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

[reezekeys]

Please forgive me if this question has been answered, I've tried searching w/o success. I just took the plunge and tried to upgrade my daughter's Early 2015 13" MacBook Air's stock 128GB drive with a cheap 256GB drive I found, the brand being Inland Professional. It was $40. I used the Sintech sled adapter.

I'm pretty sure I did everything right (don't want to detail it all now, makes this post too long!). Upshot is that the drive is seen by the Mojave installer USB stick I prepared. I used Disk Utility to format it APSF, all went well, but the OSX install fails after a few minutes with "macOS could not be installed on your computer. An error occured while loading the installer resources. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again."

Could this be drive firmware or controller? It's a Phison E8 controller with DRAM cache, Toshiba 64L 3D TLD NAND, x2 PCIe 3.0 interface. Yes I know the MBA can do x4 but that's OK, I'm fine with x2. Something else a little weird is that this drive uses a B+M key more common to SATA drives, though it's definitely NVMe. It fit into the Sintech sled fine.

Any tips for trying to get a successful OSX install are very much appreciated. Thanks!

This is the drive: https://www.amazon.com/Inland-Professional-256GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B07D4QJH6D

 

[codetrick]

With 10.14.4, I would expect the air too be running 112.0.0.0.0.

I updated my bootrom to the latest version using the stock ssd and switched back to Kingston A1000. Unfortunately the same kernel panic still occurs without noticeable change in frequency. Probably going to test with a clean OS X install next.

 

[NoisyCat]

I've recently installed a Sabrent Rocket 1TB in a 2015 rMBP 13" and I'm finding a 20% battery drain overnight. I have the default power configuration. I've checked the logs and it seems that nothing has prevented sleep so maybe its the low power mode on the drive that is not working well. Does anyone had a good experience here with the same drive?

I've found the supported power states:

➜  ~ smartctl -c disk1

...

Supported Power States

St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat

 0 +    10.73W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0
 1 +     7.69W       -        -    1  1  1  1        0       0
 2 +     6.18W       -        -    2  2  2  2        0       0
 3 -   0.0490W       -        -    3  3  3  3     2000    2000
 4 -   0.0018W       -        -    4  4  4  4    25000   25000

I think the last two are not supported. How are this values showing for other NVME drives?

 

[Audit13]

Please forgive me if this question has been answered, I've tried searching w/o success. I just took the plunge and tried to upgrade my daughter's Early 2015 13" MacBook Air's stock 128GB drive with a cheap 256GB drive I found, the brand being Inland Professional. It was $40. I used the Sintech sled adapter.

I'm pretty sure I did everything right (don't want to detail it all now, makes this post too long!). Upshot is that the drive is seen by the Mojave installer USB stick I prepared. I used Disk Utility to format it APSF, all went well, but the OSX install fails after a few minutes with "macOS could not be installed on your computer. An error occured while loading the installer resources. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again."

Could this be drive firmware or controller? It's a Phison E8 controller with DRAM cache, Toshiba 64L 3D TLD NAND, x2 PCIe 3.0 interface. Yes I know the MBA can do x4 but that's OK, I'm fine with x2. Something else a little weird is that this drive uses a B+M key more common to SATA drives, though it's definitely NVMe. It fit into the Sintech sled fine.

Any tips for trying to get a successful OSX install are very much appreciated. Thanks!

This is the drive: https://www.amazon.com/Inland-Professional-256GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B07D4QJH6D

Did you try the installer on another Mac to ensure it works? Tried deleting all partitions before installing? MacBook is running the latest bootrom?
[doublepost=1554642813][/doublepost]

I updated my bootrom to the latest version using the stock ssd and switched back to Kingston A1000. Unfortunately the same kernel panic still occurs without noticeable change in frequency. Probably going to test with a clean OS X install next.

Hopefully, a clean install of macOS will fix the issue. If not, you'll have to determine if it's the drive or adapter that is causing the issue.

