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

[xanderx007]

How?

Download the latest OCLP offline GIU version. You'll see how.

 

[Mallor]

W

Welcome to the A2000-Team...

Reading your posts about your hasslefree experience was definitely instrumental for me in choosing the Kingston. Nice to be able to say thank you directly

It is last chance saloon for the A2000 which has been discontinued, but is currently still available from small sellers via Ebay etc. Membership on the team will soon be closed.

 

[vince22]

SSDPMEnabler simply means SSD Power Management Enabler. Based on the author's claims, it manages how non-Apple NVMe SSDs consume power, especially during idle mode.

It has a similar (if not the same) functionalities as the NVMeFix, which is included in OCLP. You can install NVMeFix through Opencore without having to upgrade to Monterey (or previously Big Sur), as I have inadvertently, and my A2000's idle power went down to almost zero at times.

Now I'm wondering why some people are installing both when they can use either one.

i agree, using OCLP here with my early 2015 13"MBP, if not mistaken NVmefix has included similar ssdpmenabler functionality, plus unlocks Universal control, power savings functionality works very well, results may vary.

 

[GigabitEthernet]

Do I have to worry about this idle power drain stuff on a rMBP late 2013? Is anyone able to summarise the best drive for me?

 

[xanderx007]

Thank you for the clarification, I found a 128 Gb original SSD at a local auction dealer for $20, so I'll try with that and then sell that SSD on to the next person who needs it.

Have fun!

 

[xanderx007]

Do I have to worry about this idle power drain stuff on a rMBP late 2013? Is anyone able to summarise the best drive for me?

Just read through the posts (as most of use have, you'll need the research).

No one post, SSD, adapter, or installation works generally across the board. One SSD might work well with one model but not another, so your best bet is to search for your model on this thread.

Incidentally though, @Mallor has the same model as yours (check his post), so you might want to get an A2000 as well.

 

[Brad_C]

After a couple of days testing with the P31 2TB on a Late 2013 13" Pro Retina (432.60.3.0.0) I see idle power :
Stock : ~100mA (~330mW).
With SsdPmEnabler : ~48mA (~160mW).

Under heavy load, a max around 650mA (~2.1W) for both cases.

Almost not worth worrying about. Some 1.2% difference over a 6 hour battery run (or just under 5 minutes of runtime).

Edit : In Linux it seems to idle ~35mA. I'm seeing small variations between 34 & 36mA, so there's certainly enough resolution in the measurement. What the accuracy is would be anyones guess.

 

[ThinhNC]

Just wanted to share my own experience.

I got hold of a 13“ early 2015 Macbook Pro with original 256 GB SSD. After diving deep into this thread, I decided to upgrade it with the 1TB Kingston A2000 and the long Sintech adapter because it came in a set with the torx screw drivers needed to open the Mac and swap out the SSD.

My priorities in choosing the Kingston were compatibility, reliability, and low power consumption, rather than speed. I also wanted to make sure the SSD was using TLC memory, after reading on Amazon that some manufacturers like Crucial had switched to QLC.

The whole transition was seamless from start to finish: Installed Monterey on the original SSD to get the latest bootrom, created a bootable USB stick for Monterey, opened up the Mac, disconnected the battery (hardest part of the operation), swapped out the SSD, started the Macbook from the bootable stick, formatted the SSD to APFS, installed Monterey on it, transferred everything else with migration assistant – job done.

The set-up is running smoothly, no problems with sleep or wake-up, no change in battery life, not losing excessive charge during sleep, no need for additional kexts, no panics, no nothing, speed is as expected.

I am very happy with my new old Macbook. Thanks for everyone’s contribution on here which helped me find the optimal solution for my needs.

TLDR works great with 1TB Kingston A2000 and Monterey for 13“ early 2015 Macbook Pro.

Hi Mallor,

Would you mind to share a bit more on the migration assistant part? Since I just got an A2000 and about to swap the SSD following your steps here but I just want to make sure I done everything correctly to have a backup to the new SSD without any issue. Your sharing knowledge is appreciated.

 

[Riaan]

Good day. I can't find any info on these products compatibility. I got a MacBook Pro 13-Inch Core i5 2.6 Mid-2014 and I want to upgrade the storage. I can get these from suppliers, just want to find out if these will work on my Macbook.

