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

[The_Moves]

Good post IMO, should be added to front page if others concur.

 

[gingerdude]

The_Moves thanks for your response!

It seems like you answered most of my questions. I'll summarize the unanswered ones so maybe someone else can fill in the blanks.

1) On the 2014 with the short sintech, does the bottom close properly? Some people were reporting it does not with some SSDs or adapters. I want to be able to put the case I bought back on my computer.

2) Anyone test the Matt card / Rom flash and see if Windows still needs the modified registry entry and power settings changes?

3) Can Smart data can still be accessed via 3rd party tools on aftermarket drives?

I'm an iOS dev so I'm going to try whining to Apple about the boot ROM through my communication channel. I'm sure it will get nowhere, but the more people complaining the better.

 

[Tardegard]

I just compared the power draw of the three SSDs if currently have, which is for idle - full load:
Apple Stock SSD (sandisk): 0.0 - 1.0 A
OWC Aura: 1.0 A - 2.0 A
Adata SX8200 Pro: 0.2 - 1.0 A (25-39 degree Celsius)

So in general I would say that the Adata SSD performs super nicely also regarding power draw, it just does not fully deactivate during idle periods, so you must live with the additional power draw of up to 0.2A, which should not really affect your total battery life time!

Keep in mind, that you will have doubled read speeds and quadrupled write speeds after the upgrade.

Hi there.
is tha Adata you are talking about this very one?
https://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B07K1HMMJC/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A11IL2PNWYJU7H&psc=1

 

[Tardegard]

So it sounds like there is no upgrade that will keep battery life the same as the original drive (except another compatible apple drive). Is this correct? I would rather not have to pay the premium but battery life is pretty important to me.
[doublepost=1548058773][/doublepost]

I was able to fit an ADATA SX8200 Pro in my 2015 11” MacBook Air with the long version 3 sintech adapter. It was a bit of a squeeze but it didn’t cause any problems like KPs or overheating. Based on that I would guess that it should fit into a MBPr just fine, but as I haven’t done it myself I can’t say with certainty that you will have the same results.

hi Jstan497, i am going to try the same disk on the same machine. How bad does it affect the battery life?
my original apple disk lasts plenty of hours (I use it with parsimony...... )

 

[jwar1976]

Hi all,

I was kindly directed to this thread from another member. I am looking to upgrade my 13” early 2015 MacBook Pro & I was wondering what the most reliable M2 drives and adapters are ?. I was originally considering getting the 960gb Transcend Jet drive, but it seems that it is very much overpriced when compared to the M2 drives.

Many thanks

 

[Audit13]

Hi all,

I was kindly directed to this thread from another member. I am looking to upgrade my 13” early 2015 MacBook Pro & I was wondering what the most reliable M2 drives and adapters are ?. I was originally considering getting the 960gb Transcend Jet drive, but it seems that it is very much overpriced when compared to the M2 drives.

Many thanks

I recommend the small black sintech adapter and Adata sx8200 pro, HP ex920 or ex950, and Intel 760p.

 

[macgeek01]

OWC is advertising their new
OWC Aura Pro X2 with NVME and note no issues about standby/hibernate. Have they somehow figured out a way around the issue?

 

[jackqueenking]

OWC is advertising their new
OWC Aura Pro X2 with NVME and note no issues about standby/hibernate. Have they somehow figured out a way around the issue?

Did they explicitly say that somewhere or do they just not mention the issue at all meaning there isn't actually a problem?

 

[ds256]

Hi,
this is kind offtopic question but:

-- is it possible on MacRumors forum to search particular thread? I would like to search THIS thread for "patriot" to see if anybody try Patriot NVME in MacBooks with adapter?

Thanks!

Early 2015 MBP Retina 13" owner here, Mojave 10.14.4

I am using a Patriot Scorch 512 GB (was about $80 at Fry's - price matched Newegg) with the short Sintech adapter

No crashes or instability so far

Performance is so-so... ~680 MB/sec write, ~750 MB/sec read (encrypted APFS file system)

Bootup times (after entering password) are a little longer than I'd like

Battery seems to drain fast when lid is closed...About 50% in 12 hours... I am researching the options available

Might go back to a traditional non-NVMe, SATA SSD, I would rather have the standby battery life than the performance trade-off. As it is this drive is just as slow as a SATA drive.

