m.2 ssd for Retina Macbook Pro late 2013 and later

[NathanA]

The bad news is that the screwdriver managed to "screw" my screw so to speak, and after having tried to unscrew the screw with other screwdrivers without success, I simply gave up. There is simply no way that I am going to be able to unscrew it on my own. It's not budging.

[...]

Well, sorry guys, I will have to return the SSD :/

This was super depressing to read. I guess we will have to wait for somebody else to try it...

I'm pretty sure that the internal SSD screw is a Torx head...T5, I believe. You sure you had the right driver? You definitely don't want to try using the pentalobe driver (for the bottom case screws) on that screw head.

If you have any friends with a steady hand and a serious workshop hobby (that you can trust), somebody might be able to cut a notch in the stripped head that is good enough to get the screw out. At that point, pitch the screw and replace it with a new one (maybe even one with a Philips head). The thing you are going to have to be careful about is making sure that no metal shavings get spread around inside the computer.

-- Nathan

 

[HatMine]

This was super depressing to read. I guess we will have to wait for somebody else to try it...

I'm pretty sure that the internal SSD screw is a Torx head...T5, I believe. You sure you had the right driver? You definitely don't want to try using the pentalobe driver (for the bottom case screws) on that screw head.

If you have any friends with a steady hand and a serious workshop hobby (that you can trust), somebody might be able to cut a notch in the stripped head that is good enough to get the screw out. At that point, pitch the screw and replace it with a new one (maybe even one with a Philips head). The thing you are going to have to be careful about is making sure that no metal shavings get spread around inside the computer.

-- Nathan

Actually, I did buy new screwdrivers (Torx T5) and I did manage to install the Intel SSD, after some tinkering ^^ Please see the image below:

(I brushed out some serial numbers and what not, as you can see.)

So the good news this time is that the SSD did fit, whereas the bad news is that the computer didn't detect it. When attempting to install Windows or macOS onto the disc, I was simply given the error that there were no discs connected to the Mac. Please see the image below:

As you can see, God wasn't with us this time, and the conclusion seems to be that the rMBP 2015 doesn't support NVMe discs in any shape or form, at least not if connected internally. One could argue, however, that the adapter was at fault, but that's up for debate.

Well, there you have it! I hope we all learned something from this. And yes, I did return the SSD, since I had no other use for it, unfortunately...

 

[jerryk]

I am not too surprised that this did not work. I went through this with our last deskside systems. Only certain motherboard BIOS combinations let you boot off the NVMe drives. More would let you access it as a non-boot drive.

 

[NathanA]

...the conclusion seems to be that the rMBP 2015 doesn't support NVMe discs in any shape or form, at least not if connected internally.

Well, although this is equally as depressing, it at least does not leave us in the same place of uncertainty that we were at before. We've learned something new. Thanks for this, and good on you for persevering!

I am not too surprised that this did not work. I went through this with our last deskside systems. Only certain motherboard BIOS combinations let you boot off the NVMe drives. More would let you access it as a non-boot drive.

I am actually not really surprised (maybe just a little, given that 2015 Air models allegedly support NVMe) that the EFI firmware was unable to boot from the disk. I am quite surprised, however, that neither OS, once you were booted into their installation routines, could even see the disk. That really makes no sense to me. The "BIOS" (misnomer in this case, but whatever) really should have nothing to do with this: if the PCI bus can see it, and if the OS has NVMe support, it should be visible.

I would be quite curious to have somebody replay this experiment on the same hardware, except boot up with a Linux live CD and look at the output of 'lspci'...

-- Nathan

 

[HatMine]

So, I have some new information to share!

As it turns out, the people over at SinTech tried to install an SM951 NVMe version using their adapter, and they actually got the Windows 10 Installer to detect it (with stock drivers). The problem that they ran in to, though, was that macOS El Capitan couldn't see it.

Anyways, what this means is that the rMBP 2015 theoretically should be able to use NVMe SSDs, which leads me to believe that I was just unlucky in my choice of brand (maybe the drivers for the Intel SSD weren't all that up to date/compatible with stock drives?).

Cheers!

 

[wpvl]

Thanks all for the posts and information. Recently, I tried a similar thing using the Sintech adapter.

