For months I’ve been researching the “budget” (i.e., non-OWC!) method of upgrading the SSD in my Late 2013 MacBook Pro 15”, using the Sintech adapter and a regular NVMe M.2 drive. There’s a lot of confusing info out there. I’m still in the dark on a few things, so I thought I would post here and see if anyone can confirm what I’m understanding or tell me I’m heading down the wrong road.

Last night my daughter announced that the 128GB drive on her Early 2015 MacBook Air is full. I’m looking around and see this:

[www.amazon.com]

Wow, $40 to double the size of her internal storage, not bad. So I pulled the trigger on that plus a Sintech adapter (which was almost half the price of the drive!). The drive does 2 PCIe lanes as opposed to four lanes that pricier NVMe drives do. My MBP can do 4 lanes but as I understand, the Early 2015 MacBook Air can only do two, so this drive’s older Gen 3x2 configuration is not a downer for her; it still should be as fast or faster than what’s in there now. I also understand that these “budget” NVMe drives have a type of memory cell or controller that makes transfers of large files slow down considerably. She’s not running a server or editing video documentaries on her Air so I don’t think this will be an issue. Temperature, well that’s an unknown.

One odd thing is that this drive uses an M+B “key” that is supposedly more common for SATA drives. I asked a Q on the Amazon page for the Sintech adapter, and according to the responses, the drive will fit into the adapter. I guess we’ll see.

What I’m still not sure of: I’ve heard that some drives have firmware or controllers that don’t play well with Macs. Are these older issues that applied when these budget solutions first started appearing but have been fixed by now? I’ve heard that once High Sierra was released, upgrading an older Mac to that version of OSX (or greater) installs the firmware that allows it to work with any NVMe drives – is that true? Also, there are (or were?) issues with hibernation. Does upgrading to HS or greater also fix those or is it still a problem? The inability to hibernate wouldn’t be a deal-breaker for me, but it would be nice to know where things stand on that.

Right now my plan is to back up her current internal drive, wipe it, and install Mojave. As directed by several sites, I’ll prepare a USB stick with a Mojave installer, then install the new drive+adapter, boot from the USB stick, format the new internal as APFS, install Mojave, then restore her stuff from the backup.

I commend anyone who’s gotten this far! If someone knows a reason the particular drive I chose might not work, or if I have anything else wrong about how I think this entire process is supposed to work, I’d appreciate a heads up. TIA!

When I upgraded our two MBPr of similar vintage to your Air, I went with Apple OEM pulls. Not the cheapest option, but no guesswork or reliance on third-party tech. Solid performance in the 2 years since.

Thanks for your input, it didn't quite address what I was asking about though. Of course an Apple OEM pull will work, but so do the Sintech + 3rd party solutions, although they are definitely a little riskier. I'm very comfortable doing my own install and typing some terminal commands to disable hibernate but grant that it's not for everybody.

I just looked on Ebay and see used 256GB Apple pulls for my daughter's MBA are around $100. OWC wants $120 for a 240GB which I would probably choose over a used $100 drive. ($120 is a sale price, it's normally $150 for the 240GB according to OWC's website).

My understanding is that M+B Key is actually a SATA drive that can be used with a PCIe interface, so you won't get the speed benefits of an NVMe drive.

Did you get the stubby adapter or the full length adapter? I put a full length adapter in my Air (2012, so SATA interface) and while it works fine, it raises the drive so that it's touching the bottom cover. I bought a stubby adapter for my PCIe Macs to try out but haven't gotten around to it yet.

As for hibernation, I believe that has more to do with the machine itself. I think the 2015's are less susceptible? I put an OWC Aura Pro X in my 2013 MBP and still had to disable deep hibernation or whatever it's called, otherwise it would crash when I opened the lid after a long enough time.

I've done 3 of these, but not with your exact machine. Here's how they've gone:

2011 11" MBAir, SATA only.
Plan: Replace 120GB OWC drive in this machine (original already dead) with adapter + 250G 850EVO m.2 SATA.

Cloned internal OWC drive to external temp drive using CCC.
Replaced OWC drive with adapter+ 850EVO
Cloned external temp drive to now-internal 850EVO using CCC.

Worked great! If you have a USB m.2 adapter (I have one now), you can cut out that external temp drive middleman. BTW IMO the best way is to clone the internal drive to the new one, hooked up via USB, and then boot from teh external to make sure everything works the same. Then do the swap. I eventually undid this as I had a better use for the 850EVO and the OWC drive is back on the MBAir.
__________

2013 15" MBPro, 2-lane NVMe
Plan: Replace 250G Apple drive with 500G WDBlack m.2 NVMe ($90)

Cloned internal Apple drive to external temp drive using CCC
Replaced Apple drive with Sintech adapter + WDBlack
Cloned external temp drive to now-internal WDBlack using CCC.

Worked almost great! Only thing is with these Sintech NVMe adapters, you need to make a change in the sleep settings in order for them to wake up properly, otherwise you get a black screen and need to reboot. Do a search and have a look, I don't remember the exact procedure but it was simple. Works perfectly now! If you have a USB NVMe m.2 adapter (I have one now!), you can cut out the temp drive middleman, with the same advice as above.
__________

2104 15" MBPro 2-lane NVMe
Plan: Replace 500G Apple drive with 1TB HP EX920 ($164)

I'll spare you the details, it worked exactly the same as the above one.