Kingston SNVS/1000G 1Tb/1000Gb
Kingston SNVS/500G 500Gb
Gigabyte GP-GSM2NE3100TNTD 1000Gb/1Tb
Gigabyte GP-GSM2NE3512GNTD 512Gb

Kind regards

 

[xanderx007]

Good day. I can't find any info on these products compatibility. I got a MacBook Pro 13-Inch Core i5 2.6 Mid-2014 and I want to upgrade the storage. I can get these from suppliers, just want to find out if these will work on my Macbook.

Kingston SNVS/1000G 1Tb/1000Gb
Kingston SNVS/500G 500Gb
Gigabyte GP-GSM2NE3100TNTD 1000Gb/1Tb
Gigabyte GP-GSM2NE3512GNTD 512Gb

Kind regards

Kingston SNVS is the NV1, so yes, it should work. I'm currently testing an external-mounted 2TB NV1 with Monterey via OCLP.

 

[Riaan]

Kingston SNVS is the NV1, so yes, it should work. I'm currently testing an external-mounted 2TB NV1 with Monterey via OCLP.

Thank you very much for the help!

 

[pacificoast]

Much appreciated for the response! It seems like you've used SsdPmEnabler when you observed this "efficiency".

As I mentioned in my original question, I have NO intention to add any kexts or its variants (whether it be SsdPmEnabler, NVMeFix, lilu, OpenCore, etc). Given this, can we still expect the same "performance" or "efficiency" from Gold P31 when compared to the others in my list (assuming also WITHOUT kexts)?

Out of my search, so far there was only one post that mentioned using P31 WITHOUT kexts and unfortunately almost every other report I've seen had some sort of kexts applied to it. Thus, I couldn't really assess/compare them (or did I miss posts discussing this?). Info on Sabrent Rocket Q is also quite sparse it seems...

I'm not worried about R/W speeds as I'm quite content with default Apple SSD already, so anything better is a bonus. Primarily, I was trying to gauge if the extra $20.00 is worth it over Sabrent Rocket Q IF WITHOUT kexts (with respect to longevity and/or power efficiency)--was hoping somebody had knowledge of this...

Or should I not bother and just grab the P31?

I’ve been running a 1TB P31 in two of my MacBook Pro Retina 15" Late 2013 (MacBookPro11,3) completely native without any kexts for several months and have had no problems at all. Bootcamp and Windows 10 works very well too.

Nick

 

[pacificoast]

January 2021 I put a 1TB Crucial P2 in my Late 2013 MacbookPro 11,1 based on where this thread was at back then. The extra space was a massive improvement over the 250GB I bought it with.

After 14 months (6,200 hours on-time) and only 8TBW I've ditched it in favour of a 2TB P31. What a difference. I was unlucky enough to get one of the newer QLC P2s and it just degraded into a performance nightmare. Quick performance benchmarks were ok, but sustained reads were below 600MBs (down to below 200MB/s on some parts of the drive) and sustained writes started at ~500MB/s and dropped to ~40MB/s once the SLC cache filled up.

The P31 is much nicer. Will be interesting to see how that performs over the next year.

I completely agree. I had a 1TB P2 which was horrible too, caused both of my MacBook Pros Retina 15" Late 2013 (MacBookPro11,3) to crash almost daily. I swapped to a 1TB P31 and it’s been completely stable since December in both machines.

Nick

 

[JonasAnd]

Has anyone tried a 4TB drive in MBP or MBA?
I've only read about people using Mac Pros installing them...

How come no one seems to have tried them in a laptop here?

Is it a cost issue, reliability/heat, or does it simply not fit inside?

These drives come to mind:

Sabrent Rocket 4TB (TLC)
Corsair MP510 4TB (TLC)
Corsair MP400 4TB/8TB QLC double sided (22x80x3)mm
WD_BLACK SN750 4TB (TLC)
Western Digital 4TB WD Red SN700 (TLC)


It would be nice to know the maximum height a m.2 drive can have and still fit inside a Macbook Pro (or Air).

Double sided drives are perhaps taller then single sided, but it's hard to find specs on dimensions for the different drives.

 

[xboxbml]

Has anyone tried a 4TB drive in MBP or MBA?
I've only read about people using Mac Pros installing them...

How come no one seems to have tried them in a laptop here?

