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

[gilles_polysoft]

Thanks! So the only problem remaining is the laptop can't be in sleep mode otherwise should be stable for daily use.

Hello,
On 2015 MBPr, there is no issue at all.
On the late 2013 to mid 2014 macs, you can put the notebook to sleep, close the lid, etc.

It's only on battery that the hibernation normaly occurs after 3 hours and the mac can't wake up and read the Ram data from the hibernation file.
And this can be prevented by desactivating the deep sleep mode, with typing "sudo pmset -a standby 0" in the terminal.

Once you have done that, the settings remain permanently written in a pref. file and never goes off, and you can use your mac absolutely normally.

The only drawback is that your battery may be drained more quickly because the Mac never shuts the Ram off, and also if after a few days your battery goes totaly discharged, the ram data is lost...

 

[Wouark]

Every time my MBPr wakes up from sleep, I got a Kernel Panic :
nvme: "InitializeNVMe error = 0xE00002D7\n"@/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/IONVMeFamily/IONVMeFamily-356.1.4/IONVMeController.cpp:304
It happen when MBPr is on battery and on AC...
I will try to reinstall the OS ASAP

 

[ghifar]

hi all,
can someone help me to provide speed test screenshot of sm951 NVME on mbpr 2015 or other model in os X?
i just need to make sure this ssd is better than the original apple ssd's

thanks

 

[User9]

More questions!
1 Is 4k formatting for WD Black a must or would it work without as I'm not good with creating bootable usb and using linux terminal commands. Mind post the link to the procedures?
2. Is it possible to format 4k within some Mac applications or terminal or not possible has to be done with Linux/PC?. Thanks!

 

[DarkMeLo]

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 :
View attachment 724690

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

Amazing results, do you then mean that NON NVMe ssd's would not incur this issue on the 2013~14 macbooks then? Such as the SM951?

 

[gilles_polysoft]

More questions!
1 Is 4k formatting for WD Black a must or would it work without as I'm not good with creating bootable usb and using linux terminal commands. Mind post the link to the procedures?

Hello,
4k formatting is absolutely not mandatory. It is only necessary it you want to stay under Sierra - 10.12 (which only natively knows to work with 4K NVMe ssds).
If you are ok with High Sierra (10.13), which is able to handle 512B formatted NVMe SSDs so you don't have to use linux at all...
I'll try to make a tuto, yes !

2. Is it possible to format 4k within some Mac applications or terminal or not possible has to be done with Linux/PC?. Thanks!

You may install it with macports, fink or homebrew...
but is it really more simple that writing an iso of, let's say, xubuntu, to an USB key ?

 

[uintmax]

Hello,
4k formatting is absolutely not mandatory. It is only necessary it you want to stay under Sierra - 10.12 (which only natively knows to work with 4K NVMe ssds).
If you are ok with High Sierra (10.13), which is able to handle 512B formatted NVMe SSDs so you don't have to use linux at all...
I'll try to make a tuto, yes !

You may install it with macports, fink or homebrew...
but is it really more simple that writing an iso of, let's say, xubuntu, to an USB key ?

So with a 2015 retina Macbook Pro (13" or 15"), MacOS 10.13, a 512GB WD Black, and a Sintech adapter is it basically plug and play? Just get MacOS 10.13 on a USB, pop in the WD black into the Macbook with the adapter, and install?

Do I need to worry about the kapton tape or anything like that? If it is that easy I'll probably look into doing this.

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Amazing results, do you then mean that NON NVMe ssd's would not incur this issue on the 2013~14 macbooks then? Such as the SM951?

I remember there were some issues on 2013-14 MacBook Pros and AHCI PCIe SSDs like SM951 or Lite-on.

From my experience, there were no issue at all with a lite-on AHCI SSD on a 2013 rMBP and late 2013 MBA, there were also no issue with a Kingston AHCI Hyper-x on a early 2015 13" rMBP
But there were sleeps problem with AHCI drives on 15" 2013-2014 rMBP...

 

[pedrosimao]

Hello,

I installed a Kingston KC1000 480G on my MacBook Pro 15 Retina (Late 2013).
The disk is visible and usable on OSX High Sierra (installed on an external drive), or even on Ubuntu live USB. It works great and very fast.
But the Bootrom does not see the disk during boot. I tried going into recovery mode to disable SIP, but I end up into the external drive Recovery. Disabling SIP from there doesn't change a thing.
Than I tried to disable SIP from Net Recovery, which has Mavericks version and... the 'csrutil' tool is not present there

In your opinion how do I do? I think it's really a SIP problem?
Or do you suggest other ways to make this disk visible / allowed during boot? (holding ALT key during boot).

I am also thinking about just Time Machine the external USB version (which is already SIP disable) and restoring on internal disk. Do you think it works?

