First, update using the stock Apple SSD and then install the P2.
What do you have in the USB Stick?
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Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe
- Thread starter maxthackray
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I did that. Im now on Big Sur but it still does not find the new P2.
A bootable version of el capitan 10.11
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Your Boot ROM Version should be 431.140.6.0.0 with Big Sur.
No. It is too old.
Using the same USB stick, format it as HFS+ and create a Big Sur installer. Remove the stock Apple SSD and put the P2 + adapter in its place, boot the installer from the USB stick. Choose Disk Utility. You should be able to format the P2 now.
Thanks! SSD is working now.
Just 2 Issues: On bootup, after typing the password, there is now always some kind of progress bar which needs some time - I dont think i had that delay before.
Moreover, on Big Sur the machine runs incredibely hot, CPU Die on 75 on idle.
Please note, im complete mac newbie, im doing that setup for my mom
Just 2 Issues: On bootup, after typing the password, there is now always some kind of progress bar which needs some time - I dont think i had that delay before.
Moreover, on Big Sur the machine runs incredibely hot, CPU Die on 75 on idle.
Please note, im complete mac newbie, im doing that setup for my mom
The boot up password is prob filevault 2. So the time between power on button being clicked to the password login should be seconds. And then after that it boots for real. Since filevault encrypts partition, u need to unlock it first before the system can boot at all .Thanks! SSD is working now.
Just 2 Issues: On bootup, after typing the password, there is now always some kind of progress bar which needs some time - I dont think i had that delay before.
Moreover, on Big Sur the machine runs incredibely hot, CPU Die on 75 on idle.
Please note, im complete mac newbie, im doing that setup for my mom
The progress bar is not a problem. It happens in Big Sur.
Wait for a couple of days. If it is still that hot at idle, you probably need to repaste the CPU/GPU dies:
Also, @kvic has a FAQ (https://github.com/kvic-z/SsdPmEnabler/wiki/FAQ) which can help you reduce power consumption (ensure you read the full FAQ, including item 3 about MacBookAir6,2 (yours??) not being supported by his SsdPmEnabler).
Please note, im complete mac newbie, im doing that setup for my mom
Ok, im gonna try this.
Actually I did repaste ... had some leftover thermal grizzly hydronaut. Hope its indeed because of indexing (actually the mac is completely clean, so nothing to index, lol)
Well, its a problem because it feels very strange to type in the password and wait again - but if you say its normal I dont really care. Ill try this with filevault..
Thanks for help!
Well I've been running a Crucial P2 2TB in my 2015 15" MBP since April 2021 without issue until a few weeks ago, but now I can't go a few days without kernel panicking.
How does one go about testing the health of the drive? My usual go-to, DriveDx, doesn't see it internally or in a caddy.
How does one go about testing the health of the drive? My usual go-to, DriveDx, doesn't see it internally or in a caddy.
I can't re-iterate this more often. Given what you've described, I'm pretty confident to say months of use had developed some sort of poor contacts between P2, the adaptor or the socket.
Mitigations:
- re-seat your adaptor & P2
- use your common sense and put some Kapton tape. Instructions available on post #1
- i know i know..some folks said it's no longer necessary and blah..
- use both hands to hold your Mac always if you can
I like the peace of mind with absolute stability.
The best way to monitor SSD health IMO is checking SMART log. I'm only familiar with CLI tools such as smarttools i.e. the command smartctl. You can install this tool through Homebrew.
Hi,
just wanted to give an update on my SSD Upgrade on my MBP12,1. I ended up buying the WD Blue SN550 1Tb + Sintech adaptor. The installation went very smoothly (Bootable USB with BigSur Installer + external disc with Time Machine Backup). Then I installed W10 with Bootcamp and downloaded WD Dashboard to check if the Firmware was up to date (it was up to date as shown in image attached).
Then I switched back to MacOx to install kext (thanks @kvic )and test the W and R velocities as well as the idle power consumption. I have attached a disk speed test of the Original Apple SSD and then idle power consumption + disc speed test of the SN550.
