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

[gilles_polysoft]

I also test with 960 Evo (internal NVMe M.2) and 2013 MBA under High Sierra too. I don't find any slepp problems, but find re-boot problem. Normal boot (from power-off to press power button) is alaways OK, but re-boot (from power-on, select from menu or press button to re-boot) sometimes fail to find boot drive (internal 960 Evo NVMe M.2), "?" marked folder blinks.

I didn't have such problem at all, but it could be the same thing as the problem of wakeup from sleep, really...
Your problem may occur because of the SSD taking too long to be ready at startup...

For my information, did you protect the back of the sintech adapter with some tape ? (so that the pins at the back are not too close to the shield)

Hello Gilles,

So in my case with a late 2013 (11,2) mbpr, the best option is to stay away from samsung ?
I read WD Black have poor performances, so would you say Intel 600p is my best option ?
Any chance you kept the benchmark of those drives on your mid 2013 mbpr ?

My word would not be to stay away from samsung drives. They definitely are the fastest, but there still are issues on 2013-2014 macs.

If you have a 2013-2014 mac and can't wait, take an WD, Intel, Kingston or Toshiba NVMe SSD. They are slower than Samsung SSD but they are still faster than OEM Apple drives, and way, way cheaper...
If you have a 2013-2014 mac and can wait a little, wait : there are still lots of tests being processed.
If you have a 2015 mac, go for 960 Evo or Pro...

Polaris Samsung drives did have some issues with PC motherboard in late 2016-early 2017, which were partly corrected with the 2B7QCXE7/2B6QCXP7 firmware update. Some PC users continue to have issues, maybe a firmware update will come ? I can't say...
[doublepost=1507052563][/doublepost]

This is the adapter I just ordered: http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2015-macbook-ssd-p-1139.html

Hopefully, it's the right one for my late 2013 MBP.

Yes it is

 

[Audit13]

Yes it is

Thank you for confirming my decision. I'll be ordering kapton tape from eBay and an nvme drive from my local computer shop.

 

[zeveto]

Between these ssd. which one do you advise me please for a MacBook Air 2013 ?
Intel 600p 512GB.
Toshiba OCZ RD400 256GB (M.2)
WD Black PCIe 512GB.

Thank's.

 

[wawon]

For my information, did you protect the back of the sintech adapter with some tape ? (so that the pins at the back are not too close to the shield)

I think that is a big problem. Once I tested without any protects of adapter with some kind of M.2 SSD(AHCI, NVMe) and retina MacBook Pro (13 late2013, 15 mid 2014, 15 mid 2015), some kind of Kernel panics had occurred suddenly. So I protect using silicate resin over the pins near Mac's motherboard connector. Now I have not found any kernel panics.
I hope that the manufacturer should improve the adapter and more many people could try to challenge.

 

[tetet]

The Samsung 960 Evo is 4K block-aware.

...that the samsung 960 evo has 512b logical sectors but 4096b physical sectors. So maybe it can be reformated to have both physical and logical sectors of 4096b size. Could you try the same that you did with your WD black. I would be really grateful.

Hi @imprimis1 and @maenpaa24,

I was not able to format the Samsung 960 Pro to 4K sector using nvme-cli, but I did it to WD Black 256GB. However, Samsung 960 works flawlessly with my MBPr 15 late 2013 in macOS HS.

...I followed the procedure for non-apple SSD install and I'm also stuck with the SSD not appearing in Disk Utils. Disabled SIP (System Integrity Protect).

I will now try the "diskutil" command line and see if the drive is detected. Tetet, can you please try this too?

Hi @t0mX,

For Samsung PM961, here are the things I have tried.
Phase 1:
1. Update the OS to HS.
2. Disable SIP
3. Tape the adapter like crazy, then put pad at the bottom.
4. Disk utility still cannot see it in command line after booting from installation image.
5. I installed Linux on a flash drive, then boot the machine to Linux. Still cannot see it in fdisk nor nvme-cil.
Phase two:
6. I raged to purchase a new adapter, a Samsung 960 Pro 256GB, a WD Black 256GB, a AHCI Samsung SM951, a
Sonnet Echo Express SE Thunderbolt to PCIe box, and an M.2 to PCIe card.
7. AHCI Samsung SM951 works right out of the box, which also confirms both adapters are fine.
8. WD Black and Samsung 960 Pro was working after some 10-20 times of rebooting and many other tweeks using the M.2 to PCIe card and PCIe box, they both worked. But there is still no luck for PM961.
9. I left WD Black and Samsung 960 Evo, and returned everything else.