 

[Audit13]

Early 2015 MBP Retina 13" owner here, Mojave 10.14.4

I am using a Patriot Scorch 512 GB (was about $80 at Fry's - price matched Newegg) with the short Sintech adapter

No crashes or instability so far

Performance is so-so... ~680 MB/sec write, ~750 MB/sec read (encrypted APFS file system)

Bootup times (after entering password) are a little longer than I'd like

Battery seems to drain fast when lid is closed...About 50% in 12 hours... I am researching the options available

Might go back to a traditional non-NVMe, SATA SSD, I would rather have the standby battery life than the performance trade-off. As it is this drive is just as slow as a SATA drive.

The 2013 to 2015 MacBooks don't use sata drives. They work with either PCIe ahci or nvme.

Have you tried using hibernate mode 25 to reduce battery drain with the lid closed? Tried adjusting sleep settings?

The slow read/write speeds may be caused by the use of encryption. I don't use encryption on my 2015 Air and this may be one reason the reads and writes are faster with my Intel 600p when compared to my air's stock 128 GB Apple SSD.

 

[ds256]

The 2013 to 2015 MacBooks don't use sata drives. They work with either PCIe ahci or nvme.

Have you tried using hibernate mode 25 to reduce battery drain with the lid closed? Tried adjusting sleep settings?

The slow read/write speeds may be caused by the use of encryption. I don't use encryption on my 2015 Air and this may be one reason the reads and writes are faster with my Intel 600p when compared to my air's stock 128 GB Apple SSD.

Ah, I was kind of fuzzy regarding the backwards compatibility of NVMe and SATA. Even though the SATA SSDs are keyed to fit in an NVME slot, they will not work. ):

I've futzed with the hibernate and sleep settings to no avail, but I don't think I've tried hibernate mode 25. I think my hibernatemode is set to 3 right now. Here is my pmset -g output.

Here is what I saw when I put hibernatemode 25, is this going to be a problem??

bash-3.2$ sudo pmset -b hibernatemode 25
Password:
Warning: Idle sleep timings for "Battery Power" may not behave as expected.
- Disk sleep should be non-zero whenever system sleep is non-zero.
Warning: Idle sleep timings for "AC Power" may not behave as expected.
- Disk sleep should be non-zero whenever system sleep is non-zero.

 

[Audit13]

Ah, I was kind of fuzzy regarding the backwards compatibility of NVMe and SATA. Even though the SATA SSDs are keyed to fit in an NVME slot, they will not work. ):

I've futzed with the hibernate and sleep settings to no avail, but I don't think I've tried hibernate mode 25. I think my hibernatemode is set to 3 right now. Here is my pmset -g output.

Here is what I saw when I put hibernatemode 25, is this going to be a problem?

These are the settings for my 2015 Air with an Intel 600p and I get no drain when I close the lid:

System-wide power settings:

Currently in use:

standbydelaylow 600

standby 1

halfdim 1

hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

powernap 0

gpuswitch 2

disksleep 10

standbydelayhigh 600

sleep 1 (sleep prevented by installer, identityservicesd, identityservicesd, identityservicesd, identityservicesd, AddressBookSourceSync)

autopoweroffdelay 28800

hibernatemode 25

autopoweroff 1

ttyskeepawake 1

displaysleep 2

highstandbythreshold 50

acwake 0

lidwake 1

 

[jackqueenking]

Ah, I was kind of fuzzy regarding the backwards compatibility of NVMe and SATA. Even though the SATA SSDs are keyed to fit in an NVME slot, they will not work. ):

I've futzed with the hibernate and sleep settings to no avail, but I don't think I've tried hibernate mode 25. I think my hibernatemode is set to 3 right now. Here is my pmset -g output.

Here is what I saw when I put hibernatemode 25, is this going to be a problem??

bash-3.2$ sudo pmset -b hibernatemode 25
Password:
Warning: Idle sleep timings for "Battery Power" may not behave as expected.
- Disk sleep should be non-zero whenever system sleep is non-zero.
Warning: Idle sleep timings for "AC Power" may not behave as expected.
- Disk sleep should be non-zero whenever system sleep is non-zero.

Go into settings and click on energy saver, click restore defaults. Then in terminal write "sudo pmset -a standby 0 hibernate mode 25" without quotations. What this does is it forces your mac into hibernate mode instead of going to sleep (Standby = 0) and this hibernate mode will write the contents of your session to the SSD and power off all components. Using mode 3 will keep the RAM powered on which will consume battery. Leaving standby = 1 tells the Mac that it should sleep for X minutes before going into hibernate, obviously with NVME being a higher powered drive the sleep state will consume more battery than when using the OEM SSD. The only downside of this is that it may take a couple of seconds longer to wake up from hibernate because you are using mode 25 but still a lot faster than a cold boot.