 

[HBP]

I have a mid 2014 15" MBP. My OEM SSD died so I upgraded to a 960EVO 500GB around a year ago with a long black sintech. Things have gone well. I modified the sleep/hibernate settings rather than dealing with reprogramming/flashing and all that.

Slightly decreased battery life was noticed initially. Now that my cycle count is over 1200, and the battery condition saying to replace soon, it's getting more drastic and I'm thinking of swapping the battery (having Apple do it for me with their battery service--$259 in Canada)

Has anyone had it done with an adaptor + NVME drive in situ? I don't have an OEM drive that I can swap to for the battery replacement. Think they'll give me a hard time?

 

[Audit13]

I have a mid 2014 15" MBP. My OEM SSD died so I upgraded to a 960EVO 500GB around a year ago with a long black sintech. Things have gone well. I modified the sleep/hibernate settings rather than dealing with reprogramming/flashing and all that.

Slightly decreased battery life was noticed initially. Now that my cycle count is over 1200, and the battery condition saying to replace soon, it's getting more drastic and I'm thinking of swapping the battery (having Apple do it for me with their battery service--$259 in Canada)

Has anyone had it done with an adaptor + NVME drive in situ? I don't have an OEM drive that I can swap to for the battery replacement. Think they'll give me a hard time?

Since it's not under warranty, I don't think you'll have a problem removing the drive before bringing in the MacBook. If Apple really needs to test the MacBook for functionality before replacing the battery, I'm sure the tech has a drive for such a purpose.

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

OK, I just did a new install on a Mid 2015 15 inch MBP
Replaced a 256gb SSUBX that came with the machine
with a 2TB Sabrent (Phison E12 controller, from the recent Amazon sale).
I used the "long black" Sintech adapter from Amazon (see picture below)

I did a Time Machine backup, took out old ssd, and rebooted into disk utility; formatted new SSD as APFS and then did a restore from time machine backup.
The original SSD had Mojave 10.14.4 installed, which was backed up on the time machine

I benchmarked my 3 MBPs before I did the upgrade, just to have a comparison point (the HDDs/SSDs are different size and are also in different states of being filled):
All 3 MBPs are/were running Mojave 10.14.4

Early 2015 13 inch MBP (aka 12,1) has an original 1TB SSD, which I did nothing to (and probably won't touch)
Mid 2015 15 inch MBP (aka 11,5) with an original 512GB SSD, which I may upgrade in the future, if needed
Mid 2015 15 inch MBP (aka 11,4) with an original 256GB SSD, on which I did the upgrade.

Interestingly, the Sabrent appeared under x2 link width (and not x4) in the NVMExpress panel (see screenshots). The benchmarks themselves were "meh". Good sequental read and writes, random 4k read and write was basically no different than the stock Apple drive (remember sequental reads and writes are only good if you are transferring large files from one macbook to another - and even then you would need BOTH the machines/macs to have fast nvme SSDs for sequentials - otherwise, your speeds will only be as fast as the slowest link in the chain). If you have a 10gbE NAS link then YES, this makes a big(er) difference). I was more interested in increasing the random 4k reads AND writes.

I did NOT like the benches, so I decided to pull out the 2TB SSD, and install Mojave 10.14.4 as a clean install on the same rMBP mid 2015 (11,4) BUT I used a Samsung 960 PRO 2TB drive instead.
Did some benchmarking, and well..not that impressed (see screenshots).
The only thing different was that now I had a verified x4 link width under NVMExpress, which I did NOT with the previous install from a Time Machine backup.

Finally, I put the original 256GB SSD back in the mid 2015 rMBP for now, and left it there

I am planning on doing a clean install on a HP EX920 1TB SSD (which uses same Silicon Motion controller found in the Adata SX8200 SSD - not to be confused with the SX8200 PRO - that uses the newer controller).

