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

[Jilly Bowman]

It won't boot from that drive either it's not recognised, unless I boot from the usb high sierra boot drive then I can see it.

Are you saying wipe that drive and try to install onto it and it may update the firmware as it's a legit drive? It happens to be my daughter's school Mac so I'd be hesitant to do to much without knowing I'm good.

It won't boot from that drive either it's not recognised, unless I boot from the usb high sierra boot drive then I can see it.

Are you saying wipe that drive and try to install onto it and it may update the firmware as it's a legit drive? It happens to be my daughter's school Mac so I'd be hesitant to do to much without knowing I'm good.

sounds like your daughters ssd is formatted as APFS and your system has not been updated to boot from APFS. The only option without obtaining another drive is to clone your daughters ssd, put it in your machine then boot with alt/cmd/R. this will take you to online restore where you can reformat said drive to HFS, install High Sierra which should update your boot rom then swap drives back. finally clone your daughters drive back again.
presumably you have tried reformatting your original drive?

 

[vk2fro]

M4dd0g1975

Back up your daughters SSD with carbon copy cloner, then put it into the other computer. Blow away the install on the daughters SSD, then install high sierra. Restore the backup afterward and install your new SSD into your computer. An original Mac SSD is required for the firmware update. Alternatively, your welcome to drop by mine and we'll use my original SSD to upgrade the firmware. Mine just contains a backup of the 512Gb Toshiba XG5 I upgraded mine to. My original SSD is formatted in JHFS+ so it should be detected fine by your unupgraded Mac. Send me a PM. I'm in Sydney (erskineville).

 

[posh]

Hello to all.
I have mbp early 2015 - 13” with kingstone kc 1000.
Everything work good, but i have The problem with Wi-Fi.
In more 2.4ghz Wi-Fi dont work.
None the same problem?
Thank you

 

[Just_iWorld]

My bootrom is current at MBP114.0177.B00 (2015 High Sierra)
[doublepost=1529794231][/doublepost]
Forgot to mention, I just got my rMBP back from Apple a couple of days ago after a logic board replacement. This may be a very new version of the bootrom.

Thanks, I think 2015 doesn't have problems with that as 13/14 models. It is interesting that my bootrom has not been updated with High Sierra. Therefore, I'm doubting if I should update the SSD or not.

 

[kevllar]

Anybody know if all of this still works on the Mojave beta? It's been working great on HS but worried about the next update.

 

[alexander1789]

Hello to all,
a little note on recent works :

I've done a lot of tests about hibernation with NVMe drives on 2013-2014 macbook pro / air, with different OS.

Surprisingly (or not), hibernation works perfectly with Windows 8 / 10 and NVMe SSD on 2013-2014 macs.
It just works without any effort : in every tests I made I installed Windows, asked for hibernation and the computer hibernated... It stayed on hibernation forever without any battery drain and could wake up reliably 100% of my tries.
It seems hibernation on Windows doesn't work like under macOS : the energy state seems the same (S4, CPU and ram shut down), but the keyboard isn't able to wake the mac.
Wake from hibernation with Windows involve to press the power button, which make the mac chimie like a cold startup, and then it restores from hibernation file properly. Don't know yet if it's a normal behaviour with BootCamp..

With Linux I had more difficulties, because there are kernel events which prevents hibernation, and there are so many distributions / power managements package combinations that I couldn't test all and neither got success, but I'll continue...

I've also tested thoroughly macOS, of course, but with my 2 genuine Apple NVMe SSDs (AP032 and SM2048L). This was in order to verify if hibernation failure wasn't due to Sintech adapters.
And it seems not because on 2013-2014 macs, the Apple NVMe SSD have the exact same behaviour as other NVMe SSD with the Sintech adapter.
I wasn't able to make hibernation work even with any of my Apple NVMe SSD, and I've tested everything from 10.11 to 10.13, even with alternate bootloader (rEFInd, Clover).

Finally, I tried to watch the behaviour of the different signals with a little 2 channels oscilloscope...
It seems that :
- on every mac (2013-2017) the signal SSD DEVSLP always stays low (0V)
- on every mac (2013-2017) the signal SSD_PWR_FET_EN is always high (3,3V) even on sleep and during reboot
- on 2015-2017 macs the SSD_CLKREQ signal is high for little time at startup before SSD_RESET goes high, then is highly variable : it goes high when SSD is not in use, and low when high clock is requested (I guess).
- on 2013-2014 macs the SSD_CLKREQ is high for little time at startup before SSD_RESET, then stays at 0 every time.
- on every mac (2013-2017) SSD_RESET is low for 1s at startup then high (3,3V)

To me, this seems to confirm that the wiring of the Sintech green / black type C adapter is absolutely correct, and that there is no improvement to be made at this hardware level.

