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

[natus.w]

Aren't default Macbook (post 2005) settings that hibernatemode = 3?

So not quite sure what you mean by 'back to default settings'. With hibernatemode = 0, doesn't this mean that I won't have any hibernation (state saved to disk) at all, system will sleep (to RAM), but will eventually die if kept unplugged indefinitely, but then when resumed it'll be a cold boot w hard shutdown, vs a resume from disk hibernate to state when slept / lid closed?

Also I note from my pmset dump (see original post above) that my sleep mode 4 is 'prevented' by various processes, does this mean I will in actuality have no sleep mode at all?

sleep 4 (sleep prevented by sharingd, nsurlsessiond, nsurlsessiond, AddressBookSourceSync)

0 is default sleep option (mostly for desktop, I believe it keeps disk powered up (default behaviour is to suspend to disk and leave memory powered)

The sleep setting you’re seeing is the timeout until the laptop sleeps (should be normal)

Power Management in detail: using pmset

A command line tool with extensive abilities. It is not actually that hard to use.

eclecticlight.co

 

[Flippyflopper]

Just an FYI. I ordered the Sintech adapter from Amazon. Sold by the Sintech Store and shipped by Amazon. the one i received appears to be a counterfeit. It doesn't have the protective film layer over the pins in front of the male side of the adapter to prevent shorting. It also appears that the traces may be different than the ones shown earlier in this thread. Additionally it doesn't match their own ad. I requested a replacement but since this one was labeled correctly i don't have a high confidence that I'll be getting a better one.

Here are some photos of what i received and their ad.

 

[charlietr]

Hello, I have a Macbook Pro 13-inch 2015 early model. It has 8 GB RAM and 120 GB SSD. But ssd seems very insufficient. Therefore, I plan to upgrade the SSD to Sabrent rocket 4 plus brand SSD with the help of an adapter. Is there anyone using this ssd? Especially how does it affect the battery consumption of Macbook?
Thanks.

 

[johnmacair]

870 Plus
SN570
880 I think

I have personally tested SN570

Do you mean 970 Plus?

 

[natus.w]

Hello, I have a Macbook Pro 13-inch 2015 early model. It has 8 GB RAM and 120 GB SSD. But ssd seems very insufficient. Therefore, I plan to upgrade the SSD to Sabrent rocket 4 plus brand SSD with the help of an adapter. Is there anyone using this ssd? Especially how does it affect the battery consumption of Macbook?
Thanks.

Given your machine is only PCIE2.0 x4 I don’t think you’ll be able to get full speed from that SSD.

There are multiple reports of the regular PCIE3 based Rocket working OK here..

 

[Flippyflopper]

Just an FYI. I ordered the Sintech adapter from Amazon. Sold by the Sintech Store and shipped by Amazon. the one i received appears to be a counterfeit.

Following up. After chatting with Sintech a bit i found that under the listing for the Sintech branded adapter another vendor "FiBBA" is selling as well with a fraudulent adapter under that same page for the same price. Amazon flip flops between the two vendors depending on when you go to the page and mine got shipped from the alternate. Ensure the seller is the sintech store even under the sintech branded ad. I ordered the correct one and am just waiting for it to arrive.

 

[danielristic]

Looking to get some advice on whether an upgraded SSD is worth it in my case.

Currently running Monterey v12.6.9 on a MBP 12,1 (Early 2015 13"). I would appreciate a minor speed bump increase but understand that it's capped to the supports of 4x lanes PCIe 2.0 speed. My current posted speeds are from running on a machine with 16gb ram + 256gb storage. I would appreciate extra storage, but I mainly use the device as a daily driver to code/edit photos, and thus is not a must-have as I don't run into storage issues. Would an upgrade warrant a speed difference that is "significant" enough?

Thanks all!

You wouldn't get a significant speed bump (your stock drive seems much speedier than the original Apple one that came with my MBP Early 2015!) but given the price of nvme drives these days it would cost you about a hundred bucks to get 2TB which depending on how you use your mac might be well worth it.

