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

[gilles_polysoft]

[...]everytime when i try to reboot from the OS, it fails to recognize my ssd as if it doesn't exist. I guess it has something to do with the sleep issue under mac os.

Looking forward to advice and help.

Hello t0n1,
You did bought the right SSD and done everything well except you simply bought the wrong adapter...
The photo you provide doesn't show a Sintech type B or C adapter, but a Chenyang which tens of posts here report it doesn't work properly with the exacts symptoms you report (no deep sleep reboot doesn't work).

So, please, and sorry I have to write it again, again and again, and sorry I have to put it in capitals...
DON'T BUY ANYTHING ELSE THAT SINTECH B or C ADAPTERS :
This one :
http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2015-macbook-ssd-p-1143.html
Or this one :
http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2015-macbook-ssd-p-1229.html

Maybe you should ask for a refund at the place you bought your adapter and also, please, if it's amazon or any place that has feedback, please write some feedback to make the sell of those not working adapters stop...
[doublepost=1526890104][/doublepost]

This is awesome, Gilles!
Am I right in thinking that this could help my MBPR 15" late 2013, stuck with no hope of getting the latest bootrom?
I have some tinkering skills and very little to lose, so, with proper direction, I could be the perfect candidate for some testing

Hi aatoma,
At present I don't know any way to upgrade BootRom with only a NVMe drive on 2013 mac so I understand you are stuck here...
Of course you could do your BootRom upgrade with an SPI programmer and the specific SPI cable, if you have access to those tools.
But far more simply, you could find a working AHCI drive in order to have the "regular" update work.
If you can't find one (there are used ones on eBay for 70$) you can send me a personnal mail and I'll send you a used 128 GB drive which you could send me back after... I've already done that before for members of this thread.

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Hi everyone,
just a little update to the BootRom modification on my late 2013 rMBP.

It has been 2 days I use my 13" late 2013 rMBP with the modded BootRom and so far everything is excellent :
- deepsleep works perfectly
- battery life is excellent (around 8 hours on use, and less than 1% loss on 20h hibernation)
- cold boot is very fast (20s)

I've done the tests with on a rMBP which battery has only 89% of factory capacity, and with a MyDigital SBX ssd, which has only 2x lanes (so only 700MB/s on a PCIe 2.0 mac) but has a very low power requirements (3W max).

So as for boot time, battery life and hibernation, I'm very satisfied with those results...

I'm trying now to post more instructions on how to mod the BootRom, and how to flash it (I'll try to find a way without the SPI programmer).

 

[plexfit]

Hi everyone,
just a little update to the BootRom modification on my late 2013 rMBP.

It has been 2 days I use my 13" late 2013 rMBP with the modded BootRom and so far everything is excellent :
- deepsleep works perfectly
- battery life is excellent (around 8 hours on use, and less than 1% loss on 20h hibernation)
- cold boot is very fast (20s)

I've done the tests with on a rMBP which battery has only 89% of factory capacity, and with a MyDigital SBX ssd, which has only 2x lanes (so only 700MB/s on a PCIe 2.0 mac) but has a very low power requirements (3W max).

So as for boot time, battery life and hibernation, I'm very satisfied with those results...

I'm trying now to post more instructions on how to mod the BootRom, and how to flash it (I'll try to find a way without the SPI programmer).

Thanks for this information, what is the best NVMe SSD do you recommend for good battery life ? I am still struggling to find one. I got the 960EVO working without issues but battery life took a crazy hits (I only get 6 hours on use), not to mention the laptop gets toasty when in use even on light task.

The 760p looks great, did you get the chance to try it ?
[doublepost=1526929369][/doublepost]Found this link that more or less answer my question, it looks like your MyDigitalSSD SBX is the lowest in term of power consumption when APSM not enabled:
http://www.thessdreview.com/featured/mydigitalssd-sbx-m-2-nvme-ssd-review/5/

Have you or anyone figured out how to enable APSM yet ?
[doublepost=1526929582][/doublepost]Also, I wanted to share the results of my research, seems like somebody was able to write a script to enable APSM that OSX doesn't support natively. However, we need to improvise this script for NVMe SSD since it was targeted at general PCIe devices: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-better-power-saving-and-battery-life.157467/

 

[LightBulbFun]

I'm trying now to post more instructions on how to mod the BootRom, and how to flash it (I'll try to find a way without the SPI programmer).

you should be able to use flashrom in linux to flash the boards EEPROM without having to use an external SPI programmer

you just have to make sure the machine is in Programmers mode/BootROM update mode by holding down the Power Button, on older Macs you will get a long Beeep and you can let go of the button then, however on newer macs you wont get anything but you will notice it will take longer to POST so just keep holding the power button down until you get an EFI screen then hold alt and boot into your Linux drive. then you will be able to write to the EEPROM using flashrom in linux

you can read a bit about my escapades with flashrom here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/updating-a-mac-pro-s-cpu-microcode.2114187/

 

[ruslan120]

Long time lurker of this thread checking in.