So, at this point, I still have a lot of testings to do to understand what is going wrong here with NVMe SSD that prevents 2013-2014 macs to be able to wake up from hibernation, but :
- it seems hibernation problem with 2013-2014 macs isn't related to the M.2 adapters.
- it seems also that this issue may be related to EFI, either a problem with the NVMe DXE driver in EFI of the 2013-2014 models, or something else... This may be a too complex problem for me, there is a lot of interesting work to be done here...

The fact that hibernation is possible with Windows indicates that a software patch enabling hibernation with NVMe drives on 2013-2014 macs is possible...
I can't answer if it will be such a thing available one day...


As a sidenote, I did tested lately some cheap NVMe SSD that came to the market recently, which are both very similar : Kingston A1000 and MyDigital SBX NVMe SSD.

Both use a Phison 5008 PCIe 3.0 x2 controller
On every mac which connector is limited to PCIe 2.0, those SSD are quite limited by the 2x lanes : top speed is 700MB/sec, no more (it is very usable thought...)
Only the rMBP 15" mid 2015 is PCIe 3.0 and goes beyond 1400 MB/sec with those SSD.
By the way those SSD are cheap : less than $160 for 500 GB... cheapest upgrade so far for those PCIe mac...

I'm interested in buying the Kingston A1000 for my Macbook Air 13 2015, but I'm not sure what adapter i'd need to make it work. Is the ST-NGFF2013-C good for it? Because I've been using the Evo 960 but my Mac gets warmer even when in standby.

 

[Audit13]

Anybody know if all of this still works on the Mojave beta? It's been working great on HS but worried about the next update.

This person is running Mojave on a 13" Air https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...with-samsung-ssd.2099405/page-4#post-26132580 with a Samsung 950 https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...with-samsung-ssd.2099405/page-2#post-26051932

 

[masw123]

I have mbp early 2015 - 13” with kingstone kc 1000.
Everything work good, but i have The problem with Wi-Fi.

I had the same problem (Samsung 960 EVO, Mid-2014 MBP, MBP111.0145.B00); 5ghz worked ok, 2.4ghz didnt work. After the High Sierra 10.13.5 update, it started working again (but could have been coincidental).

 

[ohnggni]

Since my last post, I had struggled with recognition problem for several days and I finally made it.
Long story short, my Macbook pro retina 13" 2014-mid can hibernate with Samsung 960evo NVMe ssd driver as successfully flashing the modified bootrom. I used the cheapest SPI programmer, CH341a and Korean EFI-Rom converting board for J6100 port as hardwares and UEFI Tool and CH341a programmer as softwares. It didn't need to supply 3.3v to PP3V3_SUS. Instead, I plugged magsafe and battery port only while detecting the chip in the CH341a software.

My pmset adjusted like as in the following last night;
pmset -a standby 1 standbydelay 5 hibernatemode 25
ohnggniui-MacBook-Pro:~ ohnggni$ pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
standbydelay 5
standby 1
halfdim 1
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage
gpuswitch 2
powernap 0
disksleep 10
sleep 3 (sleep prevented by com.tclementdev.timemachineedit, sharingd)
autopoweroffdelay 28800
hibernatemode 25
autopoweroff 1
ttyskeepawake 1
displaysleep 3
acwake 0
lidwake 1

And I got the log this morning; (reduced nothing for about 5 hours)
2018-06-26 01:09:21 +0900 Sleep Entering Sleep state due to 'Clamshell Sleep': Using Batt (Charge:94%) 16393 secs
2018-06-26 05:42:34 +0900 Wake Wake from Standby [CDNVA] due to EC.LidOpen/UserActivity Assertion: Using BATT (Charge:94%) 389 secs

Regarding hibernation, I'll check it further as closing the lid for much longer time.

Please be sure to backup(dump) your original bootrom prior to mod & flash, by using CH341a software(Read & Save) or dosdude1's tool.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had gone through tremendous trial & errors before I got to know things above.
I nearly cried when I made it last night.
Special thanks to gilles_polysoft, terraphantm, vk2fro...

edit [Jun.26] IF you have interest in the converting board and you live in South Korea, contact the seller to directly buy via his homepage instead of ebay.

edit [Jun.27] Additionally I measured the battery consumption during hibernation last night. Minus 2% for 14.5hours. It seems so similar to Apple's advertisement, 30days standby time.

 

[Cmd+Q]

Long story short, my Macbook pro retina 13" 2014-mid can hibernate with Samsung 960evo NVMe ssd driver as successfully flashing the modified bootrom. I used the cheapest SPI programmer, CH341a and Korean EFI-Rom converting board for J6100 port as hardwares and UEFI Tool and CH341a programmer as softwares.