 

[danielristic]

The MBA should be running with the latest firmware and therefore, does not require the original SSD to install any new firmware updates. BUT...

Before getting rid of the original SSD, I would run SilentKnight by Dr. Oakley to make sure the firmware is up to date. If it is, it is safe to get rid of the old SSD.

I'd say that it is safe to update to Sonoma 14.1 + OCLP 1.1.0. Unless your friend uses any specific application that is troublesome with the combination of Sonoma + OCLP.

Before installing Monterey, do a Time Machine backup. Monterey is the last MacOS compatible with the MBA 2015, therefore, you should have no issues doing an Over the Air update (by using Check for Updates in Big Sur).

I'm not sure this "updating using original Apple drive" thing is still relevant: I migrated to a third party nvme on my MBP Early 2015 sometime in 2020 because my original Apple drive just died during a minor update (don't remember if it was monterey or Big Sur), but I now run monterey and I have the latest version of the Boot ROM. I believe it was originally a problem because if you didn't have a recent version of mac OS prior to flipping the drives, the third party NVME would not even be recognised, but if you got one that's recognised (ie your boot rom is recent enough) I believe you can get newer firmware updates no problem.

 

[mwidjaya]

Looking to get some advice on whether an upgraded SSD is worth it in my case.

Currently running Monterey v12.6.9 on a MBP 12,1 (Early 2015 13"). I would appreciate a minor speed bump increase but understand that it's capped to the supports of 4x lanes PCIe 2.0 speed. My current posted speeds are from running on a machine with 16gb ram + 256gb storage. I would appreciate extra storage, but I mainly use the device as a daily driver to code/edit photos, and thus is not a must-have as I don't run into storage issues. Would an upgrade warrant a speed difference that is "significant" enough?

Thanks all!

Here is a 12,1 with a 1TB NVMe. Note the increase in write speed. You decide if it is worth it, apart from extra storage.

 

[xboxbml]

Following up. After chatting with Sintech a bit i found that under the listing for the Sintech branded adapter another vendor "FiBBA" is selling as well with a fraudulent adapter under that same page for the same price. Amazon flip flops between the two vendors depending on when you go to the page and mine got shipped from the alternate. Ensure the seller is the sintech store even under the sintech branded ad. I ordered the correct one and am just waiting for it to arrive.

Wow.. good work. Yeah, I've not seen that one before.

 

[xboxbml]

Here is a 12,1 with a 1TB NVMe. Note the increase in write speed. You decide if it is worth it, apart from extra storage.

View attachment 2307168

Here's my MBA..Nothing really massively impressive, but works well and I have plenty of space for another couple years.

 

[dkazaz]

I have an MBP15 Retina - Mid 2014, model with integrated graphics. I've upgraded it with a sintech adapter (short version) and an Adata XPG 8200 pro 1 TB.

Everything was fine on BigSur for a while but after using OCLP 0.67 to upgrade to Ventura, I get nearly constant kernel panics on boot. If I reinstall, I get a day or two before they start again.
The error says 3rd Party NVME controller - loss of MMIO space.

I've tried a different sintech adapter (long version) witht the same results. Could this be due to the SSD ? I understand that this is one of the most recommended models for compatibility.

Should I try to find a SATA M2 SSD instead? Or, is there a software fix I can use?

And does anyone have this combination of hardware and software working well?

Many thanks for any advice.

Just posting an update on my original post here. I managed to resolve all issues, after re-installing Ventura, this time using OCLP 1.10 to install v 13.6.1. I haven't experienced issues with booting, kernel panics or sleep.

I did have a serious issue with SwitchResX which caused my system to become unbootable when disconnecting from my monitor, until I booted into safe mode and uninstalled it. This was not the reason for my SSD problem (loss of MMIO space etc) but I mention it in case anyone has a similar issue with SwitchResX.

Many thanks to all of you for your advice and useful info.

