I think you should do better than 350-400MB/sec. This is what I get on my 2014 Mini with an original Apple SSD. If you were only looking for 400MB/sec, that could have been accomplished with an external USB SSD.
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Using a Standard M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD in the 2014 Mini
- Thread starter treekram
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I think you should do better than 350-400MB/sec. This is what I get on my 2014 Mini with an original Apple SSD. If you were only looking for 400MB/sec, that could have been accomplished with an external USB SSD.
Would like to say a thank you to everyone in this thread, I've just installed a new drive into my 2014 Mac Mini and found this thread very helpful.
I bought the mini second hand, it has 8GB ram, and the previous owner installed a WD Green SSD in the SATA drive. The drive was only 240GB, which is enough for me but I almost wanted to try this just because I could (and add a little bit of a performance boost).
I used the 'all-in-one' Sintech adapter, and the physical install took about 10 minutes, and really was very simple, if you're browsing this thread and are thinking 'can I do this' it's really very easy, much easier than replacing the SATA drive. I think booted into recover mode, formatted the drive, installed Catalina on it, then migrated data from the other SSD (which was pretty fast being SSD to SSD).
I went for a Crucial P1 500GB, as it was the cheapest drive from the compatible list, and it didn't seem worth paying for a faster drive if the mini couldn't take advantage of it any way. So now I have 740GB of available internal storage.
Read speeds on the SATA were about 525mb, PCIe is a modest improvement on this with about 750mb
One question someone might be able to help me with. I enabled trim on the new drive using terminal, I have erased the original drive, will I need to re-enable TRIM on it?, if so how do you do it on a 2nd internal SSD?
Cheers, and I'll update the thread if I have any issues with the drive going forward
Edit: added read speeds
I bought the mini second hand, it has 8GB ram, and the previous owner installed a WD Green SSD in the SATA drive. The drive was only 240GB, which is enough for me but I almost wanted to try this just because I could (and add a little bit of a performance boost).
I used the 'all-in-one' Sintech adapter, and the physical install took about 10 minutes, and really was very simple, if you're browsing this thread and are thinking 'can I do this' it's really very easy, much easier than replacing the SATA drive. I think booted into recover mode, formatted the drive, installed Catalina on it, then migrated data from the other SSD (which was pretty fast being SSD to SSD).
I went for a Crucial P1 500GB, as it was the cheapest drive from the compatible list, and it didn't seem worth paying for a faster drive if the mini couldn't take advantage of it any way. So now I have 740GB of available internal storage.
Read speeds on the SATA were about 525mb, PCIe is a modest improvement on this with about 750mb
One question someone might be able to help me with. I enabled trim on the new drive using terminal, I have erased the original drive, will I need to re-enable TRIM on it?, if so how do you do it on a 2nd internal SSD?
Cheers, and I'll update the thread if I have any issues with the drive going forward
Edit: added read speeds
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If you are using Catalina, it should find and enable Trim on the SSD automatically.One question someone might be able to help me with. I enabled trim on the new drive using terminal, I have erased the original drive, will I need to re-enable TRIM on it?, if so how do you do it on a 2nd internal SSD?
Cheers, and I'll update the thread if I have any issues with the drive going forward
Edit: added read speeds
Hi guys!!
Installed and configured new system PCIe, you can find attached the speed reached
My old HDD system disk was only 60 Mb/s, now I have speeds higher than 600-700 Mb/s (more than 10 times faster)
Thank you everyone for your very valuable help and comments, without your help it would not be possible this upgrade in my macmini.
Thank you!
Installed and configured new system PCIe, you can find attached the speed reached
My old HDD system disk was only 60 Mb/s, now I have speeds higher than 600-700 Mb/s (more than 10 times faster)
Thank you everyone for your very valuable help and comments, without your help it would not be possible this upgrade in my macmini.
Thank you!
Attachments
Hello everyone,
just want to say, that I just added adapter (L shape, from aliexpress, 8 usd) with Samsung EVO 970 PRO and IT WORKED right away. Speed is 730/780 MB/s, so pretty amazing. OS installing also was very simple, I just restored from backup and made my new nvme disk as boot disk. Instal took no more than 10 minutes ( mostly for cleaning dust and opening the case) and OS restore took about 2 hours from very slow time machine hdd. Adapter from aliexpress came in 3 weeks and ssd from local online shop in 3 days :-D So i really recommend this upgrade as it gives blazing speeds and is super easy.
just want to say, that I just added adapter (L shape, from aliexpress, 8 usd) with Samsung EVO 970 PRO and IT WORKED right away. Speed is 730/780 MB/s, so pretty amazing. OS installing also was very simple, I just restored from backup and made my new nvme disk as boot disk. Instal took no more than 10 minutes ( mostly for cleaning dust and opening the case) and OS restore took about 2 hours from very slow time machine hdd. Adapter from aliexpress came in 3 weeks and ssd from local online shop in 3 days :-D So i really recommend this upgrade as it gives blazing speeds and is super easy.
