Upgrading Mac Studio storage

[datagov63]

Who will test these drives for security vulnerabilities?

 

[whgmkeller]

When you read thru this thread, you can see that there are several testers doing intense tests.

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Hello everyone,

Tests are goong extremely well with 10 testers (6 recruited on this forum, Collin Mistr, and local french studios or video editors) for 2 months now.

Everything goes smoothly, speed is tremendous and in worst case we have used 5% of lifetime for 150PBW (which is excellent !) while doing continous write at full speed for 2x months...

 

[whgmkeller]

I am confused about the M1 and M2 boards. Just to clarify: I’m guessing it won’t be possible to buy a set of ssd boards for a M1 Studio and carry them over to a M2 Studio at a later time?

 

[Pressure]

Hello everyone,

Tests are goong extremely well with 10 testers (6 recruited on this forum, Collin Mistr, and local french studios or video editors) for 2 months now.

Everything goes smoothly, speed is tremendous and in worst case we have used 5% of lifetime for 150PBW (which is excellent !) while doing continous write at full speed for 2x months...

Great to see the progress!

 

[Zorn]

Since the Mac Studio has 2 storage slots, is it possible to simply move the original drive to slot #2 and use it as additional backup storage?

 

[Pressure]

Since the Mac Studio has 2 storage slots, is it possible to simply move the original drive to slot #2 and use it as additional backup storage?

No.

Only configurations shipping from Apple are possible.

Single NAND blade configurations are 512GB, 1TB and 2TB. Two NAND blade configurations are 4TB (2 x 2TB) and 8TB (2 x 4TB).

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Thanks everyone, whgmkeller, Pressure, Zorn and datagov63.

Zorn you can't use two 512GB modules, nor two 1TB modules, but :

• if you have already one 2TB drive, you can add a second one and it can make a 4TB configuration, BUT NANDs need to be reprogrammed
• if you only have one 512GB or 1TB drive, then you can unsolder your NANDs, and purchase another card and solder a total of 8x 512GB nands of 8x 1TB nands (4x on each cards), but it may not worth it.

Pressure you're not the only one to have told me that, I modified the project accordingly

whgmkeller sadlythe M1 and M2 boards are almost identical but are not interchangeable : because M1 uses BGA110 nands and M2 uses BGA315 nands.

 

[avidrissman]

I don't know since when precisely this has been possible, but you can now order in the SelfService Repair Store any SSD capacity you want..

I was thinking about this, why Apple would offer the 1–8TB SSDs in the repair store for only higher-configuration Studios, and I have a proposed explanation. The 512GB Studio was sold with a binned GPU, while 1–8TB models were sold with full GPUs. If they sold larger SSDs for the 512GB Studio, then you could build yourself a configuration that didn’t match any of their standard configurations, and they might consider that an “invalid” configuration.

Gilles, I just signed up for an 8TB replacement on Kickstarter, so now my Mac Studio will have an “invalid” configuration of 10 CPU/24 GPU/32 GB RAM/8 TB. To be clear, this should work fine?

Thank you so much for making these.

 

[Pressure]

I was thinking about this, why Apple would offer the 1–8TB SSDs in the repair store for only higher-configuration Studios, and I have a proposed explanation. The 512GB Studio was sold with a binned GPU, while 1–8TB models were sold with full GPUs. If they sold larger SSDs for the 512GB Studio, then you could build yourself a configuration that didn’t match any of their standard configurations, and they might consider that an “invalid” configuration.

Gilles, I just signed up for an 8TB replacement on Kickstarter, so now my Mac Studio will have an “invalid” configuration of 10 CPU/24 GPU/32 GB RAM/8 TB. To be clear, this should work fine?

Thank you so much for making these.

You can configure the base model with any of the SSD storage sizes without changing the SoC or amount of unified memory.

This was true for both the M1 and M2 models.

 

[originalmagneto]

I was thinking about this, why Apple would offer the 1–8TB SSDs in the repair store for only higher-configuration Studios, and I have a proposed explanation. The 512GB Studio was sold with a binned GPU, while 1–8TB models were sold with full GPUs. If they sold larger SSDs for the 512GB Studio, then you could build yourself a configuration that didn’t match any of their standard configurations, and they might consider that an “invalid” configuration.

Gilles, I just signed up for an 8TB replacement on Kickstarter, so now my Mac Studio will have an “invalid” configuration of 10 CPU/24 GPU/32 GB RAM/8 TB. To be clear, this should work fine?

Thank you so much for making these.

I was one of the testers of this exact config and I can confirm this WORK flawlessly! 👌👌👌

 

[avidrissman]

You can configure the base model with any of the SSD storage sizes without changing the SoC or amount of unified memory.

This was true for both the M1 and M2 models.

Huh. Guess I was mis-remembering. Thanks for the correction.

I was one of the testers of this exact config and I can confirm this WORK flawlessly! 👌👌👌

Whoo! And we’re 3/4 of the way there in a day. Yay!