Thank you

 

[@t0mX]

looks like the same issue we have with SM961 ...

 

[pedrosimao]

looks like the same issue we have with SM961 ...

Just after buying the disk I realize a lot of people are facing this same issue.
I realize this is a EFI problem. I hope someone will be able to build a patch to install a modified EFI able to read those damn NVMe disks. I have no idea how to build a patcher myself, unhappily.

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Hello,

I installed a Kingston KC4000 480G on my MacBook Pro 15 Retina (Late 2013).
The disk is visible and usable on OSX High Sierra (installed on an external drive), or even on Ubuntu live USB. It works great and very fast.
But the Bootrom does not see the disk during boot. I tried going into recovery mode to disable SIP, but I end up into the external drive Recovery. Disabling SIP from there doesn't change a thing.
Than I tried to disable SIP from Net Recovery, which has Mavericks version and... the 'csrutil' tool is not present there

Hello,
There is absolutely no need at all to disable SIP in order to boot on NVMe drives, it doesn't change anything.
In all my tests (with MBPr 13" late 2013, MBPr 13" early 2015, MBPr 115" mid 2015, MBA 13" early 2015 and 2017), I never had to disable SIP to make the machine boot on NVMe drives (be it Apple NVMe drive or tiers drives).

Can you give your BootRom version ?
If it is MBP111.0138.B16 you are not up to date and this is absolutely normal that the NVMe SSD is not recognized at boot.
The correct version is MBP111.0142.B00 (or later). It can be updated either with installing High Sierra on the AHCI original drive, or follow the instructions I gave earlier on this thread.

If you already have MBP111.0142.B00 and your SSD is not seen at boot, please try to insulate the back of the adapter with tape, also reset the SMC.
[doublepost=1507885693][/doublepost]

So with a 2015 retina Macbook Pro (13" or 15"), MacOS 10.13, a 512GB WD Black, and a Sintech adapter is it basically plug and play? Just get MacOS 10.13 on a USB, pop in the WD black into the Macbook with the adapter, and install?

Almost... The first step is to update the Bootrom. It is mandatory.
After that, the steps you described will work.

Do I need to worry about the kapton tape or anything like that? If it is that easy I'll probably look into doing this.

The kapton tape (or any insulating tape) is a really simple precaution, it doesn't cost anything (I put katpon tape but it can be any insulating tape).
Just put some tape at the back of the adapter : it costs nothing and it prevents the connectors of the adapter, which carry the PCIe signals at very high frequency, to be too close to the grounded shield of the Apple 12+16 female connector.

 

[Marno]

Thanks to everybody who participate to such a thorough research which will help thousands of people to upgrade their SSD drives ! I've read all this thread (and 2 others in french where there is useful information too!).
Then I have a question about my personal scenario : I have a MacBook pro 13 inch 2015 I just bought before the summer in the hope of easy upgrade (which finally is possible thanks to all and special thanks to you Gilles !);
Soon I will upgrade High Sierra (when there will be less bugs/hickups..), and therefore benefit from the new EFI.
After a while I will upgrade, for sure, from the included Apple AHCI SSD to a NVMe non-Apple SSD :
1) As I would like to avoid any issue/tweek with sleep mode, which SSD would you advice for my 13inch 2015 MBP ? Is the easily available Samsung 960EVO would a good choice regarding the 4K/512 formatting block size ?
2) Regarding performance to max out the PCIe 2.0 4x of my 13inch MPB I think the Samsung is already good at 512GB. (the 1TB would be too bottlenecked by the PCIe). Do you agree?
3) what about 4K/512 ? what are the advantages ? and in term of performance ?
4) do I need to look for buying a WD black or a Toshiba drive ?

To sum it up : Do you concur with my reading of the thread that Samsung EVO would be the better choice for a 13inch Macbook PRO 2015 ?

Thanks to anybody willing to spend few minutes to confirm my ideas !

PS: yes i will put some insulating tape

 

[wawon]

After a while I will upgrade, for sure, from the included Apple AHCI SSD to a NVMe non-Apple SSD :
1) As I would like to avoid any issue/tweek with sleep mode, which SSD would you advice for my 13inch 2015 MBP ? Is the easily available Samsung 960EVO would a good choice regarding the 4K/512 formatting block size ?
2) Regarding performance to max out the PCIe 2.0 4x of my 13inch MPB I think the Samsung is already good at 512GB. (the 1TB would be too bottlenecked by the PCIe). Do you agree?
3) what about 4K/512 ? what are the advantages ? and in term of performance ?
4) do I need to look for buying a WD black or a Toshiba drive ?