However, the WD Black's write speed drops to around 250MB/s after a few test, while the read is steady at 1400MB/s (limited by 4* PCIe 2.0 speed). I am going put more tape and glue for the next round.

 

[wawon]

Your problem may occur because of the SSD taking too long to be ready at startup...

I agree with you. NVMe SSD needs more electric power than AHCI SSD, ex AHCI MZ-HPU256 3.3V 1.9A, NVMe 960EVO 256GB 3.3V 2.3A. In case of re-Boot, POST(Power-On-Self-Test) is omitted, So SSD stand by timing is rather tight.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201702
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-on_self-test

I think MaBook Air 13 Mid2013 has less electric power and response is not so quick. So I tried test with MacBook Pro retina 13 Early2015 and 960 Evo 256GB. There is no problems, even re-boot problem or sleep problem were not found. I will try more things.

 

[vsi]

I think that is a big problem. Once I tested without any protects of adapter with some kind of M.2 SSD(AHCI, NVMe) and retina MacBook Pro (13 late2013, 15 mid 2014, 15 mid 2015), some kind of Kernel panics had occurred suddenly. So I protect using silicate resin over the pins near Mac's motherboard connector. Now I have not found any kernel panics.
I hope that the manufacturer should improve the adapter and more many people could try to challenge.

What ssd do you use in your late 2013 mbpr ? any sleep issue with it ? thanks.
[doublepost=1507102185][/doublepost]

Hi @imprimis1 and @maenpaa24,

I was not able to format the Samsung 960 Pro to 4K sector using nvme-cli, but I did it to WD Black 256GB. However, Samsung 960 works flawlessly with my MBPr 15 late 2013 in macOS HS.

Do you mean the 960 pro works well in late 2013 mbpr ? or the 960 evo ?

 

[wawon]

What ssd do you use in your late 2013 mbpr ? any sleep issue with it ? thanks.

My case:
MacBook Air 13 Mid2013 960 Evo 256GB re-boot NG sleep OK
MacBook Pro retina 13 Early2015 960 Evo 256GB re-boot OK sleep OK

My adapter is protected by silicate resin over the pins near Mac's motherboard connector. No kernel panic is found.

 

[wawon]

My case:
MacBook Air 13 Mid2013 960 Evo 256GB re-boot NG sleep OK
MacBook Pro retina 13 Early2015 960 Evo 256GB re-boot OK sleep OK

My adapter is protected by silicate resin over the pins near Mac's motherboard connector. No kernel panic is found.

correction
MacBook Air 13 Mid2013 960 Evo 256GB re-boot NG sleep OK
MacBook Pro retina 13 Early2015 960 Evo 256GB re-boot OK sleep NG

I found kernel panic afer sleep with MacBook Pro retina 13 Early2015 960 Evo 256GB. Maybe, internal NVMe SSD is lost in sleep. I set hibernatemode 0, but it is not effective.

 

[ghifar]

Yes, right.
The write speed is better on small files, but on 5 GB test size it gives 2600MB/s read 750 MB/s write

well, thanks for your answer.. at least it's better than the original ssd from my mbpr 13" 2015.
and the important thing is i'm not stuck with this 128gb ssd .

here's my disk speed test from my original ssd from my mbpr 13" 2015 in high sierra (it's just for the comparison).
soon i'll post when my adapter is arrive with my new ssd .

 

[@t0mX]

Hi @t0mX,

For Samsung PM961, here are the things I have tried.
Phase 1:
1. Update the OS to HS.
2. Disable SIP
3. Tape the adapter like crazy, then put pad at the bottom.
4. Disk utility still cannot see it in command line after booting from installation image.
5. I installed Linux on a flash drive, then boot the machine to Linux. Still cannot see it in fdisk nor nvme-cil.
Phase two:
6. I raged to purchase a new adapter, a Samsung 960 Pro 256GB, a WD Black 256GB, a AHCI Samsung SM951, a
Sonnet Echo Express SE Thunderbolt to PCIe box, and an M.2 to PCIe card.
7. AHCI Samsung SM951 works right out of the box, which also confirms both adapters are fine.
8. WD Black and Samsung 960 Pro was working after some 10-20 times of rebooting and many other tweeks using the M.2 to PCIe card and PCIe box, they both worked. But there is still no luck for PM961.
9. I left WD Black and Samsung 960 Pro, and returned everything else.

However, the WD Black's write speed drops to around 250MB/s after a few test, while the read is steady at 1400MB/s (limited by 4* PCIe 2.0 speed). I am going put more tape and glue for the next round.