Here are some screenshots ( I have used Earl Urley's post # 3861 as a reference in the screenshots)

Conclusions so far:
For me so far, the only real world benefit I see from an upgrade is SIZE of the SSD.
I would have loved to see a significant jump in the random 4k read and random write, which I did not
The Sabrent 2TB drive and the Inland professional 1TB which was referenced earlier use the same Phison controller, yet the benchies are significantly off.
Wonder what gives? I might just try to do a clean install of Mojave on the Sabrent 2TB and see if anything changes

I did not do any power draw measures - the new SSDs were kept in the machine for Benchmarks only - so about 1-2 hours - and then replaced with the OEM Apple SSD

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

I have a mid 2014 15" MBP. My OEM SSD died so I upgraded to a 960EVO 500GB around a year ago with a long black sintech. Things have gone well. I modified the sleep/hibernate settings rather than dealing with reprogramming/flashing and all that.

Slightly decreased battery life was noticed initially. Now that my cycle count is over 1200, and the battery condition saying to replace soon, it's getting more drastic and I'm thinking of swapping the battery (having Apple do it for me with their battery service--$259 in Canada)

Has anyone had it done with an adaptor + NVME drive in situ? I don't have an OEM drive that I can swap to for the battery replacement. Think they'll give me a hard time?

Why don't you just replace your battery yourself?
It is not that difficult - and you already have the tools

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...RS0&_nkw=macbook+pro+15+2014+battery&_sacat=0

Prices range from 48 USD to 50 USD - instructions widely available

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

Please forgive me if this question has been answered, I've tried searching w/o success. I just took the plunge and tried to upgrade my daughter's Early 2015 13" MacBook Air's stock 128GB drive with a cheap 256GB drive I found, the brand being Inland Professional. It was $40. I used the Sintech sled adapter.

I'm pretty sure I did everything right (don't want to detail it all now, makes this post too long!). Upshot is that the drive is seen by the Mojave installer USB stick I prepared. I used Disk Utility to format it APSF, all went well, but the OSX install fails after a few minutes with "macOS could not be installed on your computer. An error occured while loading the installer resources. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again."

Could this be drive firmware or controller? It's a Phison E8 controller with DRAM cache, Toshiba 64L 3D TLD NAND, x2 PCIe 3.0 interface. Yes I know the MBA can do x4 but that's OK, I'm fine with x2. Something else a little weird is that this drive uses a B+M key more common to SATA drives, though it's definitely NVMe. It fit into the Sintech sled fine.

Any tips for trying to get a successful OSX install are very much appreciated. Thanks!

This is the drive: https://www.amazon.com/Inland-Professional-256GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B07D4QJH6D

I had something similar happen - but only once. restarted my computer, tried again and it worked.
If it happens again, i would try another USB, formatted in HFS journaled, install the mojave 6.04GB file on it.

I followed these directions.

http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

If it fails again, it may be that the Phison E8 controller is not supported?
I have no experience with that controller.

 

[reezekeys]

Did you try the installer on another Mac to ensure it works? Tried deleting all partitions before installing? MacBook is running the latest bootrom?
[doublepost=1554642813][/doublepost]
Hopefully, a clean install of macOS will fix the issue. If not, you'll have to determine if it's the drive or adapter that is causing the issue.

Didn't try the installer on another drive or partition, but since my post I've made some progress. I booted again with the installer and selected to restore from a TM backup. It saw my TM drive and I was able to restore a backup I made of my original 128GB drive right after I updated it to Mojave. Now the MB Air boots from the new internal – but when I try to log into my daughter's account, I get the spinning pinwheel for a short bit then the screen goes black! I have to force-restart, and I'm back in the Matrix...

Now the Air will also boot from a different external I have, so I was able to run some disk utilities but they all report no issues with the new drive. I guess I will try downloading a new Mojave installer and start from scratch, unless the black screen on account log-in indicates something specific that I can try to correct. Thanks for the reply!

 

[reezekeys]

I had something similar happen - but only once. restarted my computer, tried again and it worked.
If it happens again, i would try another USB, formatted in HFS journaled, install the mojave 6.04GB file on it.

I followed these directions.

http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

If it fails again, it may be that the Phison E8 controller is not supported?
I have no experience with that controller.