I have been working with both W10 and BigSur for the past few days and I have no complaints so far, battery drain during sleep mode is minimal and everything else runs pretty well! Again just wanted to thank this thread and all the people that helped through the process!!
just wanted to give an update on my SSD Upgrade on my MBP12,1. I ended up buying the WD Blue SN550 1Tb + Sintech adaptor. The installation went very smoothly (Bootable USB with BigSur Installer + external disc with Time Machine Backup). Then I installed W10 with Bootcamp and downloaded WD Dashboard to check if the Firmware was up to date (it was up to date as shown in image attached).
Then I switched back to MacOx to install kext (thanks @kvic )and test the W and R velocities as well as the idle power consumption. I have attached a disk speed test of the Original Apple SSD and then idle power consumption + disc speed test of the SN550.
I have been working with both W10 and BigSur for the past few days and I have no complaints so far, battery drain during sleep mode is minimal and everything else runs pretty well! Again just wanted to thank this thread and all the people that helped through the process!!
Wait, your DriveDx doesn't show your NVMe drive internally? It should. Make sure it's up to date. Since it should work fine out of the box. I'm on an old 2014 11inch MBA and it's working perfectly just fine. I can see the SMART data etc
I just tried updating from 11.5 to 11.6 using the P2 and long Sintech adapter. Once the Mac rebooted during the update, it hangs at a black screen. I’ve tried rebooting into recovery, Internet recovery and a bootable USB. My best guess is the update never completed and it’s stuck mid-update.
However with the P2 installed, i don’t even get an on screen confirmation that any recovery mode or boot disk selection has been detected when using the key combos, just a black screen. With the original Apple drive installed, everything works fine.
Has 11.6 disabled third party drives, or is it possible my drive but the dust?
However with the P2 installed, i don’t even get an on screen confirmation that any recovery mode or boot disk selection has been detected when using the key combos, just a black screen. With the original Apple drive installed, everything works fine.
Has 11.6 disabled third party drives, or is it possible my drive but the dust?
i have also had these kind of probems with my p2 and sintech adapter with 2015 macbook air.
i have returned it for a refund, in my opinion p2 is not a good compatible drive with macos.
At least it was not for me..
I'm using Addlink S70 which has a Phison E12S controller. And it works just fine in 11.6 . I upgraded using the full installer tho (since i always make the latest bootable installer on a USB, so by upgrading using it I can test that it works and in the process upgraded my laptop)
So far I have never had any problems going from a stock apple drive to my sintech+NVMe. Hibernation works , installation works. Everything works . I haven't tried bootcamp tho. So idk about that one
1.
Have you actually put back Apple SSD, install 11.5, and then upgrade to 11.6 or what? Or you simply recall the 'good old days' things were different and better..
2.
I'm guessing 'hangs at a black screen' was actually the upgrade process doing its work. You prematurely interrupted an upgrade process and the rest was complication due to your unnecessary intervention.
Sorry for not giving updates for a couple of days
The 2015 Apple SSD WORKS PERFECTLY WITH MY MACBOOK! 😚😚
Unfortunately the screen had been partially broken, and it seems that it needs to be replaced.So I won't be using this macbook for a while and considering switching to a new windows laptop
Thanks for the helps while I was here 😚😚
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You can check your SSD health with SMARTReporter as well as with SSDReporter. Both work well in Demo mode, and with the Crucial P2.
Mac SSDReporter - check & monitor your SSD / Flash Storage health
mac app to monitor SSD health
www.corecode.io
Mac SMARTReporter - protect your data with disk failure prediction
mac app to monitor hard disk drive health
www.corecode.io
I've finally got all of the items necessary for my SSD upgrade. I'm wondering if there's a standard set of data points to get so that others may benefit from my experience.
I'm upgrading a mid-2013 Macbook Air 13 i7/256GB/8GB. It's a MBA 6,2. I'm currently on High Sierra and plan on staying there.
