrent Rocket firmware. For me is the big mission to upgrade firmware on MP510 SSD, Corsair SSD Upgrading Tool doesn't support MacOS and I don't have any Windows PC. So I have to use Boot Camp and install Windows on my MBP to try to upgrade the SSD firmware.
Thank you for sharing this👍🏼
I do have 1 question: have you measured while connected to mains, or when running on battery?
I get this error. What should I do?
panic(cpu 1 caller 0xffffff80126bf016): initproc exited -- exit reason namespace 2 subcode 0x4 description: none
uuid info:
0x10d86c000 uuid = <dea51514-b4e8-3368-979b-89d0f8397abc>
0x101e35000 uuid = <6083e0d1-1507-3c83-a7f9-269261462d97>
Thread 1 crashed
panic(cpu 1 caller 0xffffff80126bf016): initproc exited -- exit reason namespace 2 subcode 0x4 description: none
uuid info:
0x10d86c000 uuid = <dea51514-b4e8-3368-979b-89d0f8397abc>
0x101e35000 uuid = <6083e0d1-1507-3c83-a7f9-269261462d97>
Thread 1 crashed
See sig.. I have similar setup as you on 2015 MBA. I have similar numbers as you as well. I have no issues.. Maybe try nvram and SMC reset..
Have similar experience. Measurably slower - but overall it is faster.
Maybe the NVME connection takes some more computing - however it is not visible on the processor load.
Many days ago I am replacing the original SSD and the Sabrent Rocket 1TB with short Sintech adapter as the measurements are not correlated to my general feel about the speed. I feel that the computer is much faster, however all the measurements are the opposite. Maybe the more IOPS helps.
MBP 13" 2015 Early, 256 GB SSD (MZ-JPV2560/0A4), 8 GB memory.
In general: the Sabrent drive gives a faster (smoother) system - although the Blackmagic Speed test shows lower numbers.
On the original Apple SSD I measured around 1400/1400MB/s on the Sabrent I get only 1150/1250.
My system has PCIe 2.0 X4 connection, so the 1400 is really the maximum which I might reach.
I even went back to High Sierra on HFS+ file system, as the APFS was noticeably slower on my device since ever.
Measurements are not confirming it, but I feel a little lag on APFS. I kept HS until November, then I upgraded to BS.
Then did a clean install too on Big Sur (no time machine restore).
High Sierra did 1400/1400 on Sabrent too (HFS+ file system, Filevaoult off, indexing finished).
So APFS and NVME is slower than HFS+ and NVME.
The reason why I'm on Big Sur again is the fact, that I installed ssdpmenabler.kext on HS and after that my SSD started consuming 1,43 A peak. Checked the logs, it was loaded properly.
So with the same usage I do on BS it was consuming much more than BS without the ssdpmenabler.
Now on Big Sur (without the ssdpmenabler) it consumes 0,06-0,25 A. (that's nothing - even on battery).
I did a test, was able to browse the net and listen to music over BT headset for 7 hours (my battery is new).
So no ssdpmenabler anymore, and I'll play with the sleep/hibernation issue as the system consumes 2% per hour from battery. As I usually using it plugged in this is not an issue.
sudo pmset -a standbydelaylow 600
sudo pmset -a highstandbythreshold 50
sudo pmset -a standbydelayhigh 600
This should hibernate the content of the memory after 10 minutes.
Or simply set somehow the lid close action to shutdown (like in Windows Power Management)
I will not turn off SIP, it is not worth for me. No more testing from my side - finished here.
If there will be any other complications I simply buy a new computer as the 'hacking' not working and not safe.
And Sabrent will be used in another computer to enjoy the speed/capacity it offers. Original SSD goes back to computer and go on Ebay.
I'm wondering if you could have gotten more speed with a different drive?.. x4 should get better than that I think?. my 2015 MBA gets same numbers as you, maybe a little better.. 1121-write 1322-read.. with the ADATA.
AJA System test gives 1350/1350 on Big Sur for 1GB test file in my home directory.
And now I have at least 40 open tabs in various browsers plus bootcamp vm running.
Skype, Spotify, Qbittorrent runs at the background.
