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

[ponta pon pon]

Just did this quick.I did not have time to let it finish as about to pop out.
The numbers don't mean a lot to me as first time using it.

Is this data about the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB?

Oh sorry. ....

 

[ItsHal]

Interesting.

It looks about right. I think you and me have similar systems, mid 2014 15". View attachment 813860
That's my Crucial P1 1TB.

Thats good to know it's working how it shod
I have A MacBook Pro 13" 8GB 1600MHz i5 2.6 GHz
[doublepost=1546530770][/doublepost]

Is this data about the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB?

Oh sorry

Yes it is

 

[Audit13]

Hi all (again)
I swapped the Kingston A1000 with the Adata XPG8200. Trying to install Windows but I fail since the installer can't find the drive. Any idea on how to proceed with the installation of windows? I don't know what else to do

Are you installing Windows 8.1 or 10?

 

[aminadab]

Interesting.

It looks about right. I think you and me have similar systems, mid 2014 15".

Apologies is this is veering slightly off topic, but I'm considering upgrading the SSD in the mid 2014 15". I had read that this machine doesn't do too well with High Sierra, a prerequisite OS for the types of upgrades being undertaken in this thread. I wonder: has Mojave improved things? A larger SSD isn't much use for me if the machine is sluggish and has UI oddities.

 

[ItsHal]

Apologies is this is veering slightly off topic, but I'm considering upgrading the SSD in the mid 2014 15". I had read that this machine doesn't do too well with High Sierra, a prerequisite OS for the types of upgrades being undertaken in this thread. I wonder: has Mojave improved things? A larger SSD isn't much use for me if the machine is sluggish and has UI oddities.

I'm running Mojave and all is good for me.Far from sluggish for my day to day needs.

 

[busterje]

Hi,
in the late 2015 5K NVMe drive should work perfectly, with a high speed thanks to the 4x lanes PCIe 3.0 bus. No sleep issues. As for heat, it should be ok because iMacs have quite good thermal design.
[doublepost=1544996008][/doublepost]Hi everyone,
juste a little update to my tests of NVMe SSD.
This time I focused on energy consumption, I also included for comparison some AHCI and NVMe genuine Apple SSDs.
I've sorted the table in three way :
- SSDs sorted by performance / price ration
- SSDs sorted by growing power consumption (assuming a time ratio of 80% idle - 10% read - 10% write)
- SSDs sorted by power efficiency = speed / power consumption

Note that my favorite SSD at this time is the Adata SX8200, but it is not yet available in 2TB (although it has been announced for nearly 1 year...).

I don't especially love QLC ssds which have very low speed once the SLC cache has been filled.

I would also love to test the MyDigital BPX which seems to be very interesting : high performance / price value, MLC cells, 5 year warranty, high endurance (TBW), and exists in 2TB (at $519),

View attachment 811200 View attachment 811201 View attachment 811202

Hello, did you test 'new' sx8200 512GB ?

 

[adry.69]

Are you installing Windows 8.1 or 10?

Windows 10. Tomorrow i'll give a try to Windows 8.1.

 

[Fancuku]

Just installed a 1TB Intel 760p on a mid 2014 MBP 15". Mojave install went without any problems. It recognized the drive and I must say the install took at least half the time that it takes to install on the OEM drives.
It seems fine so far but I haven't tried anything like sleep and hibernation yet.
I will report on that later.

Had problems with hibernation causing the machine to freeze so I set hibernation and standby mode to 0. Now I don't have that problem.
Closed the lid last night at 10pm and opened it up today at 5pm. I lost 4% battery during that time. Not too bad I guess.

 

[dobrink]

That's my Crucial P1 1TB.

What adapter are you using ?

Thats good to know it's working how it shod
I have A MacBook Pro 13" 8GB 1600MHz i5 2.6 GHz

Dude, I think that if you set your hibernation to 25, you are gonna start having problems with the wake. At the moment you default value is 3, which means your PC sleeps, but the SX8200 is still awake and draws power. Switching from 3 -> 25 puts the disk to sleep, so no battery is drained overnight, but it creates another problem that it cannot wake. (of course all this unless the 2€ adapter you are using is the right one that everyone here has been looking for! 😀)

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

 

[ItsHal]

What adapter are you using ?



Dude, I think that if you set your hibernation to 25, you are gonna start having problems with the wake. At the moment you default value is 3, which means your PC sleeps, but the SX8200 is still awake and draws power. Switching from 3 -> 25 puts the disk to sleep, so no battery is drained overnight, but it creates another problem that it cannot wake. (of course all this unless the 2€ adapter you are using is the right one that everyone here has been looking for! 😀)

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

I see. If i set it and it makes problems can I set it back as to be honest it's not bothering me.lol

 

[ponta pon pon]

Is this data about the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB?