Hi
Congratulations and welcome to the 'club' - Another one to confirm that the install is dead easy and with no complications. I had previously changed the 1TB HDD for a Samsung SSD, that is a much more delicate install process.
What size of Evo did you buy? And those speed look just around the max possible on the MM 2014.
It transforms a 1TB HDD 2014, changing it from hardly usable to pretty decent, specially if it is an 8GB unit.
I bought 512Mb, the smallest size pro exist. In the beginning I thought about evo plus, but found here information that it still has problems even with updated firmware. So despite the high price I chose PRO for robustness and hope it will serve me few more years while I save money for upgrade. And it worker straight out of the box, without any firmware update needed. 256Mb could also be enough for me as I have very big external drive ( by the way, original "Blade runner", still in great shape), so my idea was to speed up my mini as much as possible. And yes, you guys are amazing as exactly here I got all the information what to buy, where and how to install and everything went flawlessly.
Well it was quite the task but I got it done. I used the Sintech adapter from Amazon but ended up cancelling the ADATA SX6000 Pro. I went with the SX8200 Pro because of some poor reviews I had seen of the SX6000.
The problem I ran into is that the 2014 Mac mini I am using came from eBay (without storage) and had apparently not ever been updated to 10.13 or higher. Since it didn't have the latest firmware/Boot ROM, I was not able to boot after initially installing Catalina onto the SSD. Unfortunately the machine did not include the SATA cable. Ater trying in vain to use a Thunderbolt SSD to install an OS and attempt to extract and install the updated firmware manually......
I ended up just pulling apart a 2012 Mac mini for the SATA cable and got the firmware updated by: use internet recovery to install El Capitan, download and update to Sierra, download and update to High Sierra, download and update to Mojave.
At this point the Boot ROM Version was up to date at version 248.0.0.0.0, so I then removed the SATA drive, booted to a USB Catalina installer, and its was smooth sailing from there.
I'm very pleased with this solution.
The problem I ran into is that the 2014 Mac mini I am using came from eBay (without storage) and had apparently not ever been updated to 10.13 or higher. Since it didn't have the latest firmware/Boot ROM, I was not able to boot after initially installing Catalina onto the SSD. Unfortunately the machine did not include the SATA cable. Ater trying in vain to use a Thunderbolt SSD to install an OS and attempt to extract and install the updated firmware manually......
I ended up just pulling apart a 2012 Mac mini for the SATA cable and got the firmware updated by: use internet recovery to install El Capitan, download and update to Sierra, download and update to High Sierra, download and update to Mojave.
At this point the Boot ROM Version was up to date at version 248.0.0.0.0, so I then removed the SATA drive, booted to a USB Catalina installer, and its was smooth sailing from there.
I'm very pleased with this solution.
Attachments
So glad that it has worked well for you in the end. I hadn't realised that you did not have even the original basic HDD in that eBay MM 2014.
A lesson to learn from your troubles is that the Mac Mini should be updated to Mojave, or maybe High Sierra, before the install to make sure that the firmware is updated for NVMe. I am not sure from which macOS version they will run.
Are you going to leave an SSD in the SATA bay?
You have now discovered the difference in complication between adding the NVMe and getting down into the SATA bay!
Good, anyway, that all is running so well now
Adam
From what I have read the first firmware that allows the machine to boot from NVME drives is in the first release of High Sierra, but Mojave provides a newer Boot ROM. Mojave did bring a newer version of the Boot ROM on my machine, but I did not test booting to NVME on the High Sierra version.
I currently have an extra 512GB 2.5in SSD, but I am thinking of putting it in my gaming rig for some extra space for games. The 512GB NVME should be more than enough for my use considering I just migrated from a 2012 mini with 256GB that never had less than ~80GB free.
My NVME with Sintech adapter shows as an orange external drive on the Option boot screen. You can see the in-OS details a few posts up.
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Not sure why that is happening, I have the one piece PCIe adaptor and a Sabrent Rocket and both show as internal SSDs
When in OS mine also shows as internal as depicted below. However, on the Option boot screen it shows as an orange external drive.
Ahhhh get what you mean now. I just don't often use Option Boot, but I will check that when I can
I just installed the sintech adapter with a Sabrent 256GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 in a Mac Mini late 2014 i5 2.6 with 8Gb RAM. Clean install of catalina and I am seeing what I think are slow write speeds around 270 MB/s Read speeds are 750 MB/s using the Blackmagic Speed Tester. Is this what you would expect?
Thanks. Reading through the whole thread I expected to get roughly symmetrical read & write speeds around the 750 mark. Any thoughts on why the low write speed?
Very useful thread. Thanks to all who have contributed.
Might just be the cheap SSD. I only did a quick Google search, but the review I found specifically mentioned the 256gb device had very disappointing write speeds and the larger capacity chips were faster.
Even so, the Sabrent Rocket drive can give write speeds of up to 3GBps on PCs. I suspect with write speeds that low it could be a defective drive.
For another point of reference these are my speeds with an XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB, Sintech adapter:
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