I think 960 PRO/EVO series are the fastest NVMe SSD, now we can get. But for MacBook Pro 13 retina Early 2015, access speed is not different from Apple original PCIe AHCI SSD. It is relationship of Motherboard and SSD.

my result
Read 1200MB/s Write 1200MB/s PCIe 2.0 x4 5.0 GT/s MZ-JPV256 (Apple original AHCI SSD)
Read 1500MB/s Write 1050MB/s PCIe 2.0 x4 5.0 GT/s MZ-V6E250B/IT(960EVO 250GB, NVMe)

MZ-V6E250B/IT(960EVO 250GB) has wake-up (from sleep) issues, and it may be caused from EFI boot ROM, so we can not solve it easily. I suggest you to use original Apple SSD.

 

[tetet]

After a while I will upgrade, for sure, from the included Apple AHCI SSD to a NVMe non-Apple SSD :
1) As I would like to avoid any issue/tweek with sleep mode, which SSD would you advice for my 13inch 2015 MBP ? Is the easily available Samsung 960EVO would a good choice regarding the 4K/512 formatting block size ?
2) Regarding performance to max out the PCIe 2.0 4x of my 13inch MPB I think the Samsung is already good at 512GB. (the 1TB would be too bottlenecked by the PCIe). Do you agree?
3) what about 4K/512 ? what are the advantages ? and in term of performance ?
4) do I need to look for buying a WD black or a Toshiba drive ?
To sum it up : Do you concur with my reading of the thread that Samsung EVO would be the better choice for a 13inch Macbook PRO 2015 ?

1) All NVMe SSD I tested (WD Black, Samsung 960, Plextor M8Pe) has sleep issues. As gilles_polysoft mentioned, it even occurs to the Apple SSD pulled from 2017 iMac. It is very likely that the issue is related to the NVMe protocol in general.
2) 512GB or 1TB really depends on your need. Their speed will be maxed out at 1600MB/s due to lane limitation
3) I will test that later with WD Black.
4) My first WD Black 256GB had some extremely poor sustained read performance(250MB/s). After getting a new one, it reveals that the first one is faulty. The second one functions as intended, but the read is still only 800MB/s. This is inline with the results from multiple reviews. If you are trying to save some bucks by using WD Black, make use you would test the speed.

Hackintosh community had a lot of resources related to NVMe add-on. I wonder if it's possible to port some of those resources for MacBook?

On a further note, I also experienced "folder + ?" while updating the system from GM to official release, followed by multiple reboots on black screen. The machine was able to find the right drive eventually. I wonder if anyone else observed that?

 

[pedrosimao]

Hello,
There is absolutely no need at all to disable SIP in order to boot on NVMe drives, it doesn't change anything.
In all my tests (with MBPr 13" late 2013, MBPr 13" early 2015, MBPr 115" mid 2015, MBA 13" early 2015 and 2017), I never had to disable SIP to make the machine boot on NVMe drives (be it Apple NVMe drive or tiers drives).

I have already put insulation tape, I am not 100% sure I did the right way. But I guess it is not an insulation problem since I am able to boot into the disk with an external USB drive, using the method described here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/boot-osx-on-a-nvme-card.1967790/

When I installed HighSierra it automatically changed the bootrom. The new bootrom doesn't produce a beep sound during startup for example. But still the computer was not able to see the SSD drive on startup (even with hold "Option").
Now, for some reason (maybe a PRAM + SMC reset), the old Bootrom was reinstalled. But anyway, the new one made no difference whatsoever. Also something odd that is happening now that wasn't before HighSierra install is that I was able to read my SD card on startup as a boot disk. I had Ubuntu installed on it and it was booting perfectly. And now I can't see it anymore. I don't know if two things are related.

I am not sure if there is a way to install new bottoms without installing HighSierra again. Since I already have it installed, it would be annoying to install it again just for the bootrom (which doesn't make a difference).

 

[Earl Urley]

The new bootrom doesn't produce a beep sound during startup for example.

It's just an NVRAM setting, you can bring back the startup sound by issuing this command in Terminal:

sudo nvram BootAudio=%0

I've been running with the Sintech adapter and a 256 GB Samsung SM951 on a Late 2013 rMBP 13-inch for the past several months (tried a Micro SATA Cables version but it was junk, didn't work OOTB) with no Kapton tape or shielding, but it's been fine for me.

Will try ordering a 500 GB 960 EVO and some Kapton as I'm running out of space trying to run Linux and Mac OS VMs (Parallels Lite from the App Store will run older OS Xs in a VM.)

I've given up on getting a 512 GB SM 951 because the prices on eBay all suck (average above $350 for a 'new' unit) compared to getting a 500 GB 960 EVO for only $240 or so.

One thing I noted about the SM951 was it was initially kinda crashy, but I enjoyed a 1300 MB read in Blackmagic speed disk test; then after I did a PRAM reset and some other things it stabilized to the point I no longer have random crashes but now I only do 800 MB read/write?!