I have the same setup here and successfully flashed my Late-2013 MacBook Pro with an CH341A and flashrom. Unfortunately, I still have the boot delay and now suspecting I did the replacement wrong (replaced
51116915-C34B-4D8E-86DB-6A70F2E60DAA as-is with the appropriate file from MBP114_0183_B00.fd; Header checksum: E6h, Data checksum: C0h). Any suggestions?

 

[ohnggni]

I have the same setup here and successfully flashed my Late-2013 MacBook Pro with an CH341A and flashrom. Unfortunately, I still have the boot delay and now suspecting I did the replacement wrong (replaced
51116915-C34B-4D8E-86DB-6A70F2E60DAA as-is with the appropriate file from MBP114_0183_B00.fd; Header checksum: E6h, Data checksum: C0h). Any suggestions?

How about hibernation? If it is alright, I recommend NVRam & SMC clear first. In my case, hibernation got to work first but boot delay and intermittent KP for switching bootcamp to macOS remained. So I did NVRam & SMC clear and I am watching if it's effective.

 

[vk2fro]

Since my last post, I had struggled with recognition problem for several days and I finally made it.
Long story short, my Macbook pro retina 13" 2014-mid can hibernate with Samsung 960evo NVMe ssd driver as successfully flashing the modified bootrom. I used the cheapest SPI programmer, CH341a and Korean EFI-Rom converting board for J6100 port as hardwares and UEFI Tool and CH341a programmer as softwares. It didn't need to supply 3.3v to PP3V3_SUS. Instead, I plugged magsafe and battery port only while detecting the chip in the CH341a software.

My pmset adjusted like as in the following last night;
pmset -a standby 1 standbydelay 5 hibernatemode 25
ohnggniui-MacBook-Pro:~ ohnggni$ pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
standbydelay 5
standby 1
halfdim 1
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage
gpuswitch 2
powernap 0
disksleep 10
sleep 3 (sleep prevented by com.tclementdev.timemachineedit, sharingd)
autopoweroffdelay 28800
hibernatemode 25
autopoweroff 1
ttyskeepawake 1
displaysleep 3
acwake 0
lidwake 1

And I got the log this morning; (reduced nothing for about 5 hours)
2018-06-26 01:09:21 +0900 Sleep Entering Sleep state due to 'Clamshell Sleep': Using Batt (Charge:94%) 16393 secs
2018-06-26 05:42:34 +0900 Wake Wake from Standby [CDNVA] due to EC.LidOpen/UserActivity Assertion: Using BATT (Charge:94%) 389 secs

Regarding hibernation, I'll check it further as closing the lid for much longer time.

Please be sure to backup(dump) your original bootrom prior to mod & flash, by using CH341a software(Read & Save) or dosdude1's tool.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had gone through tremendous trial & errors before I got to know things above.
I nearly cried when I made it last night.
Special thanks to gilles_polysoft, terraphantm, vk2fro...

edit: IF you have interest in the converting board and you live in South Korea, contact the seller to directly buy via his homepage.

This is good news - means I won't need to solder to my macbook. CH341A at the ready, windows loaded up in a parallels VM (I've flashed my drone with this VM, it should work similar for the macbook). Flasher setup has arrived at the post office so I will collect it tomorrow. As I use a desktop computer for the majority of my work, I can do extended sleep tests with the modified rom - Mostly my macbook is put away unless I take it out with me, or my housemate wants to use a computer (his is borked - needs new parts) so I let him use my macbook. Will record the whole process tomorrow for the benefit of the forum, and post it up on youtube.

 

[Cmd+Q]

How about hibernation? If it is alright, I recommend NVRam & SMC clear first. In my case, hibernation got to work first but boot delay and intermittent KP for switching bootcamp to macOS remained. So I did NVRam & SMC clear and I am watching if it's effective.

Thank you! Yes, the hibernation issue seems solved after restoring the energy saving defaults on my MacBook Pro. I used the system booting and boot delay as first indicators - which gave me the mixed results. SMC/PRAM/NVRAM reset did change anything for me unfortunately.

CH341A at the ready, windows loaded up in a parallels VM (I've flashed my drone with this VM, it should work similar for the macbook).

I was initially planning to flash from the same machine. However, as the target MacBook Pro went into some kind of service state that wouldn’t let me turn on it on when I connected to the J6100 port, I used flashrom in a Linux VM on another Windows machine as service machine. Initially, I tired a Windows VM with the infamous CH431A Programmer but that did not recognize the 8MB chip correctly - hence the switch to Linux.

 

[m4dd0g1975]

M4dd0g1975

Back up your daughters SSD with carbon copy cloner, then put it into the other computer. Blow away the install on the daughters SSD, then install high sierra. Restore the backup afterward and install your new SSD into your computer. An original Mac SSD is required for the firmware update.

vk2fro, thanks for the offer i actually read the post on my phone and didn't scroll down so I didn't take you up on it.

So I did exactly this ^, daughter giving me wicked side eye, but hey dads studying IT on the side so she is cool with it.

