Great to see the progress!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...
No.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?
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..
You can configure the base model with any of the SSD storage sizes without changing the SoC or amount of unified memory.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! 👌👌👌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.
I was one of the testers of this exact config and I can confirm this WORK flawlessly! 👌👌👌
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.Who will test these drives for security vulnerabilities?
Not true.(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.)
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".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).
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.![]()
Actually in the meantime I found you responded to this question positively in this thread, so a couple of hours ago I pledged an 8Tb kit as the last early bird.Hello Lipaz and thank you !
Yes sure every Mac Studio, even the "base" one, do accept 4TB or 8TB modules, I have already upgraded many ones ! There is no limitation, and 8TB M1 Max is a configuration that was offered on the Apple Store (as is the 8TB M2 Max today).
It is definitely dual rank, the NAND says 128GB on it.Interesting, although it again looks different from both the Mac Pro and Mac Studio PCBs.
So this one probably can have a single NAND chip on both the top and bottom for the base model M4.
View attachment 2448371
Yeah, there are more pictures.It is definitely dual rank, the NAND says 128GB on it.