In my opinion other SSD would not be (a lot) faster. PCIe 2.0 X4 limits the maximum around 1400.
And now the SSD consumes 0,35A.
In my opinion the core issue that Big Sure seems to use the SSD as cache memory.
Swap is often used - and this free up the main memory. In my opinion at these times the SSD slows down.
Never managed to hang up the system, but I was able to consume much more memory then I have (8GB).
This means the swapping on SSD helps.
Of course at this time I measured 400/400 on Blackmagic. Most probably the rest of the bandwidth was used by the system.
If this is the case, then M1 Macs with 8GB memory will easily wear out the SSD and only MB replacement will help.
Had a look on the things with Silentknight/Lockrattler - Gatekeeper is 94 - although it was 181 on High Sierra.
Cannot find any updates which is pending or not installed. This is the only thing I found on a clean install with Big Sur.
Thanks @megaco
From my quick google (I really hope myself hasn't been dragged into this..), RKT3xx.x series firmware indicates newer Sabrent Rocket based on Phison E12S. And guess what? Folks at overclockers.co.uk claimed RKT303.3 is the equivalent of ECFM22.6 that Phison compiled for Sabrent.
I hope a future firmware update from Phison will make it work for existing owners. Meanwhile, I've added notes to Confirmed working Mac & SSD models in the User Guide to warn new users.
Looks like that's the case though I would re-phrase it like follows:
Phison E12/E12S reference design with ECFM22.6 firmware are not capable of lower power states in BigSur (i.e will kernel panics) and hence won't benefit from ssdpmEnabler. Also, very likely Phison E12S reference design based products with ECFM2x.x series firmware are incompatible too (until further evidence reported by users says otherwise).
So at the moment people who want to achieve AppleSSD-like (or even better) low idle power consumption may consider:
- Seagate Barracuda 510
- Sabrent Rocket with ECFM1x.x series firmware
- other re-branded Phison E12 reference design with ECFM1x.x series firmware; or
- simply Crucial P2
Changed "Mac's" to "BigSur". I don't mean to give people false hope but it's possible that a future BigSur update may do some magic...
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Attached you can find the report from my drive - RKT303.3.
Made it today in Icy Dock Nano case connected on USB-C to a HP laptop.
Downloaded the tool from here.
Definitely ECFM22.6 - but I had no kernel panics (yet). Although I only tried ssdpmenabler on High Sierra and immediately reverted back to Big Sur after realised the high power consume on the SSD.
On Big Sur the power consume is mostly under 0,5A which is fine. I mean this is not significantly decrease the battery operation time.
The big issue is the sleep. It seems it does not go to sleep at all and consumes even more energy than in normal operation. 2W/h is a significant energy usage while the rest of the computer is in low power state.
@pdudas
(just saw your reply to me like 10mins ago)
Thanks for confirming RKT303.3 = ECFM22.6! I believe some of us appreciate it.
ssdpmEnabler won't increase your SSD's power consumption. LOL. But I don't know what happened to your SSD in High Sierra.
I believe if you try ssdpmEnabler in BigSur, you'll get kernel panics on reboot. As a matter of fact, I think some of us will appreciate you carry out this experiment if you may.
Battery drain during sleep is the easiest to solve as you've found out.
(just saw your reply to me like 10mins ago)
Thanks for confirming RKT303.3 = ECFM22.6! I believe some of us appreciate it.
ssdpmEnabler won't increase your SSD's power consumption. LOL. But I don't know what happened to your SSD in High Sierra.
I believe if you try ssdpmEnabler in BigSur, you'll get kernel panics on reboot. As a matter of fact, I think some of us will appreciate you carry out this experiment if you may.
Battery drain during sleep is the easiest to solve as you've found out.
Hi,
I have no clue what happened in HS - the fact that it is end of life and also needs disabled SIP was a no go for me.
Just was significant increase as I have not seen the the SSD above 1A in Big Sur.
Was monitoring it as I did not install your kext in Big Sur as don't want to disable SIP.
If you need any other clarification about this 1TB Sabrent Rocket just let me know.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
I can try your kext if the following works:
- in recovery I disable SIP.