Hey Tetet,
On my side, I can confirm that my PM961 is working flawlessly with a M.2 to PCI-E adapter in my PC, so in the end, if you have tried a 2nd M.2 adapter and it's a no go, I believe the issue is Apple software / Samsung Firmware related...

I wish I had known this before ordering the PM961, but as we all know this is trial and error

 

[DarkMeLo]

I didn't have such problem at all, but it could be the same thing as the problem of wakeup from sleep, really...
Your problem may occur because of the SSD taking too long to be ready at startup...

For my information, did you protect the back of the sintech adapter with some tape ? (so that the pins at the back are not too close to the shield)


My word would not be to stay away from samsung drives. They definitely are the fastest, but there still are issues on 2013-2014 macs.

If you have a 2013-2014 mac and can't wait, take an WD, Intel, Kingston or Toshiba NVMe SSD. They are slower than Samsung SSD but they are still faster than OEM Apple drives, and way, way cheaper...
If you have a 2013-2014 mac and can wait a little, wait : there are still lots of tests being processed.
If you have a 2015 mac, go for 960 Evo or Pro...

Polaris Samsung drives did have some issues with PC motherboard in late 2016-early 2017, which were partly corrected with the 2B7QCXE7/2B6QCXP7 firmware update. Some PC users continue to have issues, maybe a firmware update will come ? I can't say...
[doublepost=1507052563][/doublepost]
Yes it is

So back to my first question, the specific models of WD, Intel, and Kingston have no sleep or reboot issue with 2013~2014 mbpr? Whereas samsung's are still showing issues?

Again, really appreciate your hard work !

 

[vsi]

So back to my first question, the specific models of WD, Intel, and Kingston have no sleep or reboot issue with 2013~2014 mbpr? Whereas samsung's are still showing issues?

Again, really appreciate your hard work !

The WD seem to suck. I feel the intel is the best compromise, unless someone thinks otherwise ?

 

[DarkMeLo]

The WD seem to suck. I feel the intel is the best compromise, unless someone thinks otherwise ?

And by “suck” you mean...?

 

[vsi]

And by “suck” you mean...?

I mean that if you make a bit of self research before buying an ssd, and read any test on internet about the WD, they all say that the performances are very low. Unlike the intel. Hence my comment.

 

[tetet]

Hey Tetet,
On my side, I can confirm that my PM961 is working flawlessly with a M.2 to PCI-E adapter in my PC, so in the end, if you have tried a 2nd M.2 adapter and it's a no go, I believe the issue is Apple software / Samsung Firmware related...

I wish I had known this before ordering the PM961, but as we all know this is trial and error

I'm glad you found a use for your PM961!

So back to my first question, the specific models of WD, Intel, and Kingston have no sleep or reboot issue with 2013~2014 mbpr? Whereas samsung's are still showing issues?

Again, really appreciate your hard work !

My WD Black have very poor stable read speed, around only 250MB/s, but the read speed is just fine.

Do you mean the 960 pro works well in late 2013 mbpr ? or the 960 evo ?

On Samsung 960 Evo, I encountered the wake up issue in my MBPr 15 late 2013. It was produced by leaving the machine unplugged, then shut down the lid. After a night, the machine could not recover. Later, it would boot into the question mark on folder screen. A reboot solves the issue. I am testing WD Black now.

 

[zero_conduite]

Hi, following this thread from inception and I joined because of the recent, wonderful news. Momentum is great lately--a deep thanks to you, contributors, for the hard work of incremental breakthroughs & frustrations.

I plunged. With a 15" rMBP mid-2014 11,3, a new WD Black NVMe M.2 7.2017/fw B35500WD and a CY adapter. Old BootROM MBP112.0138.B16.

Following gilles_polysoft lead: booted linux on the rMBP, lsblk revealed SSD as /dev/nvme0n1; nmve-cli to format the WD Black with 4k block size from the default 512; Kapton tape/spacer.

Booted 10.13 installer from external USB and did not see SSD in 10.13 Disk Utility. Used this tip to see SSD in 10.13 Disk Utility (10.12 Disk Utility: no View menu item) and then formatted as GPT, Journaled:
https://tinyapps.org/blog/mac/201710010700_high_sierra_disk_utility.html
Terminal diskutil confirmed SSD & Disk Utility showed SSD.

Installed 10.13. However, auto-reboot after initial install booted from external USB.
Installed 10.12. Auto-reboot after initial install booted from external USB. The new install appears as startup drive.