 

[mattsnuts]

Hello
This thread is very long and I've read through the info in the first post.
I'd like to upgrade my mid-2013 MBA to a 1Tb SSD, because I'm running out of disk space.

I currently have Big Sur 11.7.10 installed, and System Firmware Version: 478.0.0.0.0, and I also Bootcamp to Windows 10.

I have ordered the Sintech adapter from their website and am waiting for delivery to New Zealand.

My question is: Which 1Tb SSD should I buy in Nov 2023 which has good perf, low power usage, low temps, and works OK with Bootcamp?

Based on the charts in the first post in this thread, I was leaning towards the Sabrent Rocket, but I'm wondering if there's a newer recommendation? Also, the charts only show 512Gb perf and not 1Tb perf.

(Adding my stock disk perf for posterity

 

[chiahungwang]

Hynix P31, SN570 (Don't Samsung)

WD Blue SN580 1 TB Review - Incredible Price/Performance

Western Digital's new WD Blue SN580 is the best budget M.2 SSD drive out there. Despite its impressive price point of $45 it comes with fantastic performance that easily matches most high-end drives. Compared to the SN570, the interface has been upgraded to PCIe 4.0, and the SLC cache is now...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[danielristic]

My question is: Which 1Tb SSD should I buy in Nov 2023 which has good perf, low power usage, low temps, and works OK with Bootcamp?

You're in luck, I've spent the past few weeks testing several modern drives on an MBP Early 2015 (slightly more recent model than yours but close enough) and here are my main findings:

• Crucial P3: fine but the flash memory type is QLC which is arguably less durable.
• Crucial P5 Plus: slightly faster than the P3, power consumtion average, occasional warning message "hash checksum didn't match drive" but didn't seem to do any harm.
• Samsung 980 Pro: the fastest drive I've tried but high average power consumption and terpermental (had a weird issue with filevault that took days to complet, slow boot times, ...) don't buy!
• WD Blue SN580: second fastest, lowest power consumption, my recommendation so far.

Also, regarding power consumption note that you should at the very least install ssdpmenabler, as stock firmware will give you a higher power consumption with any drive, but the best thing is to install Mac OS with open core legacy patcher (which comes with its own ssd power management) and then install ssdpmenabler, which is even better (also your model might have sleep issues which can also be resolved with a setting in open core legacy patcher).

Can't comment on Bootcamp compatibility, I use bootcamp to boot windows 10 but only from an external drive with its own EFI partition.

Good luck!

 

[mattsnuts]

Hynix P31, SN570 (Don't Samsung)

Thanks

• WD Blue SN580: second fastest, lowest power consumption, my recommendation so far.

but the best thing is to install Mac OS with open core legacy patcher (which comes with its own ssd power management) and then install ssdpmenabler, which is even better (also your model might have sleep issues which can also be resolved with a setting in open core legacy patcher).

Thanks Daniel. ssdpmenabler whatever that is sounds complicated, I hadn't heard of any of these steps, nor had I heard of "Mac OS with open core legacy patcher" but I've googled it and it sounds interesting.

I was happier with my Macbook Air running Mojave, it never slowed down or had the rainbow wheel appear. I only recently upgraded it to Big Sur because I needed to open an iMovie project which was created with a newer version. I'm thinking when I get the new SSD I might start from scratch and revert to running an older OS, i.e. Mojave, or is that a silly idea?

 

[neekulp]

So I pulled the trigger on upgrading an old Macbook Air (6.2 13") for the wife (nothing intensive, just needs space for iPhone backups and a Photos library), to a 2TB 970 Evo Plus.
I have parts arriving soon, and have been reading through tons of posts here. Thanks to everyone that has been contributing, it's been super useful!!