 

[macgeek01]

Did they explicitly say that somewhere or do they just not mention the issue at all meaning there isn't actually a problem?

These are new models that just came out and I don’t see that they note there are any issues but doesn’t there mean that there isn’t.

They are pretty reputable and seems like something they would note to not have returns and unsatisfied customers but you never know.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd...5mac&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=auraprox2

I’ll reach out to their tech support and see what they say

 

[macgeek01]

OWC is claiming no issues within the comments of this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...r-macbook-air-and-macbook-pro-models.2178148/

The specs they report on the new drives aren’t as fast as other NVME although still fast. I like OWC but have seen frequent failure rates with their other SSD blades doing Mac service. Nice if they really support standby/hibernation on MacBooks before 2015 however.

 

[macgeek01]

Looks like OWC Larry is also claiming that the 1st Gen NVME Aura Pro’s also fully support standby/hibernation which is incorrect according to posts in this thread.

 

[mbosse]

Looks like OWC Larry is also claiming that the 1st Gen NVME Aura Pro’s also fully support standby/hibernation which is incorrect according to posts in this thread.

Let' will see how he answers to these questions. I think his precise wording was 'all of today's Aura Pro...' which is an important qualifier.

I posed a few additional ones as well. If it looks good, this might be the first OWC SSD in (many) years I am seriously interested in.

Magnus

 

[ptfuzi]

Looks like OWC Larry is also claiming that the 1st Gen NVME Aura Pro’s also fully support standby/hibernation which is incorrect according to posts in this thread.

On my previous MacBook Pros, with aura ssd 2tb, many times I couldn't wake up from sleep, just backlight on, had to turn off and turn on again.
And also sometimes it would drain the battery completely when it should be in sleep/hibernated

 

[macgeek01]

Let' will see how he answers to these questions. I think his precise wording was 'all of today's Aura Pro...' which is an important qualifier.

I posed a few additional ones as well. If it looks good, this might be the first OWC SSD in (many) years I am seriously interested in.

Magnus

Maybe I misinterpreted

On my previous MacBook Pros, with aura ssd 2tb, many times I couldn't wake up from sleep, just backlight on, had to turn off and turn on again.
And also sometimes it would drain the battery completely when it should be in sleep/hibernated

Thanks for sharing your experience

 

[jwar1976]

I recommend the small black sintech adapter and Adata sx8200 pro, HP ex920 or ex950, and Intel 760p.

Thanks for that, been looking at benchmarks for those drives, really impressive.

 

[Intenditore]

Guys, I could not find clear info on that, the wikipost is written when such model didn't exist I guess, so... Would be that adapter good? A1398 model
I suspect it could be a better solution as the structure is rigid and must not put any stress or displace the slot somehow. Who tried it, what are the results?
https://aliexpress.com/item/32996568898.html

 

[jwar1976]

Guys, I could not find clear info on that, the wikipost is written when such model didn't exist I guess, so... Would be that adapter good? A1398 model
I suspect it could be a better solution as the structure is rigid and must not put any stress or displace the slot somehow. Who tried it, what are the results?
https://aliexpress.com/item/32996568898.html

I saw something similar to this on a YouTube tutorial video

Seems to work pretty well, if it is the same one

 

[Audit13]

Guys, I could not find clear info on that, the wikipost is written when such model didn't exist I guess, so... Would be that adapter good? A1398 model
I suspect it could be a better solution as the structure is rigid and must not put any stress or displace the slot somehow. Who tried it, what are the results?
https://aliexpress.com/item/32996568898.html

If you use a double-sided SSD, you may have to bend the the drive and/or adapter a bit to make the screw fit in as others have noted.

NVME drives are quite rigid and should be not a problem when using the short adapter.

 

[jwar1976]

If you use a double-sided SSD, you may have to bend the the drive and/or adapter a bit to make the screw fit in as others have noted.

NVME drives are quite rigid and should be not a problem when using the short adapter.

Would something like this be better ?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapter-Up...5593498&s=gateway&sprefix=Ngff,aps,160&sr=8-6

 

[Galu]

Hello, sorry for my bad english, i'm italian.
I have a macbook air mid 2014, and i buy the Samsung 970 PRO, and this adapter

https://www.amazon.it/Adapter-Upgra...5593498&s=gateway&sprefix=Ngff,aps,160&sr=8-6

When i install Win 10 via bootcamp the bootcamp panel don't work. I see a lot of solution, create a non-admin account, create a shortcut, but i wanna that my pc normaly work.
If i buy the Sintech adapter the bootcamp panel will be normaly works?