Perhaps the SM951 doesn't need the shielding because of the lower voltage draw?

 

[zero_conduite]

My 2014 rMBP w/ a WD Black is at the Apple Store for an unrelated repair. I spoke with the Apple Store today: the repair was completed, yet they waited authorization for an additional repair after diagnosing a "Failing drive". I declined the $475 repair.

Fortunately, no conflict with Apple regarding my NVMe substitution. Resuming tests when the MBP returns.

 

[wawon]

My 2014 rMBP w/ a WD Black is at the Apple Store for an unrelated repair. I spoke with the Apple Store today: the repair was completed, yet they waited authorization for an additional repair after diagnosing a "Failing drive". I declined the $475 repair.

Fortunately, no conflict with Apple regarding my NVMe substitution. Resuming tests when the MBP returns.

I heard from Apple "Are you using any optional items? if you use, we refuse repair". You could apply for repair in spite of using 3rd party product. Dose the $475 repair mean replacing from WD Black to Apple SSD 512GB? it can be used when we want genuine SSD.

 

[ghifar]

It's just an NVRAM setting, you can bring back the startup sound by issuing this command in Terminal:

sudo nvram BootAudio=%0

I've been running with the Sintech adapter and a 256 GB Samsung SM951 on a Late 2013 rMBP 13-inch for the past several months (tried a Micro SATA Cables version but it was junk, didn't work OOTB) with no Kapton tape or shielding, but it's been fine for me.

Will try ordering a 500 GB 960 EVO and some Kapton as I'm running out of space trying to run Linux and Mac OS VMs (Parallels Lite from the App Store will run older OS Xs in a VM.)

I've given up on getting a 512 GB SM 951 because the prices on eBay all suck (average above $350 for a 'new' unit) compared to getting a 500 GB 960 EVO for only $240 or so.

One thing I noted about the SM951 was it was initially kinda crashy, but I enjoyed a 1300 MB read in Blackmagic speed disk test; then after I did a PRAM reset and some other things it stabilized to the point I no longer have random crashes but now I only do 800 MB read/write?!

Perhaps the SM951 doesn't need the shielding because of the lower voltage draw?

aww 800MB for the read/write, is it the NVME version or AHCI version? that's so bad if i compared it with my original macbook pro SSD's with read >1000Mb/s and write >600Mb/s. because i'm considering to buy that SM951 NVME hope that i got significant improve from that ssd, but after looking at your post make me don't want to buy SM951

 

[Earl Urley]

aww 800MB for the read/write, is it the NVME version or AHCI version? that's so bad if i compared it with my original macbook pro SSD's with read >1000Mb/s and write >600Mb/s. because i'm considering to buy that SM951 NVME hope that i got significant improve from that ssd, but after looking at your post make me don't want to buy SM951

AHCI version. But who knows, I just had my logic board swapped out by Apple so maybe my LB is bad, or the Sintech adapter is failing. Will know once I get the 960 EVO installed, that should boost me to 1600 MB/s from what I gather.

 

[DarkMeLo]

AHCI version. But who knows, I just had my logic board swapped out by Apple so maybe my LB is bad, or the Sintech adapter is failing. Will know once I get the 960 EVO installed, that should boost me to 1600 MB/s from what I gather.

Speed wise there should definitely be a boost, please update us with the tests and if there are any sleep/wake/restarting issues :/.

 

[tetet]

It's just an NVRAM setting, you can bring back the startup sound by issuing this command in Terminal:

sudo nvram BootAudio=%0

Perhaps the SM951 doesn't need the shielding because of the lower voltage draw?

SM951 is AHCI compatible.

 

[DarkMeLo]

I've also noticed that my original drive information is shown in the SATA/SATA Express section, not the PCI section. Any chance of the adapters working with SATA m.2's such as 850 evo m.2's?

 

[Transfusion]

I've also noticed that my original drive information is shown in the SATA/SATA Express section, not the PCI section. Any chance of the adapters working with SATA m.2's such as 850 evo m.2's?

That's a good question actually, but no, I tried for fun with a B+M-Key SSD for fun (random Chinese brand) and it wasn't detected in diskutil or anywhere, as expected. As others have noted the adapter is a passive one; no ICs or controllers, just direct pin to pin conversion. If you google around there are M.2 B+M SATA to desktop PCIe adapters such as StarTech's PEX2M2, but those rely on a chip that bridges PCIe to SATA e.g. Asmedia ASM1062, which would be quite hard to say the least to cram into an adapter of this size.

In the screenshot the interconnect is still PCI(e) and x2 width. It shows up in the SATA express section because the drive talks over PCIe but with the AHCI driver. AHCI is a legacy interconnect invented in hard drive times when SATA was the fastest available.