I still have one question that I can't seen to find a definitive answer.
Hibernation / Sleep issues on older MBP/MBA when using NVME drives. I recall reading this is "fixed" when the OS is updated to BigSur or beyond.
With the original SSD, I did a full format, and reinstall of BigSur using a bootable USB. I then applied any updates available from System Settings (will come back when I have the laptop at hand with the BootROM ver showing in System Report / Info).
The question I have is, is there a definitive answer / way to confirm if I will have issues with Hibernation / Sleep when replacing the original SSD to the Samsung NVME drive (Install NVME, Recovery Mode from Bootable USB, Format using Disk Util, Install OS using the same Bootable USB, Time Machine Recovery once NVME is running OS).
Is it worth turning off Hibernation / Sleep, using "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 standby 0 autopoweroff 0" or some variant of, as a precaution or installing KEXT?

Thanks again to everyone on here!

 

[ItsHal]

Samsung 980 still working with macOS Sonoma 14.1.1 and OCL 1.2.0
Pro Mid 2014 OCL 1.2.0 macOS Sonoma 14.1.1 .
Everything running fine. After first boot at the login screen the keyboard would not work so powered off the mac by holding down the power button.Powered it back on and it work.HAD to reinstall the post-root patch

 

[ItsHal]

You're in luck, I've spent the past few weeks testing several modern drives on an MBP Early 2015 (slightly more recent model than yours but close enough) and here are my main findings:

• Crucial P3: fine but the flash memory type is QLC which is arguably less durable.
• Crucial P5 Plus: slightly faster than the P3, power consumtion average, occasional warning message "hash checksum didn't match drive" but didn't seem to do any harm.
• Samsung 980 Pro: the fastest drive I've tried but high average power consumption and terpermental (had a weird issue with filevault that took days to complet, slow boot times, ...) don't buy!
• WD Blue SN580: second fastest, lowest power consumption, my recommendation so far.

Also, regarding power consumption note that you should at the very least install ssdpmenabler, as stock firmware will give you a higher power consumption with any drive, but the best thing is to install Mac OS with open core legacy patcher (which comes with its own ssd power management) and then install ssdpmenabler, which is even better (also your model might have sleep issues which can also be resolved with a setting in open core legacy patcher).

Can't comment on Bootcamp compatibility, I use bootcamp to boot windows 10 but only from an external drive with its own EFI partition.

Good luck!

Lovely work.
May look into getting A 1TB or 2TB WD Blue SN580

 

[danielristic]

Thanks Daniel. ssdpmenabler whatever that is sounds complicated, I hadn't heard of any of these steps, nor had I heard of "Mac OS with open core legacy patcher" but I've googled it and it sounds interesting.

I discovered it from this post which basically sums up the main things to consider when swapping from an original Apple drive and even point to this discussion. While it sounds complicated, SsdPmEnabler is the simplest thing you can do to improve the battery life with any non-Apple ssd. You can check instructions on the official page but simply put it consists of disabeling part of the SIP (boot in recovery mode + enter a few command lines) and then copying one single file in the right location.

I did only that part for the past couple of years but NVMeFix plugin with lilu promised to improved things even further, only I couldn't understand how to get that working until I discovered open core legacy patcher, which makes the whole process (and even installing SsdPmEnabler) much simpler. The best part is that it's virtuallly risk free if you have a time machine backup and you're installing it on a new drive (while keeping the old one around), because open core legacy patcher only affects the contents of the drive and nothing else.

Open core legacy patcher is advertised as a way to install newer Mac Os versions on unsupported macs (and it can do too) but it's also a much simpler way to use various plugins such as NVMeFix and SsdPmEnabler.

Here's how I did it:

1. Download the open cor elegacy patcher app, and use it to create a bootable mac os installer (you need an empty 16GB or more usb stick, it will even download the installer directly from Apple if you don't have it on your disk already).
2. Click "build and install OpenCore" and install it on the EFI partition of the usb installer you just created.
3. Use the usb installer to install mac OS on your new nvme drive.