I going with a 480GB Corsair MP510 using the Sintech adapter. Since this is a MBA 6,2 I don't think kvic's ktext file is applicable.
Just wondering what data should I collect to be useful for thread.
I'm upgrading a mid-2013 Macbook Air 13 i7/256GB/8GB. It's a MBA 6,2. I'm currently on High Sierra and plan on staying there.
I going with a 480GB Corsair MP510 using the Sintech adapter. Since this is a MBA 6,2 I don't think kvic's ktext file is applicable.
Just wondering what data should I collect to be useful for thread.
I think info like r/w speeds and idle power consumption would be very useful. I have the same MBA model. I also plan to document my update here. But I'm still waiting for the adapter to arrive. Also, I haven't finally decided which SSD to use. Corsair MP510 is one of the candidates; Crucial P2 is another. I'm also very interested in SK Hynix Gold P31, known for its low power consumption. I have already created a Windows To Go USB so I would be able to update P31's firmware. There are recent reports here saying P31 works. But the Sintech product page (http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2015-macbook-ssd-p-1139.html) still indicates otherwise. I'm very much confused by such conflicting information.
So read/write speeds would be easy. It seems Black Magic is the app to use.
I'm wondering what app shows power consumption? Is that on the Black Magic app too?
A general report will be nice. I can't think of any that's not already known or can't be estimated. But thanks for asking
Out of box idle power will be like:
- Corsair MP510 - 0.17A
- Crucial P2 - 0.10A
- Hynix P31 Gold - 0.10A
The adaptor is a very simple piece of PCB. What a seller said about compatibility isn't very important. I won't be surprised sellers actually copied information from folks in this thread. So you can expect they'll eventually pick it up weeks or months later. The adaptor I bought was noname and costed me $1. I've stared at electronics long enough, can guess quality from pictures. If you aren't like me or want some assurance, going with a "brand-name" like Sintech or NFHK is a safe bet.
OK, I've finished my update of my mid-2013 MacBook Air (MBA 6,2). I had a stock 256GB SSD (Samsung) and I'm replacing it with a 480GB Corsair MP510.
Installation was easy (but don't forget to plug the battery back in before putting the bottom case back on), but I did some things on the restore side that wasted time.
The method I used for restoring my system was to install macOS High Sierra using a bootable USB Install drive. I made a Time Machine backup on an external HDD right before I started the process. The plan was to install macOS onto the new SSD and restore from the Time Machine.
This is where I had some inefficiencies.
My original SSD was formatted in APFS. My Time Machine backup was formatted in MacOS (Journaled). When I installed macOS onto the new SSD, I selected APFS (case-sensitive) ... don't know why I did that, thought it might be a good idea. After the install finished, I selected restore from Time Machine and got an error. The dialog box indicated that my source was not formatted in case-sensitive while my destination was. Uggh! (NOTE - my Time Capsule backups also didn't work)
So I compounded the error at this point. I reinstalled my original SSD with the intent to make a new Time Machine back-up using APFS (case-sensitive) as the format. I wiped the Time Machine HDD and formatted it in APFS (case-sensitive) and tried making a backup. Uggh! Time Machine drives have to be formatted in macOS format. Damn, I wiped my back up for no reason.
At this point, I verified that my original SSD was in APFS format and not APFS (case-sensitive) and decided that I'll re-install macOS onto the SSD in regular APFS.
Swapped the SSD back in. Did the Install process again and was able to restore from my Time Machine backup. All of this took hours, so I left it overnight, until now. Works perfectly, but I still had to sign in to things and I'm currently re-building my Photos library. I probably should have chosen to restore from a SuperDuper! clone instead. Oh well.
So - the moral here is to take note of what your drives and back-ups are formatted in. You can find this info in Disk Utility. Select the drive in the left panel and do a Get-Info to see more detail information.