- reboot, install kext.
In case the system will not boot after this - I'll try to boot in recovery and enable SIP.
That should prevent loading unsigned kexts and I HOPE the system will boot after this action without your kext.
Don't really want to reinstall the Big Sur again - even if I have a Time machine backup it does not load it at the first boot. So first Big Sur install from USB (an hour), then at the first boot restore from TM. It takes almost 2 hours - and my system is empty (20GB size in TM). Plus this way all the custom settings I do is lost. Especially pmset related things are reseted.
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Hmm..ok, well that's a lot running at once with only 8gb.. My numbers are with nothing running.. and I will NOT go up to Big Sur.. Any OS has a page file, but in your case with running so much at once, I'm sure it uses that often... I'm still kicking around going back down to Mojave or even High Sierra..but Catalina seems to work ok on this for my use case, along with this ADATA 2tb...
I recommend to read page 1. That should answer (nearly) all your questions.
Based on the last discussions, I would buy a P2 SSD + Sintech Adapter.
Big Sur's BootRom solved the kernel panics you are referring to.
AND, take a look at page 1 as @MauriceG suggested.
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On Big Sur also the Sabrent Rocket 1TB (RTK303.3) works fine.
Without the ssdpmenabler and other magic the SSD consumes 0,06-0,43A based on the last days statistic.
Also with the careful settings for the Sleep/Hibernation options the device safely works.
Applied the following settings:
sudo pmset -a standbydelaylow 600
sudo pmset -a highstandbythreshold 50
sudo pmset -a standbydelayhigh 600
This ensures that after 10 minutes of sleep the computer write the content of the memory to the disk and goes to low power state. (I don't care about a wear level on a replaceable SSD).
Tested tonight, working.
After unplugging the device, sent to sleep (from apple logo, sleep) around 23:00, then opened the lid at 09:30 with 100% battery.
Worked few hours - then I sent it again to sleep at 65% battery and 2h later it was still 65%.
So I think this way the SSD is turned off after 10m which helps conserving the battery.
Start takes approximately 2-3s (from opening the lid to the login screen) - in my opinion this is fast enough.
Not so instant like before, but also not like a boot.
And last but not least: it is a stock installation without any additional extensions.
Does not require any magic - except sending the device to hibernation earlier than the factory settings.
Sabrent is much faster than the factory SSD - although it is not really measurable.
Almost the same speed measured by the test programs (1400/1400 on PCIe 2.0 X4 equipped laptop) - but old SSD had 130MB/s unzipping speed (from SSD to SSD) and this has around 250MB/s. That is almost double. So that's why I feel that the new is much smoother...
Yesterday was copying the downloaded movies to external drives. 1x 3,5" USB WD Red drive - 150MB/s, then 1x USB WD Elements (2,5") 120MB/s and during that I was also copying to my NAS with almost 100MB/s (limited by the gigabit ethernet to TB2). 3 copy operation at the same time. This was not possible with the old SSD.
And the system was also responsing.
So (IMHO) the Sabrent SSD is extremely good. The 1M+ IOPS (R+W) makes it much faster than the original SSD which measured to be as fast as this by all the test programs. But it seems read and write speed is just one factor of the system performance which depends on the SSD. There is no other proof why my system performance increased so much (doubled) with an SSD which measured same fast (or even slower sometimes) than the previous one.
Last words: do not use Sabrent RKT303.3 with Big Sur on normal sleep settings (on 13" Early 2015 (A1502))! Computer does not go to sleep properly and depletes the battery by 2-3%/h.
With the above listed commands this can be prevented without any further issues.
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Hi, I did the switch on my 2015 rMBP. Bought the Sintech Adapter from their site and got a WD Blue 1tb drive for the storage. The Sintech adapter had instructions to do a clean install with a Mojave USB installer. So I used that and then upgraded to Big Sur (because my time machine backup was made running Big Sur). After installing my back-up from time machine I have issues with the admin account on the computer. For example I can't add an other user because it rejects the pw that I use when logging onto the computer. Anyone have any ideas what I need to do?