I was happier with my Macbook Air running Mojave, it never slowed down or had the rainbow wheel appear. I only recently upgraded it to Big Sur because I needed to open an iMovie project which was created with a newer version. I'm thinking when I get the new SSD I might start from scratch and revert to running an older OS, i.e. Mojave, or is that a silly idea?

Things might be better with a nvme drive as it will be faster than the original Apple drive but it's not a silly idea to use an older version of Mac OS that was actually created for your hardware. The only downside is that you don't get any of the security updates (and you're stuck with an older version of Safari), and eventually other apps like Chrome won't receive any updates either (not sure if that's already happened for Chrome on Mojave).

By the way, I also keep a version of Mojave around that I boot from a separate SSD that also has windows 10 on it when needed as Mojave is the last version that allows non-64bit processes, that's not a bad way to try new OSes on your hardware before commiting them to the internal drive.

 

[neekulp]

I discovered it from this post which basically sums up the main things to consider when swapping from an original Apple drive and even point to this discussion. While it sounds complicated, SsdPmEnabler is the simplest thing you can do to improve the battery life with any non-Apple ssd. You can check instructions on the official page but simply put it consists of disabeling part of the SIP (boot in recovery mode + enter a few command lines) and then copying one single file in the right location.

I did only that part for the past couple of years but NVMeFix plugin with lilu promised to improved things even further, only I couldn't understand how to get that working until I discovered open core legacy patcher, which makes the whole process (and even installing SsdPmEnabler) much simpler. The best part is that it's virtuallly risk free if you have a time machine backup and you're installing it on a new drive (while keeping the old one around), because open core legacy patcher only affects the contents of the drive and nothing else.

Open core legacy patcher is advertised as a way to install newer Mac Os versions on unsupported macs (and it can do too) but it's also a much simpler way to use various plugins such as NVMeFix and SsdPmEnabler.

Here's how I did it:

1. Download the open cor elegacy patcher app, and use it to create a bootable mac os installer (you need an empty 16GB or more usb stick, it will even download the installer directly from Apple if you don't have it on your disk already).
2. Click "build and install OpenCore" and install it on the EFI partition of the usb installer you just created.
3. Use the usb installer to install mac OS on your new nvme drive.

Things might be better with a nvme drive as it will be faster than the original Apple drive but it's not a silly idea to use an older version of Mac OS that was actually created for your hardware. The only downside is that you don't get any of the security updates (and you're stuck with an older version of Safari), and eventually other apps like Chrome won't receive any updates either (not sure if that's already happened for Chrome on Mojave).

By the way, I also keep a version of Mojave around that I boot from a separate SSD that also has windows 10 on it when needed as Mojave is the last version that allows non-64bit processes, that's not a bad way to try new OSes on your hardware before commiting them to the internal drive.

Jumping on your response in relation to my post above (hope you dont mind).
Is what you posted worth it, in the context of my intended use for the laptop after a NVME install:

Laptop may be put to sleep (lid closed) for a short period. Moving around the house / place its being used.
It will never be used to sleep (lid closed) for extended periods (hours / over night etc). Will always be shut down after being used essentially.
I will still setting "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 standby 0 autopoweroff 0" given my use, but then further than that is it worth it (OpenCore install with ssdpmenabler / NVMeFix / Lilu)?

Can live with it not ever being able to hibernate.

 

[danielristic]

Jumping on your response in relation to my post above (hope you dont mind).
Is what you posted worth it, in the context of my intended use for the laptop after a NVME install:

Laptop may be put to sleep (lid closed) for a short period. Moving around the house / place its being used.
It will never be used to sleep (lid closed) for extended periods (hours / over night etc). Will always be shut down after being used essentially.
I will still setting "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 standby 0 autopoweroff 0" given my use, but then further than that is it worth it (OpenCore install with ssdpmenabler / NVMeFix / Lilu)?

Can live with it not ever being able to hibernate.