Here are the speed results. The original drive had read/write speeds of 540/711. The new drive was 1313/1367. So it's much faster. Note - I used the 2GB stress test on the original drive and both 2GB and 5GB on the new drive. Didn't seem to be a difference in test results between 2 and 5GB.
Original 256GB Samsung/Apple SSD
New Corsair MP510 - 480GB
Installation was easy (but don't forget to plug the battery back in before putting the bottom case back on), but I did some things on the restore side that wasted time.
The method I used for restoring my system was to install macOS High Sierra using a bootable USB Install drive. I made a Time Machine backup on an external HDD right before I started the process. The plan was to install macOS onto the new SSD and restore from the Time Machine.
This is where I had some inefficiencies.
My original SSD was formatted in APFS. My Time Machine backup was formatted in MacOS (Journaled). When I installed macOS onto the new SSD, I selected APFS (case-sensitive) ... don't know why I did that, thought it might be a good idea. After the install finished, I selected restore from Time Machine and got an error. The dialog box indicated that my source was not formatted in case-sensitive while my destination was. Uggh! (NOTE - my Time Capsule backups also didn't work)
So I compounded the error at this point. I reinstalled my original SSD with the intent to make a new Time Machine back-up using APFS (case-sensitive) as the format. I wiped the Time Machine HDD and formatted it in APFS (case-sensitive) and tried making a backup. Uggh! Time Machine drives have to be formatted in macOS format. Damn, I wiped my back up for no reason.
At this point, I verified that my original SSD was in APFS format and not APFS (case-sensitive) and decided that I'll re-install macOS onto the SSD in regular APFS.
Swapped the SSD back in. Did the Install process again and was able to restore from my Time Machine backup. All of this took hours, so I left it overnight, until now. Works perfectly, but I still had to sign in to things and I'm currently re-building my Photos library. I probably should have chosen to restore from a SuperDuper! clone instead. Oh well.
So - the moral here is to take note of what your drives and back-ups are formatted in. You can find this info in Disk Utility. Select the drive in the left panel and do a Get-Info to see more detail information.
Here are the speed results. The original drive had read/write speeds of 540/711. The new drive was 1313/1367. So it's much faster. Note - I used the 2GB stress test on the original drive and both 2GB and 5GB on the new drive. Didn't seem to be a difference in test results between 2 and 5GB.
Original 256GB Samsung/Apple SSD
New Corsair MP510 - 480GB
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I initially had the P2 on 11.5, then encountered this issue when updating to 11.6. I've put the Apple SSD back in and was able to update that successfully to 11.6.
I'm sure you're right, I just interrupted the installation. I was able to get the drive to be discovered in an external enclosure, but I'm frequently getting partition table and unwritable errors. The update was taking so much longer than others that I figured it had frozen, but I think what actually happened is that since the P2 doesn't have a DRAM cache it was just slowing to a crawl during the install. When I updated using the Apple SSD, it flew through the update.
Here's to hoping I'm able to wipe the P2...
Should be no problem to restore P2 back to pristine state
BTW, can you confidently tell if you got the TLC or QLC version?
I don't think DRAM-less is the culprit.
I think you might genuinely bump in some sort of real issue potentially for the QLC version of P2 under V. RARE usage scenario. Say, for example, you've done lot of write (over 100GB) a couple of days before you decided to upgrade MacOS. As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't know what's the recovery time for QLC P2's fast cache. It could be from hours up to a couple of days to fully recover. That time again depends on how often you leave your Mac machine turned on...so pretty complicated to estimate..
What people could help to corroborate your 'issue' is if they also run into similar problem. And do they have TLC or QLC version of the P2. And do they run into such slow MacOS update/upgrade often enough.
Anyway, I think the way forward for you will be leave your Mac machine turned on (not sleeping) overnight before the MacOS update. While during the update, just be patient.
Due to sealed volume introduced since Big Sur, Apple not only makes update/upgrade much larger but also take much longer with multiple mandatory reboots.