Oh sorry
Yes it is
[doublepost=1546530770][/doublepost]
Yes it is

If the SSD capacity is 1TB,
You can get better numerical data for MBPr performance limits.
Maybe.

 

[ItsHal]

If the SSD capacity is 1TB,
You can get better numerical data for MBPr performance limits.
Maybe.

I am using the 256GB Pro model.

 

[ItsHal]

What adapter are you using ?



Dude, I think that if you set your hibernation to 25, you are gonna start having problems with the wake. At the moment you default value is 3, which means your PC sleeps, but the SX8200 is still awake and draws power. Switching from 3 -> 25 puts the disk to sleep, so no battery is drained overnight, but it creates another problem that it cannot wake. (of course all this unless the 2€ adapter you are using is the right one that everyone here has been looking for! 😀)

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

No luck so went back to defaults settings.Lucky I mainly use my Mac when plugged in. Only ever use it of the mains for about 2hr always have a plug socket around when me when I do have to take it out.

 

[dobrink]

No luck so went back to defaults settings.Lucky I mainly use my Mac when plugged in. Only ever use it of the mains for about 2hr always have a plug socket around when me when I do have to take it out.

Do you mean that you set your laptop to hibernate 25 ? Could it start normally after that? (for a working hibernate you should see a progress bar of the macbook transferring the saved on the ssd image file back to the RAM, it is really quick, about 5 seconds).

What wasn't right that you reverted back to defaults ?

 

[ItsHal]

Do you mean that you set your laptop to hibernate 25 ? Could it start normally after that? (for a working hibernate you should see a progress bar of the macbook transferring the saved on the ssd image file back to the RAM, it is really quick, about 5 seconds).

What wasn't right that you reverted back to defaults ?

Did what this guy said.

 

[dobrink]

The thing is that I do not wish to fix it. I would like to eliminate the problem entirely using the correct adapter + ssd.

There is something that the Apple's ssd drives have that most of those on the market do not have. However, it is very possible that someone has used such adapter + drive combination that there is no problem at all.

So what problems did you encounter and in which hibernatemode?

 

[sman789]

What adapter are you using ?

"Sintech NGFF M.2 nVME SSD Adapter Card for Upgrade 2013-2015 MacBook"
I went ahead and tested the HP EX920 1TB and performance was comparable to the Crucial P1 1TB.

About these adapters, if you ever do swap out drives again, the adapter likes to stay in the motherboard slot and the nvme will slide in/out easily.

 

[ItsHal]

The thing is that I do not wish to fix it. I would like to eliminate the problem entirely using the correct adapter + ssd.

There is something that the Apple's ssd drives have that most of those on the market do not have. However, it is very possible that someone has used such adapter + drive combination that there is no problem at all.

So what problems did you encounter and in which hibernatemode?

Would just not wake up
[doublepost=1546608998][/doublepost]Since about 11:20 when I did the test I used my mac on battery only i'm now on 55% have had mice and 750GB HDD plugged in to.

 

[dobrink]

Would just not wake up

You did click the power button right ? Because the difference between hibernate 3 (the normal sleep) and hibernate 25 (deep sleep) is that in the first one opening the lid or clicking a keyboard button wakes the computer (to the login screen), while in the latter only clicking the power button resumes the computer to where you left off (after a short "blur-screen" progress bar).
[doublepost=1546609916][/doublepost]

"Sintech NGFF M.2 nVME SSD Adapter Card for Upgrade 2013-2015 MacBook"

What is interesting in the ItsHal's case is that he is using a 2€ adapter that was not supposed to work with NVMe drives at the first place. And he is getting the same speeds as with the expensive Sintech and obviously less problems. It may have something to do with the drive he is using as well.

 

[ItsHal]

ou did click the power button right ? Because the difference between hibernate 3 (the normal sleep) and hibernate 25 (deep sleep) is that in the first one opening the lid or clicking a keyboard button wakes the computer (to the login screen), while in the latter only clicking the power button resumes the computer to where you left off (after a short "blur-screen" progress bar).

Ah I see na think I just open the lid then pressed the space bar to it not coming on.So help down the power button to reset it.

 

[dobrink]

To test the hibernate 25, you have to put your computer to sleep by closing the lid and clicking shut down -> sleep (it will go to hibernate instead, after it dumps all the RAM contents to the disk as an image, so keep the lid closed for about 10-15 seconds).
Then try to wake it up, but not only by opening the lid or pressing a keyboard button, but by pressing the power button (not holding it). Normally, this would show you a "blurred screen" progress bar (about 5 seconds) during which the contents saved to the image referred above will be transferred back to the RAM, and the computer will resume to how you left it off.