Unfortunately I don't have any experience with hibernation issues as the model I use is not affected (MBP Early 2015). However I did try swapping the drive of a supposedly affected model (Macbook Air Early 2014) and it did not seem to exhibit the issue either (however I might have not given it long enough after closing the lid). The Air now has an OWC Aura Pro X2 (the expensive drive that uses the same Apple proprietary connector) and still doesn't have sleep issues but not sure if it's supposed to with that one.

Open Core Legacy patcher does have one option called "Hibenation Workaround" so it might still be an issue for some people (but I don't know ecactly what the option does).

To answer your question I would say that it still might be worth using open core legacy patcher (as power management is also affected during use so it will draw less power for the same reading and writing speed and you'll get a better battery life overall), but if you don't mind tinkering I would start with a regular install on your new nvme without altering hibernatemode, see if it has the hibernate issue or not and then redo the install, this time with open core legacy patcher (and activate the hibernate option if needed).

 

[neekulp]

Unfortunately I don't have any experience with hibernation issues as the model I use is not affected (MBP Early 2015). However I did try swapping the drive of a supposedly affected model (Macbook Air Early 2014) and it did not seem to exhibit the issue either (however I might have not given it long enough after closing the lid). The Air now has an OWC Aura Pro X2 (the expensive drive that uses the same Apple proprietary connector) and still doesn't have sleep issues but not sure if it's supposed to with that one.

Open Core Legacy patcher does have one option called "Hibenation Workaround" so it might still be an issue for some people (but I don't know ecactly what the option does).

To answer your question I would say that it still might be worth using open core legacy patcher (as power management is also affected during use so it will draw less power for the same reading and writing speed and you'll get a better battery life overall), but if you don't mind tinkering I would start with a regular install on your new nvme without altering hibernatemode, see if it has the hibernate issue or not and then redo the install, this time with open core legacy patcher (and activate the hibernate option if needed).

Thanks for getting back! 🙏🏽

I will have a tinker once the adapter arrives.

Using OpenCore tool, I read up on how to use it / watch some videos. Do you have somewhere you can point me to, to understand how to also use the OpenCore tool to add/enable ssdpmenabler, NVMeFix, and Lilu. I have taken a look at the option for "Hibernation Workaround" so that bit I get.

Thank again.

 

[danielristic]

Thanks for getting back! 🙏🏽

I will have a tinker once the adapter arrives.

Using OpenCore tool, I read up on how to use it / watch some videos. Do you have somewhere you can point me to, to understand how to also use the OpenCore tool to add/enable ssdpmenabler, NVMeFix, and Lilu. I have taken a look at the option for "Hibernation Workaround" so that bit I get.

Thank again.

Glad to help!

I haven't found any clear explanation/tutorial as to how to use Open Core Legacy Patcher other than the "Getting Started" section on the official website. The great thing is that is you follow my 3 step instructions from one of my previous messages, you end up with Lilu and NVMeFix already installed and operational (it's part of open core by default) so no extra steps needed for that.

Regarding ssdpmenabler, it's also pretty much the same instructions as on the official github page, except that since you installed through open core, you don't need to disable part the SIP (boot in recovery mode, ...) so you just follow the instructions for Monterey/Big Sur (does not matter if you run something more recent, I've tried on Ventura and Sonoma and it works just the same) which consists of pasting this single line of code in the terminal (assuming that you've already downloaded the .kext from the release page in your Downloads folder):

sudo cp -R ~/Downloads/SsdPmEnabler.kext /Library/Extensions

Then, after granting the necessary permissions when asked and rebooting, you can verify ssdpmenabler is loaded by pasting this in the terminal (it will show two lines ending with "Enabled PCIe PM on SSD"):

log show --style syslog --last boot | grep \(SsdPmEnabler

 

[danielristic]

Lovely work.
May look into getting A 1TB or 2TB WD Blue SN580

In case anywone is wondering I tried the same setup with a 2TB WD Blue SN570 and speed is almost identical to the SN580 (a tad faster to read and slower to write, surprisingly) and power consumption feels identical, so if that's the only model you can find/this one is cheaper in your region that works too.