Can confirm that the 2TB 970 Evo is working well on a Late 2013 rMBP.

I cloned a working installation however from a USB drive, and have yet to test things like hibernation or power consumption (just got the drive today).

Will update if any issues crop up.

P.S. Thanks all for sharing your experiences so far.
P.P.S. Happy to do stability tests. Have y'all run any special programs? I've been running Blackmagic for a bit, have also been copying files to and from a NAS.

Here are the 970's speeds using PCIE 2.0.

 

[gilles_polysoft]

holy sh*t! you did it! jawdropping stuff, man. are you planning to release the boot ROM?

Do you publish the boot rom?

Hi,
As for the MacPro firmware with NVMe support, I've published the procedure here :
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp51-0084-b00-rom-dump-request.2119496/#post-26075700

This is a draft, I've not had time yet to make a full tutorial with screen captures, but I'm working on it.
[doublepost=1526943915][/doublepost]

Long time lurker of this thread checking in.

Can confirm that the 2TB 970 Evo is working well on a Late 2013 rMBP.

So cool thanks for the update ! Can you make a screenshot of smartctl output ? (with a live Xubuntu USB for exemple)

 

[plexfit]

Long time lurker of this thread checking in.

Can confirm that the 2TB 970 Evo is working well on a Late 2013 rMBP.

I cloned a working installation however from a USB drive, and have yet to test things like hibernation or power consumption (just got the drive today).

Will update if any issues crop up.

P.S. Thanks all for sharing your experiences so far.
P.P.S. Happy to do stability tests. Have y'all run any special programs? I've been running Blackmagic for a bit, have also been copying files to and from a NAS.

Here are the 970's speeds using PCIE 2.0.

Isn't the 970EVO just a variant of the PM981, how can it be that the PM981 doesn't work but the 970EVO does ? You mentioned cloning instead of fresh installation, maybe that's the trick ?

 

[vk2fro]

Just had my macbook late 2013 show up. 29 cycles on the battery, and looks brand new - has to have been a desk queen, not used as a daily portable. Its installing high sierra now (clean install from a usb stick), so the boot rom gets updated. Pentalobe and T5 screwdrivers at the ready

Once HS is installed, I'll perform a Black Magic test, then proceed with the SSD transplant.

 

[Cmd+Q]

Isn't the 970EVO just a variant of the PM981, how can it be that the PM981 doesn't work but the 970EVO does ? You mentioned cloning instead of fresh installation, maybe that's the trick ?

Negative. When I tried the PM981 initially, I tried a clone of my 10.13.4 installation first. It did not boot up completely and rebooted at about 75%.

Needless to say, a fresh install of High Sierra crashed about half way on the PM981 (exact firmware and model in earlier post). I do not expect a firmware upgrade to become available for these OEM drives to introduce compatibility with MacBooks (even though they are being sold with Samsung branding without any big OEM markings).

 

[vk2fro]

Well after a bit of jiggery pokery in terminal to get the correct GUID format (diskutil partitionDisk disk0 GPT jhfs+ MacNVMe 512G), I'm installing high sierra to the new disk (Toshiba XG5). I'll run the black magic speed test on it once its done, then put the mac to sleep and see how things go. If I get a sleep problem I'll know to turn off hibernate.

of course I forgot to bypass APFS, so my test results will be skewed slightly in favour of the original apple SSD, as that one I DID bypass conversion when I did the software install, as I plan to keep it as a backup once the external caddy arrives.

about the hardest part was getting that SSD screw back into place, its short and very fiddly. I ended up getting it lined up, then gave it a half turn with my thumb, before securing it with the T5 driver.

Edit: confirmed working machine with the toshiba XG5 - ~1200 Write, 1500 Read compared to 700/800 of the original apple drive. Shows as an orange disk in the boot selector, but internal disk when macOS is up and running. I have now "slept" the computer and will wake it later tonight to see if I need to do anything about hibernate, and will pull the power and see how much the battery drains.

 

[Pikaman]

Isn't the 970EVO just a variant of the PM981, how can it be that the PM981 doesn't work but the 970EVO does ? You mentioned cloning instead of fresh installation, maybe that's the trick ?