Macbook loaded mavericks from recovery, updated to high sierra, all looked good I restored to a partition on a 3tb seagate external, shutdown put Intel 600p 512gb in and rebooted 15 minutes later it auto recovered itself to high sierra and all looks good. Turns out not only the drive was toast but also the wifi bluetooth card so a new one is coming from eBay. used daughters card for that too cables just reached, wifi card is useless without antenna attached even though I am 2 feet from router.

Muchas gracias and refried beans to you and your family, you guys are awesome.

Speed test shows write 572.8mb read 1210.3mb but for me it wasn't about speed increase, more to see if I could rescue a busted MBP.

MBP Mid 2014 black sintech long adaptor intel 600p 512gb (20% off on eBay EOFY sale) high sierra 10.13.5 bootrom 112.0146.B00

 

[vk2fro]

kind warning here - do not try to power up a machine with the wifi antenna's disconnected. The card could easily be damaged, a bit like pressing the microphone on a CB radio without an antenna connected. They don't like it. At best it will get very hot and have awful/non existant range/speed, at worst you'll kill it.

 

[highvoltage12v]

Hello all,
I have been reading through the forum but I am still unsure whether an efi mod is required to prevent kernal panics after hibernate, or simply purchasing the sintech adpater instead of the current one I have now. I am on bootrom 146 on a 2014 15" MBP.

 

[vk2fro]

The 2013 and 2014 models need the modified EFI, the 2015 models do not.

The flash does help, but having the correct adapter will improve your experience. I have not had a kernel panic that is not sleep related (that will be fixed today with the efi modification) with the long black sintech.

Went to the post office and picked up my J6100 flashing kit. Quickly soldered it up, is going to take longer to download the high sierra installer to get the 2015 NVME driver from it than it did to solder the kit together. Pulled my copy off the server and found it was an older (10.13.4) revision.

Sadly no video folks. Looks like I'm up for a new camera - my panasonic wont turn on

edit: done the mods to the rom, and its writing now. Fingers crossed. I still have 3 backups I can fall back on if I goofed

 

[terraphantm]

I have the same setup here and successfully flashed my Late-2013 MacBook Pro with an CH341A and flashrom. Unfortunately, I still have the boot delay and now suspecting I did the replacement wrong (replaced
51116915-C34B-4D8E-86DB-6A70F2E60DAA as-is with the appropriate file from MBP114_0183_B00.fd; Header checksum: E6h, Data checksum: C0h). Any suggestions?

Try going to System Preferences -> Startup Disk, click the lock icon, and select your SSD.

 

[Cmd+Q]

Try going to System Preferences -> Startup Disk, click the lock icon, and select your SSD.

Yep, that worked! Thanks a bunch!

 

[vk2fro]

Blasted usb hub! I've been messing around with failed flash after failed flash, coz I was too lazy to move my headphones and battery monitor from the top of my computer. Plugged the CH341A into the front port of the hackintosh and flashed the macbook pro successfully with it. Now a happy camper.

 

[AleGhia]

Hello all, i need help for upgrade the ssd of my macbook pro retina 13” early 2015. I have buy sintech black adapter (the new) but havent buy an ssd. Wich type of ssd you advise me to buy? I need 1tb ssd and i need to install windows 10 too in my macbook with bootcamp. Now i have the original 128gb ssd with high sierra installed
What tutorial or video tutorial i must use for upgrade my ssd and preserve my macbook from sleep problem, restart problem and all other problems that can occur?
Thanks so much community.

 

[vk2fro]

AleGhia you should be able to simply do a carbon copy clone of your current installation to an external back up drive, swap the original apple drive for a sintech long black adapter with the nvme drive of your choice, then boot from the backup on the external drive and carbon copy clone it back to the new nvme drive. Your computer is new enough to not need a boot rom hack. You can then use boot camp to put on a windows 10 installation.

 

[AleGhia]

AleGhia you should be able to simply do a carbon copy clone of your current installation to an external back up drive, swap the original apple drive for a sintech long black adapter with the nvme drive of your choice, then boot from the backup on the external drive and carbon copy clone it back to the new nvme drive. Your computer is new enough to not need a boot rom hack. You can then use boot camp to put on a windows 10 installation.

Wich ssd is better for resolve heating problem? A friend tell me that him ssd arrive at 100 grades celsius. I need 1tb memory.

 

[sandrvoxon]

Hi Guys ! Anyone using SM951 ? Can you tell me pls how is it ? Any issues ?

 

[Jilly Bowman]

Hi Guys ! Anyone using SM951 ? Can you tell me pls how is it ? Any issues ?

I have a 256GB one in my 2013 MBP, it runs bootcamp ok, slow to boot, hibernation doesn't work but i've not reflashed the ROM yet. Its a slow on write speed but read speed is good.