Startup w/o external drive times out to ? folder. With external drive..
On startup, with Option key, only the external USB drive appears--the internal NVMe SSD never appeared in tests. When booting 10.12 Sierra from the external drive, OS immediately mounts the SSD and I see all installed files in the SSD volume (10.12 or 10.13 dependent on the test run). Disk Utility & diskutil shows the internal CoreStorage drive.
System Report displays NVMExpress with the new bootable, writable WD Black x4 with UUID. BootROM not updated.

My guess is the old BootROM EFI can't boot from NVMe on my system and I likely need to update my BootROM. What do you folks think? Suggestions are welcome.

Looking forward!

 

[zero_conduite]

[Update]

15" rMBP mid-2014 11,3, a new WD Black NVMe M.2 7.2017/fw B35500WD and a CY adapter. Old BootROM MBP112.0138.B16.

Updated BootROM to latest MBP112.0142.B00
With a Apple AHCI SSD as internal drive, updated, swapped in the NVMe. Installed OS.

Success. WD Black NVMe M.2 formatted 4k sector size, Journaled GPT, installed 10.13 and then 10.12. Internal NVMe SSD works as boot drive.

One hitch in my system with the WD Black, in both 10.12 & 10.13:
Restart/Reboot times out to ? folder. With Battery or AC.
Shutdown then Power Button successfully boots.
Sleep-Wake works with a quick, cursory test.
During the OS install, with auto-reboots, I manually shutdown and powered up (otherwise boots from external Installer drive). The NVMe drive always appeared as a boot drive when Option key was held [Edit:] [at cold-boot].

Will another NVMe brand be trouble-free?

 

[zero_conduite]

I didn't have such problem at all, but it could be the same thing as the problem of wakeup from sleep, really...
Your problem may occur because of the SSD taking too long to be ready at startup...

Observations from my system, while using internal WD Black PCIe NVMe 4k-sector/Journaled, 10.12 with no external drives. SMC/NVRAM reset. 15" rMBP 2014 w/ updated BootROM:

-- 30 seconds of black screen elapse from cold-boot Startup chime to Apple logo & status bar. Booting from internal NVMe.
-- 5 sec. elapse from cold-boot Startup chime, holding Option-key, to displaying internal NVMe boot drive icon. Apple logo and status bar begin instantly when Return key pressed. Almost 30 sec. from chime to desktop.

Restart/Reboot is 30 sec. of black screen from chime to the ? folder. With Option-key, 5 sec. from chime to Internet Recovery icon. Never displays internal WD Black boot icon.

[Update:]

After numerous boot ups, cold-boot chime to desktop is consistent, under 30 sec; a sudden change. Restart issue unchanged.

[Update:]

Sleep: Closing lid or Sleep menu item and then waking after a few minutes works. Closed the lid overnight and then resumed, resulted in a chime and ? folder.

 

[DarkMeLo]

Observations from my system, while using internal WD Black PCIe NVMe 4k-sector/Journaled, 10.12 with no external drives. SMC/NVRAM reset. 15" rMBP 2014 w/ updated BootROM:

-- 30 seconds of black screen elapse from cold-boot Startup chime to Apple logo & status bar. Booting from internal NVMe.
-- 5 sec. elapse from cold-boot Startup chime, holding Option-key, to displaying internal NVMe boot drive icon. Apple logo and status bar begin instantly when Return key pressed. Almost 30 sec. from chime to desktop.

Restart/Reboot is 30 sec. of black screen from chime to the ? folder. With Option-key, 5 sec. from chime to Internet Recovery icon. Never displays internal WD Black boot icon.

[Update:]

After numerous boot ups, cold-boot chime to desktop is consistent, under 30 sec; a sudden change. Restart issue unchanged.

[Update:]

Sleep: Closing lid or Sleep menu item and then waking after a few minutes works. Closed the lid overnight and then resumed, resulted in a chime and ? folder.

Firstly, extremely appreciate your testings and updates.

So it seems that wd’s aren’t the answers too. Have you tried it a smaller sector size? Say 512B. Would really like to see if that has a difference regarding sleep and retstart.

Us 2013-2014 mbpr owners are so unlucky :/.

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Observations from my system, while using internal WD Black PCIe NVMe 4k-sector/Journaled, 10.12 with no external drives. SMC/NVRAM reset. 15" rMBP 2014 w/ updated BootROM:

-- 30 seconds of black screen elapse from cold-boot Startup chime to Apple logo & status bar. Booting from internal NVMe.
-- 5 sec. elapse from cold-boot Startup chime, holding Option-key, to displaying internal NVMe boot drive icon. Apple logo and status bar begin instantly when Return key pressed. Almost 30 sec. from chime to desktop.