Just an imagination. Would it because PM981 is an OEM version that rely on PC maker to include DXE drive in UEFI to boot from NVMe but 970 EVO is a commercialised model and SSD has included an "Option ROM/OPROM/OROM" for any PC to boot from?

 

[ruslan120]

Ruslans-MBP:~ ruslan$ smartctl -a disk0

smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [Darwin 17.4.0 x86_64] (local build)

Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org


=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Model Number:                       Samsung SSD 970 EVO 2TB

Serial Number:                      redacted

Firmware Version:                   1B2QEXE7

PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            0x144d

IEEE OUI Identifier:                0x002538

Total NVM Capacity:                 2,000,398,934,016 [2.00 TB]

Unallocated NVM Capacity:           0

Controller ID:                      4

Number of Namespaces:               1

Local Time is:                      Tue May 22 12:50:56 2018 EDT

Firmware Updates (0x16):            3 Slots, no Reset required

Optional Admin Commands (0x0017):   Security Format Frmw_DL Self_Test

Optional NVM Commands (0x005f):     Comp Wr_Unc DS_Mngmt Wr_Zero Sav/Sel_Feat Timestmp

Maximum Data Transfer Size:         512 Pages

Warning  Comp. Temp. Threshold:     82 Celsius

Critical Comp. Temp. Threshold:     82 Celsius


Supported Power States

St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat

 0 +     6.20W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0

 1 +     4.30W       -        -    1  1  1  1        0       0

 2 +     2.10W       -        -    2  2  2  2        0       0

 3 -   0.0400W       -        -    3  3  3  3      210    1200

 4 -   0.0050W       -        -    4  4  4  4     2000    8000


=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED


SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02, NSID 0x0)

Critical Warning:                   0x00

Temperature:                        49 Celsius

Available Spare:                    100%

Available Spare Threshold:          10%

Percentage Used:                    0%

Data Units Read:                    3,329,616 [1.70 TB]

Data Units Written:                 4,957,782 [2.53 TB]

Host Read Commands:                 5,357,345

Host Write Commands:                4,296,987

Controller Busy Time:               56

Power Cycles:                       22

Power On Hours:                     13

Unsafe Shutdowns:                   0

Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0

Error Information Log Entries:      0

Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    0

Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    0

Temperature Sensor 1:               49 Celsius

Temperature Sensor 2:               75 Celsius


Read Error Information Log failed: NVMe admin command:0x02/page:0x01 is not supported


Ruslans-MBP:~ ruslan$

 

[vk2fro]

So I got the dual reboot thing happening when I let it sleep - but am confused as to what to do about it?

Its either a combination of "sudo pmset -a" commands (standby, sleep, hibernatemode), or setting the /var/vm/sleepimage file to read only. My guess to do the latter is:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage
sudo touch /var/vm/sleepimage (creates a 0 byte file)

The third command I'm not sure, but think it would be

sudo chmod xxx /var/vm/sleepimage

not sure what to make xxx in the chmod command. if my google-fu serves me correctly, the xxx is 0444, correct?

 

[imax2k2]

Hi all,

Thank you very much for your help, I installed the Evo 970 1tb today in my mac (Late 2013 15" rMBP). I didn't clone my original drive. Just kept a copy of the High Sierra OS on a usb, booted into net recovery, the Samsung drive was recognized right off, formatted to APFS and installed High Sierra from the usb. Running great so far, but I can visibly see high battery use during regular usage.

Hi everyone,
just a little update to the BootRom modification on my late 2013 rMBP.

It has been 2 days I use my 13" late 2013 rMBP with the modded BootRom and so far everything is excellent :
- deepsleep works perfectly
- battery life is excellent (around 8 hours on use, and less than 1% loss on 20h hibernation)
- cold boot is very fast (20s)

I've done the tests with on a rMBP which battery has only 89% of factory capacity, and with a MyDigital SBX ssd, which has only 2x lanes (so only 700MB/s on a PCIe 2.0 mac) but has a very low power requirements (3W max).

So as for boot time, battery life and hibernation, I'm very satisfied with those results...

I'm trying now to post more instructions on how to mod the BootRom, and how to flash it (I'll try to find a way without the SPI programmer).

This is an amazing break through!. Since I have just installed my drive with a new OS, very happy to experiment. Please reach out to try some beta work!

 

[plexfit]

@imax2k2 the high power usage is what puts me off from the 960 EVO (I measured with Coconut Battery and it's around 3W higher than the stock SSD in any circumstance). This was the chief reason why my battery life was reduced to 6 hours flat vs. 9 hours with the stock SSD. I just bought the MydigitalSSD SBX based on the testings from @gilles_polysoft. Will update you guys once I receive it.