If this works like explained, then you have found the combination that all have been looking for: 2€ adapter + ADATA NVMe.

 

[ItsHal]

To test the hibernate 25, you have to put your computer to sleep by closing the lid and clicking shut down -> sleep (it will go to hibernate instead, after it dumps all the RAM contents to the disk as an image, so keep the lid closed for about 10-15 seconds).
Then try to wake it up, but not only by opening the lid or pressing a keyboard button, but by pressing the power button (not holding it). Normally, this would show you a "blurred screen" progress bar (about 5 seconds) during which the contents saved to the image referred above will be transferred back to the RAM, and the computer will resume to how you left it off.

If this works like explained, then you have found the combination that all have been looking for: 2€ adapter + ADATA NVMe.

Close the lid of the MacBook.
Press the power button on the Mac—tapping the power button makes both MacBooks and iMacs or Mac minis drop off to sleep instantly.
Choose Sleep from the Apple menu.
Press the Command-Option and Media key simultaneously.

I'm happy with just shutting the lid.

 

[Inge83]

To test the hibernate 25, you have to put your computer to sleep by closing the lid and clicking shut down -> sleep (it will go to hibernate instead, after it dumps all the RAM contents to the disk as an image, so keep the lid closed for about 10-15 seconds).
Then try to wake it up, but not only by opening the lid or pressing a keyboard button, but by pressing the power button (not holding it). Normally, this would show you a "blurred screen" progress bar (about 5 seconds) during which the contents saved to the image referred above will be transferred back to the RAM, and the computer will resume to how you left it off.

If this works like explained, then you have found the combination that all have been looking for: 2€ adapter + ADATA NVMe.

Sorry, but this is not how this works. I highly doubt that there is an adapter which will magically make any NVMe drive work with hibernation in older (2013/2014) macs.
The fact if a mac is able to hibernate correctly is not linked to the used adapter, but rather to the NVMe driver used in the firmware. As shown in great detail previously in this thread, the NVMe driver of the 2013/2014 macs differs from the one used in 2015 macs. I'm pretty sure I also read that even an original apple NVMe drive from 2015 won't make an older mac hibernate correctly.

Regarding ItsHal's setup and the fact that the cheap adapter works with the NVMe drive, I would rather assume that he got lucky and received a slightly different adapter than listed in the product description. From my experience with electronic parts ordered from ebay sellers in Hong Kong, I'd say that you do not necessarily get always exactly the part that is given in the description. However, ItsHal faces exactly the limitations as expected on a 2014 mac with an NVMe drive, i.e. it does not wake from hibernation.

 

[ItsHal]

Sorry, but this is not how this works. I highly doubt that there is an adapter which will magically make any NVMe drive work with hibernation in older (2013/2014) macs.
The fact if a mac is able to hibernate correctly is not linked to the used adapter, but rather to the NVMe driver used in the firmware. As shown in great detail previously in this thread, the NVMe driver of the 2013/2014 macs differs from the one used in 2015 macs. I'm pretty sure I also read that even an original apple NVMe drive from 2015 won't make an older mac hibernate correctly.

Regarding ItsHal's setup and the fact that the cheap adapter works with the NVMe drive, I would rather assume that he got lucky and received a slightly different adapter than listed in the product description. From my experience with electronic parts ordered from ebay sellers in Hong Kong, I'd say that you do not necessarily get always exactly the part that is given in the description. However, ItsHal faces exactly the limitations as expected on a 2014 mac with an NVMe drive, i.e. it does not wake from hibernation.

lol i'm just happy it works.

 

[dobrink]

Inge83 we do not know if it wakes from hibernation, he did not press the power button after the MacBook went into hibernate mode, he just tried hitting the spacebar key. That was why I asked him to set hibernate to 25 once again and try waking up the MacBook by quick-pressing the power button. What he did was that he shut down and "rebooted" the MacBook by long pressing it for at least 3 seconds.

I understand that the Apple's firmware for their original drives may be the reason that other drives will have issues when installed in the Mac. However, it is within a reasonable possibility that there may be a compatible drive that would work with the Apple's firmware (such the as custom OWC drives). Like in ItsHal's case, he didn't update any firmware and if he is able to pull his MacBook from hibernation then this sounds like the case for me 🙂

Also, Inge83, do you know how the situation is with 2015+ MacBooks/iMacs? Do they face similar issues, or others compared to the 2013/2014 models ? Do you know what adapter/drive works as a blade drive in e.g. iMac 27" 5k late 2015, without having to sacrifice sleep?