Restart/Reboot is 30 sec. of black screen from chime to the ? folder. With Option-key, 5 sec. from chime to Internet Recovery icon. Never displays internal WD Black boot icon.

[Update:]

Sleep: Closing lid or Sleep menu item and then waking after a few minutes works. Closed the lid overnight and then resumed, resulted in a chime and ? folder.

Hello,

thanks a lot for your tests.
I totally agree with the results, I finally took hours to test and got the same results also.
On a mid-2015 MacBook Pro retina 15" : absolutely no issue
On a Late-2013 MacBook Pro retina 13" : after ~8 hours of deep sleep, the wake up is impossible.
MacBook Pro start with a blackscreen, then restart.
All this, with either a Samsung 960 Evo or WD Black M.2.

I noticed the MBPr also looses PRAM during this "cold wake-up" or "cold start" (e.g it loose my setting of SIP disable)

It could be more or less a SMC problem.

I can't say yet it the MacBook Pro can't wake from sleep (or shutdown) because it looses PRAM, or if it looses PRAM because it can't wake from sleep (or shutdown).

I continue the tests : I'll try resetting SMC, also I'll try original Apple NVMe SSD, to see if it's an issue caused by NVMe SSD in general.

This issue is quite sad, I hope we can fix it...

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Hello,
I continue the tests : I'll try resetting SMC, also I'll try original Apple NVMe SSD, to see if it's an issue caused by NVMe SSD in general.

Hello to all,

a little update here.
So I tried to put a genuine Apple NVMe SSD (SM2048L) in my 13", late 2013 rMBP, under El Capitan (10.11.6).

After this night sleeping on battery, it had exactly the same behaviour on wake up : it did not properly wake up from sleep. Display stayed black, and after a while (3s) the mac did chimie and made a cold start.
Sip was disabled yesterday evening before sleep, this setting has been lost at restart this morning.

The SSD being a genuine Apple SSD from a 2017 iMac, the issue here is definitely not with tiers SSD nor with the sintech adapter. It is with NVMe SSD (being it Apple or other brand), and maybe the SMC is involved...

Also, I did checked the console log and saw en error code which is quite common with 2013 MacBook air-MacBook Pro :
10/10/2017 07:55:07,000 kernel[0]: Sleep failure code 0x00000000 0x1f006c00

It seems we could fix the problem with settings like "autopoweroff 0" or "standby 0".
Will try that...

[EDIT] I set the standby delay to 60s (with "sudo pmset stanbydelay 60").
It makes the problem occur after a minute of sleep... Ok this is a clue...

So I tried to test all combinations with smalls standby and autopoweroff delays.

Here are the results :


It seems clear that, in fact, true hibernation doesn't work on NVMe SSD (this is, again, with a genuine Apple SM2048L NVMe SSD).

So, unless other findings, solution would be to stay away from hibernatemode 25, and set "standby" to 0 with the command "sudo pmset -a standby 0"

More info here :
https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...nce-between-autopoweroff-and-standby-in-pmset

 

[User9]

Just wondering if advance users can confirm if the following will work or issues that I may encounter.

1. Macbook 13 Retina Early 2015
2. Format new SSD WD Black to 4k sector using method in this thread
3. Install WD SSD into Macbook
4. Boot from external Mac (original SSD) with Sierra
5. Use Carbon copy cloner to clone original drive onto WD SSD
Would this work? or is update to bootrom required by upgrading to High Sierra is a must for this to work?
or Should I update to High Sierra first then downgrade by Cloning back to Sierra before performing the above?

Thanks a million!

 

[Wouark]

Hello, Again

I used the Toshiba SSD for 3 weeks without any issue.
Since I installed the 960 EVO SSD, Macbook keeps crash when I open back the lid and when I press Restart (leads to a folder icon with the "?")
However, turning off and restarting the mac is not a problem;
Still investigating...

Btw, well done for all these advances

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Just wondering if advance users can confirm if the following will work or issues that I may encounter.

1. Macbook 13 Retina Early 2015
2. Format new SSD WD Black to 4k sector using method in this thread
3. Install WD SSD into Macbook
4. Boot from external Mac (original SSD) with Sierra
5. Use Carbon copy cloner to clone original drive onto WD SSD
Would this work? or is update to bootrom required by upgrading to High Sierra is a must for this to work?
or Should I update to High Sierra first then downgrade by Cloning back to Sierra before performing the above?

Thanks a million!

Hello,
All what you have described is correct, except you have to update the Bootrom first.
You can do that by first installing High sierra (10.13) on your actual genuine AHCI SSD.
But it can also be manually done :
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/page-7#post-25159050