Is it a cost issue, reliability/heat, or does it simply not fit inside?

These drives come to mind:

Sabrent Rocket 4TB (TLC)
Corsair MP510 4TB (TLC)
Corsair MP400 4TB/8TB QLC double sided (22x80x3)mm
WD_BLACK SN750 4TB (TLC)
Western Digital 4TB WD Red SN700 (TLC)


It would be nice to know the maximum height a m.2 drive can have and still fit inside a Macbook Pro (or Air).

Double sided drives are perhaps taller then single sided, but it's hard to find specs on dimensions for the different drives.

I would like to know also.. I've got my 2015 MBA with 2TB ADATA that I like. I've still got a while to go before I have to go 4tb.. but would like to know also what would fit and work best. Price isn't too much of a concern for me.

 

[Sinthesis]

After a couple of days testing with the P31 2TB on a Late 2013 13" Pro Retina (432.60.3.0.0) I see idle power :
Stock : ~100mA (~330mW).
With SsdPmEnabler : ~48mA (~160mW).
...

I’ve been running a 1TB P31 in two of my MacBook Pro Retina 15" Late 2013 (MacBookPro11,3) completely native without any kexts for several months and have had no problems at all...

@ Brad_C, @ pacificoast: Much thanks for the additional datapoints! I personally ended up just "risking" it and bought a P31.

--------------

Some findings after ~10 days with P31 below. Note that I don't have iStat Menus so report will be rudimentary--apologies if the format is non-standard for this thread but it highlights the metrics/features I care the most about:

MBP 13" Early 2015, macOS Monterey 12.2.1, BootRom 428.60.3.0.0, battery recently replaced (<100 cycles):

• New SSD: SK Hynix Gold P31 ($110)
• kexts: None
• Thermal Paste: recently replaced with Arctic MX-4 during SSD replacement
• SSD Temperature:
  • Observed avg (observed min, max): ~44C (~37C, ~48C)
• Observed battery performance:
  • Active: ~7-10% / 30min (est. total hours ~5-6 hrs)
  • Lid closed:
    • Complete stock settings: ~10-20% / ~8 hrs (overnight; ~2%/hr drain)
    • After sudo pmset settings recommended by @ vince22 here: ~1-5% / ~8 hrs (overnight; ~0.3%/hr drain)
• SSD Read/write:
  • Not checked; minimal importance to me. Qualitatively, felt slight but detectable improvement in speed (opening apps, etc is faster).

The temps I'm seeing from P31 is about ~5C higher compared to Rocket Q (light blue) that I had in the past (relegated to clone-drive) and ~10C higher than AppleSSD.

P31 feels faster than Rocket Q. P31 battery drain feels slightly better in both active/lid-closed situation compared to Rocket Q (can't recall Rocket Q's specifics) but otherwise seemed identical. Personally, I'm comfortable with the purchase but not blown away by it (without kexts).

 

[Jedi82]

Hello guys! What the best choice for a new ssd on a Macbook pro 13'' 2014 in these days? Thanks so so much for the advices

 

[Doctor Blue]

Hi, everybody! I updated my MacBook Pro 15, mid 15, from the stock 256gb SSD to a Samsung 970 EVO PLUS, 2TB. While the initial install (Monterey 12.3) went great and I was really happy with the purchase, things started to slow down. The boot time took around a minute or so, and the apps took a long time to load. I mainly use my laptop for music production and photo editing (both at an amateur level). I got issues with Logic Pro X - it loaded my VSTs really slow and was hearing some cracking noises. I also ran out of memory really fast so I decide to go back to Catalina. But now I have some backwards compatibility with the latest Logic Pro. I am really not happy with the purchase and I cannot return the Samsung EVO. I would have probably noticed these things earlier, had I not been ill for a few weeks.

Any suggestions would be great. I am hoping not to change the EVO...

 

[macpro_mid2014]

Hi, everybody! I updated my MacBook Pro 15, mid 15, from the stock 256gb SSD to a Samsung 970 EVO PLUS, 2TB. While the initial install (Monterey 12.3) went great and I was really happy with the purchase, things started to slow down. The boot time took around a minute or so, and the apps took a long time to load. I mainly use my laptop for music production and photo editing (both at an amateur level). I got issues with Logic Pro X - it loaded my VSTs really slow and was hearing some cracking noises. I also ran out of memory really fast so I decide to go back to Catalina. But now I have some backwards compatibility with the latest Logic Pro. I am really not happy with the purchase and I cannot return the Samsung EVO. I would have probably noticed these things earlier, had I not been ill for a few weeks.