 

[imax2k2]

@imax2k2 the high power usage is what puts me off from the 960 EVO (I measured with Coconut Battery and it's around 3W higher than the stock SSD in any circumstance). This was the chief reason why my battery life was reduced to 6 hours flat vs. 9 hours with the stock SSD. I just bought the MydigitalSSD SBX based on the testings from @gilles_polysoft. Will update you guys once I receive it.

If we end up updating our boot roms by any chance, there does seem to be a low power state of 1w available in the samsung evo's. Here's to wishful thinking.

 

[plexfit]

If we end up updating our boot roms by any chance, there does seem to be a low power state of 1w available in the samsung evo's. Here's to wishful thinking.

I am using Macbook Pro 2015, doesn't it have the newer BootROM with power state selection available ?

 

[bowen1506]

I am in the same boat trying to upgrade the tiny 256gb ssd in my 15 inch macbook pro 2015. But power draw is the main concern. I doubt apple will release update to optimize power consumption for 3rd party ssd...is there a consensus on the best ssd to replace in terms of battery life and compatibility?

 

[imax2k2]

I am using Macbook Pro 2015, doesn't it have the newer BootROM with power state selection available ?

They do I believe. My comment was for the pre 2015 MBPs, with the older boot roms.

 

[plexfit]

They do I believe. My comment was for the pre 2015 MBPs, with the older boot roms.

Ah got it, but for some reasons, I don't think Apple is very aggressive in saving power or setting low power states with the 3rd party nvme ssd. Any chance some genius in this forum can pull up a scripts to aggressively set the drive in lower power states that smartctl returns ?

If you want low power nvme ssd, your best choice right now is the MydigitalSSD SBX, the 600p, or the old WD Black:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11174/the-western-digital-black-pcie-ssd-512gb-review/9

The old WD Black is quite interesting, it has its own power management and it doesn't count on the OS to provide the APST features.

 

[imax2k2]

Ah got it, but for some reasons, I don't think Apple is very aggressive in saving power or setting low power states with the 3rd party nvme ssd. Any chance some genius in this forum can pull up a scripts to aggressively set the drive in lower power states that smartctl returns ?

If you want low power nvme ssd, your best choice right now is the MydigitalSSD SBX, the 600p, or the old WD Black:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11174/the-western-digital-black-pcie-ssd-512gb-review/9

The old WD Black is quite interesting, it has its own power management and it doesn't count on the OS to provide the APST features.

I have seen those SBX, but I don’t think they have a tb model. I got the 970 evo tb since I had a 512gb ssd. The old WD Blacks have terrible write performance if I remember right.

 

[plexfit]

I have seen those SBX, but I don’t think they have a tb model. I got the 970 evo tb since I had a 512gb ssd. The old WD Blacks have terrible write performance if I remember right.

I think they added this to Amazon last night: https://www.amazon.com/MyDigitalSSD...e=UTF8&qid=1527188903&sr=8-1&keywords=SBX+1TB

Yeah agreed with you that the old WD Black has bad write performance but it has the most aggressive power saving scheme without relying on the OS to support. The new WD Black has better performance but has much worse power management and it was more in line with the Samsung one.

 

[ngod01]

Hello,

Can someone direct me to a central list (pretty sure it has been compiled) that confirms that Macbook Pro Mid 2015 retina 15" can be upgraded with Samsung PM981 PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD (1024GB) - with Instructions/requirements for succesful set up.

Many, many thanks for all your research and testing.

(ps.; Please advise if more info is required from me).


Norman

 

[macuser_123]

I think they added this to Amazon last night: https://www.amazon.com/MyDigitalSSD...e=UTF8&qid=1527188903&sr=8-1&keywords=SBX+1TB

Not necessarily endorsing it since I haven't tried it, but looks even cheaper if bought direct from MyDigitalDiscount:
https://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/m...80-m.2-pcie-gen3-x2-nvme-ssd-mdnvme80-sbx-1t/

 

[plexfit]

Hello,

Can someone direct me to a central list (pretty sure it has been compiled) that confirms that Macbook Pro Mid 2015 retina 15" can be upgraded with Samsung PM981 PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD (1024GB) - with Instructions/requirements for succesful set up.

Many, many thanks for all your research and testing.

(ps.; Please advise if more info is required from me).


Norman

PM981 doesn't work right now, don't waste your time. Your closest choice would be 970 EVO.