Big Sur Does not accept user account (administrator) password!
I just updated to Big Sir from Catalina 10.15.6 beta 2, and the updating process completed without problems and finally Big Sur started and showed desktop. My Mac is macmini 2018, and Big Sur is installed on the external USB drive. The main system Catalina is installed on the internal disk. I...
forums.macrumors.com
My MBA upgrade report & problems:
With the security update of Mojave 10.14.6, my bootROM was upgraded to 429.0.0.0.0 and this happened with the Adata SSD inside! That’s the good news.
The bad news with my Adata SD8200 is that NVMeFix & Lilu won’t make any difference in SSD power consumption.
So I was thrilled to read @kvic SsdPmEnabler.kext solution as it would reduce the consumption about 50%.
This didn’t work out well:
@kvic Hopefully you have some time to update your kext to make sure it will work for my configuration? I’m available for any assistance.
Would be great as it’s the only way I can get my power consumption under control with this SSD!
I don’t have iStat but I definitely notice less battery life with the CPU area being hotter than before.
Many thanks for helping!
- Config: MBA 6.2 13” mid 2013
- Mojave 10.14.6
- Upgraded to Adata SX8200 PRO 1 TB
With the security update of Mojave 10.14.6, my bootROM was upgraded to 429.0.0.0.0 and this happened with the Adata SSD inside! That’s the good news.
The bad news with my Adata SD8200 is that NVMeFix & Lilu won’t make any difference in SSD power consumption.
So I was thrilled to read @kvic SsdPmEnabler.kext solution as it would reduce the consumption about 50%.
This didn’t work out well:
- Followed the manual to the letter, checking the input before executing in Terminal
- It all went well until I tried to update the Kext cache. 10 sec after doing so I got a Kernal panic and it couldn’t even reload the MacOS completely anymore: the Apple logo screen loaded very slowly and near the end of the white band, it created a never ending circle of kernel panics.
- Turned it completely OFF, restarted and same thing happens.
- Uninstalled the kext in recovery mode using “If your Mac does not boot…”
- Rebooted normally
- Tried the entire process again starting at “Disable part of SIP”
- This time I got past the update of the kext cache, I got the signature warning (didn’t get that the first time as it takes a while to appear)
- I executed the kext load and when I was about to check if it loaded correctly, it had another kernel panic resulting in the same loop of kernel panics.
- Uninstalled it again and all was back to square one.
@kvic Hopefully you have some time to update your kext to make sure it will work for my configuration? I’m available for any assistance.
Would be great as it’s the only way I can get my power consumption under control with this SSD!
I don’t have iStat but I definitely notice less battery life with the CPU area being hotter than before.
Many thanks for helping!
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I have no clue why but having almost an identical setup, I have exactly the same experience!
Short answer: If you are an avarage user you do not need to worry.
Detailed answer:
- With the OEM Apple SSD inside use a utility which shows you the SMART values of your SSD, i.e. smartmontools on the command line or there are also graphical apps.
- Check values 175 Host_Writes_MiB and 9 Power_On_Hours
- On my MacBook Pro 15 Mid 2014my relevant SMART values are currently:
- 9 "Power_On_Hours" is 13852
- 175 Host_Writes_MiB is 36687538 which are 36 TB written after ca. 6 years total ownership!
- So I have used it 6.3 hours every day on average! I am quite a frequent user (professional and private) though not ultra heavy write applications (video cutting, code compiling, etc), but still, quite a lot.
- 6 years of professional+private totalling 36 TB write operations are only 12% usage of the maximum 300 TB write maximum of your prospected SSD. So plenty of overhead!
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Note: I have read the last 1000 posts or so over the last 6 hours. 😉
Nevertheless need one clarification: "without patching" means what exactly in this context?
That the significantly reduced wattage is possible with:
1) Newest firmware (=EFI) delivers that alone
2) Newest firmware + MacOS Big Sur
3) SsdPmEnabler alone is enough as this is an extension itself (which extends the kernel ofc) but does not really "patch anything" else in that sense
4) NVMeFix plugin inside lilu. I guess this is not needed anymore as it is patching by its nature, as I understood it.