Any suggestions would be great. I am hoping not to change the EVO...

Somewhere in this thread, people who used the 970 EVO PLUS did a firmware update (check the first page too). Maybe, this helps with your case.
How much RAM does the computer have? I suggest you run hardware diagnostics (https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202731) to ensure all the RAM modules are working as expected.
I hope this helps!

 

[gabe_willow]

Hi!

I have a rMBP mid-2014, and I've been facing a problem for a few days: the SSD (m.2 nvme Kingston NV1 500GB) is not recognized by the machine.

When I open the installer's Disk Utility (either through Internet Recovery or from the thumb drive), the disk does not appear. I go to the Terminal and give the "diskutil list", and nothing appears there either.

I bought two adapters that are very popular and recommended by other consumers. Because of the problem, I returned the first one thinking it was a problem with him and got another one, from another model, from another seller. It didn't work either.

With this second adapter (which is what I have now), I took another SSD (m.2 SATA WD Green) that has Windows installed and put it on to see if it recognized it. Unsuccessfully.

I read that it could be outdated NVME SSD firmware, and as I was booting from it in Internet Recovery, there was no way to update it. I put the OS on the flash drive, and still nothing changed.

Considering that (1) I changed the adapter twice and (2) I put in two different SSDs (I couldn't test NVME on another machine, but I bought brand new from an authorized seller; SATA works), I think the problem can only be in the my machine.

I reset the SMC and NVRAM every time, and nothing changed. Today I have Big Sur installed (ie the Boot ROM is up to date (System Firmware Version: 432.60.3.0.0)).

Any idea what should I do?

 

[Doctor Blue]

Somewhere in this thread, people who used the 970 EVO PLUS did a firmware update (check the first page too). Maybe, this helps with your case.
How much RAM does the computer have? I suggest you run hardware diagnostics (https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202731) to ensure all the RAM modules are working as expected.
I hope this helps!

I've got the 2B2QEXM7 firmware which is the latest for my drive. I tried to update it to 4B2QEXM7, but it seems the latter is for 970 EVO PLUS with another type of controller.
Thank you for the hardware diagnostics tip. I ran the test, the only issue I got was the "battery missing" (which I had previously pulled it out myself since it was swollen). So, the RAM works great.

Looking up for info on the internet, I found that the Samsung drives have issues with the controller. It is not optimised for MacOs, at least for Monterey.

 

[macpro_mid2014]

I've got the 2B2QEXM7 firmware which is the latest for my drive. I tried to update it to 4B2QEXM7, but it seems the latter is for 970 EVO PLUS with another type of controller.
Thank you for the hardware diagnostics tip. I ran the test, the only issue I got was the "battery missing" (which I had previously pulled it out myself since it was swollen). So, the RAM works great.

Looking up for info on the internet, I found that the Samsung drives have issues with the controller. It is not optimised for MacOs, at least for Monterey.

If you are running the machine WITHOUT a battery, you found the culprit. MacBooks throttle the CPU if it cannot detect a battery. There are ways to circumvent this but what I found is that these ways can damage the computer so I never used them.

 

[JonasAnd]

I would like to know also.. I've got my 2015 MBA with 2TB ADATA that I like. I've still got a while to go before I have to go 4tb.. but would like to know also what would fit and work best. Price isn't too much of a concern for me.

I found a thread about someone using a 4TB sabrent in a macbook pro 2013

https://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,2431891

The person used the short adapter, it seems better for double sided sticks as they can be thicker.

I wonder how thick the 4TB sabrent is?

 

[Doctor Blue]

If you are running the machine WITHOUT a battery, you found the culprit. MacBooks throttle the CPU if it cannot detect a battery. There are ways to circumvent this but what I found is that these ways can damage the computer so I never used them.

Wow, I wouldn't have thought this might be the issue ???... So, it might not be the compatibility with Samsung Evo Plus, after all, but only the fact that I don't have the battery in. I will try to buy a battery, then, and see what happens. Thank you very much!?

 

[Doctor Blue]

Double post, please delete.