Thanks. Looks like I got the OS installed and it does boot, but the screen goes black after logging into my daughter's account. Weird for sure. I may try another OS install I guess. Appreciate the advice!

 

[turbineseaplane]

@djangoreinhardt442

Just for fun and to add more data, here are my scores on the same drive in my High Sierra Hackintosh

(8700/1080ti/Rocket 2TB NVMe)

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

My guess is that the chipset here plays a large role.
Interestingly, your 4K random reads are in the 40s, which is what I had.
User Earl Urley had it at 50 MB/s or so.

I get around 70 MB/s random reads on a PC but with the HP EX 920 on a Z370 mobo

NOT thread crapping but....

Do you mind me asking your Hackintosh specs? (mobo, memory, and all others)
(this is OFF topic - an off thread - do you have AirDrop (bluetooth) and WiFi working? - i know you can get an add on card)

 

[turbineseaplane]

@djangoreinhardt442

PM'd you hack specs
[doublepost=1554661814][/doublepost]

Interestingly, your 4K random reads are in the 40s, which is what I had.

I was having some discussions about this with a guy on Reddit who knows all the ins and outs of NVMe drives, etc.

His research led him to conclude that it's all about APFS and in the latest Macs, the T2 chip is meant to assist the SSD's in some way.

It was all way above my head and deep in the technical weeds.

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

I did it!
I think I found a very good SSD - I have 2 x 1TB HP EX 920 (same controller as Intel 760p and Asdata 8200) on my PCs.

Figured I would try it on my rMBP mid 2015 15 inch with OEM Apple 256gb installed on it.

Getting very good 4k random reads and writes. And for the first time, broke the 3000MB/s sequential barrier (though only on QD32, which never happens in consumer circumstances).

The top result is the new drive; the other thumbnails are from my original post

 

[turbineseaplane]

@djangoreinhardt442

Nice!

That gives me hope that an EX 920 would also be good in the 13" 2015 MBP I have arriving tomorrow, despite only being at PCIe 2.0 in that machine of course

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

@djangoreinhardt442

Nice!

That gives me hope that an EX 920 would also be good in the 13" 2015 MBP I have arriving tomorrow, despite only being at PCIe 2.0 in that machine of course

Yes, I think you should have hope.

Only thing you will be losing out on will be sequential reads and writes (will still probably get between 1200-1500MB/s on both)

Your 4K random reads and writes should be similar

The Silicon Motion controller in the EX920 is already over a year old.
The newer edition one (the one inside EX950 and the Adata 8200 pro) should give slightly better results (optimized controller but still same type of TLC NVRAM)


Anyone know how to do testing on power draw?
@gilles_polysoft?

 

[turbineseaplane]

The Silicon Motion controller in the EX920 is already over a year old.
The newer edition one (the one inside EX950 and the Adata 8200 pro) should give slightly better results (optimized controller but still same type of TLC NVRAM)

Ironically, I did actually have an EX950 2TB right when they came out (in my now gone mid-2015 15" MBP)

I ran the following tests at the time.

[doublepost=1554666059][/doublepost]I've thought of getting another EX950 for my Hack, but the cost delta just doesn't seem worth it to me since I got this Rocket 2TB for $280

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

Ironically, I did actually have an EX950 2TB right when they came out (in my now gone mid-2015 15" MBP)

I ran the following tests at the time.

[doublepost=1554666059][/doublepost]I've thought of getting another EX950 for my Hack, but the cost delta just doesn't seem worth it to me since I got this Rocket 2TB for $280

Hmmm...see now I think I must have done something wrong with the Rocket 2TB.
I think I am going to re-bench it via new install.

Btw, the benches above with Amorphous Disk Mark would show better number if you had ran the test 5x and with 1gb file instead !! I did about 20 benches last night and notice that if you only do 1x trial of the test, you write numbers are always lower.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Btw, the benches above with Amorphous Disk Mark would show better number if you had ran the test 5x and with 1gb file instead !! I did about 20 benches last night and notice that if you only do 1x trial of the test, you write numbers are always lower.