 

[whgmkeller]

Hello Gilles,

I received your email about the early bird 8TB offer.

Just to make sure:

I have a M1 Mac Studio and I would like the early bird 8TB ssd’s. Is this possible for the M1 or is 8TB only offered for a M2 ?

Regards,

Willem Keller
Netherlands

 

[gilles_polysoft]

Hello avidrissman and whgmkeller,

To answer on the supported configurations : every Mac Studio supports every configuration from 512 GB to 8TB.

There is no "regular" M1 or M2 Mac Studio, there is only Max and Ultra M1 or M2 inside the MacStudio, and both those SOC have 8x PCIe channel dedicated each one to one NAND. So all MacStudio can support up to 8 TB.


Of course Apple has made so that M1 supports only some models of NANDs, M2 support other models of NANDs, etc.
I have start to build a table, still incomplete, that is available on this post done with @dosdude1 :

Apple Silicon Soldered SSD Upgrade Thread

In this thread, we intend to share all relevant details, resources, and processes involved with upgrading soldered storage on Apple Silicon Macs. Notes All M1 systems utilize BGA110 "S5E" NANDs Some M2 systems use BGA110, while some use BGA315 Table of supported NAND configurations SSD...

forums.macrumors.com

As a general rule :

• Supported NANDs chips are the same as iPhone and iPads NAND chips and only go up to 1TB each NAND
• every "regular" M1, M2, M3, or M4 SOC (even the one in the base 14" and 16" MacBook Pro) only support 2 PCIe 4.0 channels dedicated to Nands, so support only up to 2TB
• every "Pro", "Max" or "Ultra" M1, M2, M3 or, not here yet, M4 SOC, support 8x PCIe lanes, so theorically every "Pro", "Max" or "Ultra" Mac supports 8TB
• BUT a lot of MacBook Pros lacks the traces or chips for more than 4x NANDs.

In fact the "base" 512GB MacStudio M.2 has 1 card with only 2 nands, so it is even slower than the "base" 512 GB M1 which has 4x nands.

 

[mr_roboto]

Who will test these drives for security vulnerabilities?

As far as Apple's M-series chips are concerned, the external NAND flash modules these people are replacing are just bags the SoC can store bytes in. All security is implemented inside the M-series SoC itself. Data is never written to NAND flash in the clear, and the key used to encrypt it never leaves the Secure Enclave inside the SoC. Therefore, replacing the NAND modules with bigger ones cannot compromise the security of the system.

(Besides, as a practical matter, it is impossible to buy aftermarket NAND with the proprietary interface Apple requires. All these upgrades involve buying NAND harvested from other Macs or phones, usually ones which were damaged enough to be scrapped.)

 

[Pressure]

(Besides, as a practical matter, it is impossible to buy aftermarket NAND with the proprietary interface Apple requires. All these upgrades involve buying NAND harvested from other Macs or phones, usually ones which were damaged enough to be scrapped.)

Not true.

You can now buy raw NAND modules, solder them on and then restore the computer with Apple Configurator (which will do all the programming necessary for the raw NANDs).

 

[mr_roboto]

Not true.

You can now buy raw NAND modules, solder them on and then restore the computer with Apple Configurator (which will do all the programming necessary for the raw NANDs).

If you're able to buy new never-before-used NAND modules which work, it's still sourced from somewhere in Apple's supply chain. Most likely it's stuff that "fell off the back of the truck".

In non-Apple SSDs, the interface between SSD controller and flash is ONFI (open standard) or Toggle (Samsung/Toshiba). These are 8- or 16-bit wide parallel interfaces running at medium-high clock speeds.

Apple's SSDs integrate the SSD controller into the main SoC. Instead of having that SoC present ONFI or Toggle interfaces for flash, Apple uses four or eight lanes of PCIe. In turn, they have their NAND suppliers add an Apple proprietary ONFI/Toggle-to-PCIe bridge chip into every NAND module Apple buys.

Apple's the only company out there which does this. Everybody else has their SSD controller speak ONFI/Toggle natively with no external translation required. Thanks to this, there is no such thing as a generic NAND module which will work with an Apple SoC. Different pinouts, different electrical interfaces, no way to make it function.

 

[Chancha]

You said "All these upgrades involve buying NAND harvested from other Macs or phones", which excluded those "fell off the back of the truck". I think this is the part that he was disagreeing you with, which now you concur.

 

[Lipaz]

Hello gilles_polysoft,

First of all, thank you very much for this dedicated hard work and effort, that you and anyone who helped you put into this project. 🙏 Good to see that justice can defeat corporate greed sometimes.

So, I read the thread, and if I understand correctly, even if I own the "base" M1 Max Mac Studio with a single 512Gb storage, I can order either the 4Tb kit or the 8Tb kit, correct? I'm asking before I pledge for any of these StudioDrive kits on kickstarter.