The 3 types of SSD that seem to be compatible according to Amazon, (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sintech-Replace-MZ-JPU128T-SD6PQ4M-128G-MacBook/dp/B01CWWAENG) are:
Samsung XP941 (MZHPU128HCGM MZHPU256HCGL MZHPU512HCGL)
Samsung SM951 PCIE-AHCI (MZHPV128HDGM MZHPV256HDGL MZHPV512HDGL)
Kingston SHPM2280P2/ 240G/ 480G

In my test I used the Kingston SHPM2280P2 HyperX SSD: Predator PCIe SSD 240GB.
There was a problem at first for the Macbook Pro to recognize the SSD. Using an external Thunderbolt disk to boot the laptop, the OS (El Capitan) displayed the message that the "disk" could not be used and I should initialize or eject. Instead on clicking on "Initialize" I chose to open Disk Utility straight away in order to try and format the disk with more options. This was a mistake ! Disk Utility (both GUI and Terminal) did not find any internal disk. Therefore I had to open up the laptop again, remove the SSD, start up again with the external disk, then repeat the process and place the SSD back into the laptop.
This time, after booting from the Thunderbolt disk, I DID click on "Initialize".... Low and behold: the SSD was formatted and is now Macintosh HD...

I ran the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test with limited results. R/W performance is Read: 738,5 MB/s & Write: 632,1 MB/s whereas the original Apple SSD performs over 2 times faster: Read: 1964,3 MB/s & Write: 1461,5 MB/s
Other World Computing (Macsales) sells the Aura SSD's with 12+16 pins (so no adapter needed) but these are even slightly slower and twice the costs. With the tested config, I have not found any issue with power saving and sleep-mode (hibernation). It seems to work just fine.

So..... i.m.h.o. if you need more storage for not too much money the adapter + Kingston disk is certainly a good option but it will not have the speed of Apple's original SSD.
Note: I have not tested the Samsung SSD's (they're hard to find) that claim to be much faster (https://www.flexxmemory.co.uk/blog/all-about-pcie-ssds-mac/) so I cannot draw any conclusions.

 

[HatMine]

Thanks all for the posts and information. Recently, I tried a similar thing using the Sintech adapter.

The 3 types of SSD that seem to be compatible according to Amazon, (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sintech-Replace-MZ-JPU128T-SD6PQ4M-128G-MacBook/dp/B01CWWAENG) are:
Samsung XP941 (MZHPU128HCGM MZHPU256HCGL MZHPU512HCGL)
Samsung SM951 PCIE-AHCI (MZHPV128HDGM MZHPV256HDGL MZHPV512HDGL)
Kingston SHPM2280P2/ 240G/ 480G

In my test I used the Kingston SHPM2280P2 HyperX SSD: Predator PCIe SSD 240GB.
There was a problem at first for the Macbook Pro to recognize the SSD. Using an external Thunderbolt disk to boot the laptop, the OS (El Capitan) displayed the message that the "disk" could not be used and I should initialize or eject. Instead on clicking on "Initialize" I chose to open Disk Utility straight away in order to try and format the disk with more options. This was a mistake ! Disk Utility (both GUI and Terminal) did not find any internal disk. Therefore I had to open up the laptop again, remove the SSD, start up again with the external disk, then repeat the process and place the SSD back into the laptop.
This time, after booting from the Thunderbolt disk, I DID click on "Initialize".... Low and behold: the SSD was formatted and is now Macintosh HD...

I ran the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test with limited results. R/W performance is Read: 738,5 MB/s & Write: 632,1 MB/s whereas the original Apple SSD performs over 2 times faster: Read: 1964,3 MB/s & Write: 1461,5 MB/s
Other World Computing (Macsales) sells the Aura SSD's with 12+16 pins (so no adapter needed) but these are even slightly slower and twice the costs. With the tested config, I have not found any issue with power saving and sleep-mode (hibernation). It seems to work just fine.

So..... i.m.h.o. if you need more storage for not too much money the adapter + Kingston disk is certainly a good option but it will not have the speed of Apple's original SSD.
Note: I have not tested the Samsung SSD's (they're hard to find) that claim to be much faster (https://www.flexxmemory.co.uk/blog/all-about-pcie-ssds-mac/) so I cannot draw any conclusions.

Great stuff, thanks for sharing! Personally I ended up buying a new Mac with more storage, but it's great to hear that someone succeeded.