So I've now learned - sadly the drive and MBP are gone so I can't retest..

 

[dobrink]

I've found the supported power states:

➜  ~ smartctl -c disk1

...

Supported Power States

St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat

 0 +    10.73W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0
 1 +     7.69W       -        -    1  1  1  1        0       0
 2 +     6.18W       -        -    2  2  2  2        0       0
 3 -   0.0490W       -        -    3  3  3  3     2000    2000
 4 -   0.0018W       -        -    4  4  4  4    25000   25000

What exactly do you write in Terminal to get the drive's power states? I tried the above smartctl, but it didn't work, is the syntax different?

Conclusions so far:
For me so far, the only real world benefit I see from an upgrade is SIZE of the SSD.
I would have loved to see a significant jump in the random 4k read and random write, which I did not
The Sabrent 2TB drive and the Inland professional 1TB which was referenced earlier use the same Phison controller, yet the benchies are significantly off.
Wonder what gives? I might just try to do a clean install of Mojave on the Sabrent 2TB and see if anything changes

I did not do any power draw measures - the new SSDs were kept in the machine for Benchmarks only - so about 1-2 hours - and then replaced with the OEM Apple SSD

Can you explain or link to any info source what do those different measurements mean in reality (sequential, 4K, QD32 etc.). I tried to look at the software's website, but without success.
It made me think how relevant those benchmarked speeds actually are when instead of transferring a movie in 2-3GB/s (sequential I guess), when I transfer photos of size 5-10MB each, the speed drops drastically to like 30-50MB/s.

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

What exactly do you write in Terminal to get the drive's power states? I tried the above smartctl, but it didn't work, is the syntax different?


Can you explain or link to any info source what do those different measurements mean in reality (sequential, 4K, QD32 etc.). I tried to look at the software's website, but without success.
It made me think how relevant those benchmarked speeds actually are when instead of transferring a movie in 2-3GB/s (sequential I guess), when I transfer photos of size 5-10MB each, the speed drops drastically to like 30-50MB/s.

This has been discussed many a times in the past on many forums.
Essentially, the SIZE of the files you are moving matters.
a 5MB file which is transferred won't get the same speed as a 50GB file.
This is why if you are transferring lots of LARGE files back and forth (say 4k video edits from point A (say a MBP) to point B (a NAS, a storage device, a server, etc.) - you will wan to have as fast as possible sequential (I have seen in excess of 3500MB/s). Keep in mind this is under QD1.
When a consumer devices gives you a QD32 number (due depth 32), it is MISLEADING, as most consumer applications never reach a QD32.
Rather, you should look at all numbers at a QD1 for consumer applications (take a look at the example of my benches above and see the difference between the sequential numbers which are QD32 and ones which are not).

Random read and writes are the most important for every day use (basically, how SNAPPY is the machine). The higher the random read (and sometimes write), the better.

I will look for some articles tonight and enclose them here.

Here is a link for consumer-based applications:

http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/the-ultimate-guide-to-ssd-benchmark-software/

here is another article which is quite informative.

Please read the random 4k part (this is done for PC)

http://www.thessdreview.com/featured/ssd-throughput-latency-iopsexplained/

 

[turbineseaplane]

Random read and writes are the most important for every day use

Wait, so which ones are those in the results?

 

[The_Moves]

If someone gets a MattCard, is it possible to update/modify the ROM stored on it with SPI + SOIC8 clip? I don't want to go the route of buying the SPI programmer for ~$10 then having to buy an expensive J6100 for ~$55. I think I read in this thread that you can update/modify the MattCard with the SPI + SOIC8 clip.

I've purchased a used 2013 Macbook Pro 15" Iris only and am expecting to receive a MyDigitialSSD BPX Pro and Sintech adapter in the mail today - not much discussion on this thread about that SSD, but it appears similar to the Sabrent Rocket.

 

[djangoreinhardt442]

Wait, so which ones are those in the results?

The bottom most (read and write)

see atta