All 3 of these machines are daily drivers so the swap works perfectly in the long run once the sleep setting change is made. The 2015 13" MBPro should proceed the same as the 15" MBPros I worked on.

I did this on a 2015 13", and it's been working perfectly.

No sleep problems on 2015 or later MBA-no need to change sleep changes.

I used this adapter:
[www.amazon.com]

I used this drive:
[www.amazon.com]

There have been some reports of some NVME SSD models that don't work well in Macs. The one you ordered may; it may not. Take a look at the first post here for SSDs that are known to work in Macs
[forums.macrumors.com]

I'm pretty sure the 2015 MBA can use all 4 PCIe lanes, but I'm not positive. On that machine, 2 lanes probably won't be noticeable restriction, if at all.

Hope this helps.

Quote
Gareth
My understanding is that M+B Key is actually a SATA drive that can be used with a PCIe interface, so you won't get the speed benefits of an NVMe drive.

No, this is supposed to be an actual NVMe drive, not SATA. This is addressed in the comments/reviews on the Amazon page for the drive I bought. Apparently some NVMe drives can have an M+B key – at least that's what one reviewer said!

Quote
Gareth
Did you get the stubby adapter or the full length adapter? I put a full length adapter in my Air (2012, so SATA interface) and while it works fine, it raises the drive so that it's touching the bottom cover. I bought a stubby adapter for my PCIe Macs to try out but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I got the full-length one – I read somewhere that it's more stable. Now I'm a little worried but that's why I got it on Amazon. I also read about some of these gumstick drives having chips on both sides, making them thicker. I'm not sure what the drive I bought is gonna be like, but again, Amazon – I should be able to return these if I have to.

Lew Zealand & anonymouse – thanks a ton for your helpful replies! I guess I'm rolling the dice a little here, but as I said in my last post, I should be able to swap the adapter and/or drive if I have to. Amazon has been great on returns for me, at least up to now.

$40 for a 256GB drive was too good to pass up. I'm gonna do my Late 2013 MacBook Pro next. I have 256GB now, looking to go to 512GB or 1TB. I'm thinking about this one, which might be a newer version of the drive anonymouse got: [www.amazon.com]

And the prices keep dropping, 500GB for $78. I believe this is brand new:

[www.amazon.com]

I took what I thought was a risk with the HP drive as it wasn't from one of the more familiar SSD names and it just worked. So both of those drives seem like they should work as they're from AData and WD, both of whom I've bought SATA SSDs from in the past.

HP works in Macs

I tried the adapter route to upgrade my son's MacBook Air. At first it worked, but after a short time the machine became very unstable, to the point of being unusable. Bought a used OEM Apple SSD instead and put it in, and it's worked perfectly since then.

Personally, I would not try the adapter thing again.

I can't blink without seeing deals... now there's a 1TB for $105... and I'm a 10 minute drive to the store!

[www.microcenter.com]

Quote
tronnei
I tried the adapter route to upgrade my son's MacBook Air. At first it worked, but after a short time the machine became very unstable, to the point of being unusable. Bought a used OEM Apple SSD instead and put it in, and it's worked perfectly since then.

Personally, I would not try the adapter thing again.

If you don't mind my asking: what brand adapter? Stubby or "sled"?

Quote
reezekeys

If you don't mind my asking: what brand adapter? Stubby or "sled"?

Stubby. I don't recall the brand.

I can't blink without seeing deals...

AMZ has the same drive for the same price, for those on fortunate enough not have a Microcenter nearby. Mine closed and the nearest is in SoCal (Tustin).

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2019 11:26AM by RAMd®d.

The drive and adapter came today. I've hit a bump trying to get a bootable Mojave installer done for my daughter's MBAir. I will report back on the success or failure of this venture, soon I hope!

Not looking good. After installation I booted from a Mojave install USB. The new drive was seen, and I used Disk Utility to format it APFS. I started installing OSX but after about two minutes it failed with a very large alert box saying "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."

I tried a few times with the same results. During one of the reboots I checked and saw that some files were written to the new drive. So it works, it's seen, but there's something that's stopping the install. I attached a TM volume to the MBA's other USB port thinking I'd try a restore (even though it has an older OSX) but that drive wasn't seen at all. Anyway, I've swapped the original Samsung drive back, the MBA is working, and I'm gonna research this a bit. Worse comes to worst, I'm out $40 for this drive, though I could just throw it on Ebay & try to recoup some of that.

Are you at the latest firmware? What version of MacOS are you running?

I updated to Mojave on the old drive first – to install the firmware to read 3rd-party NVMe drives, as I understand. Then I installed the new drive, and booted from a partition on an external drive that I set up as a bootable Mojave installer according to instructions on several website (it involved several terminal commands).

I've always read that High Sierra was the OS that installed the newer firmware but I assume that means any OS beyond High Sierra does the same thing. I only wonder a little because this MacBook Air was updated from Yosemite (10.10) directly to Mojave – it never saw High Sierra.

I'm in the process of making a new TM backup of the Air which will include the updated (Mojave) system, then see if I can restore from that on the new drive. The previous TM backup had Yosemite. I'll admit – this is pretty much a fishing expedition right now. Thanks for the reply & trying to help!

[edit - I put the new drive back in and started up. Got the same "macOS could not be installed on your computer" error but this time the TM backup was visible, so I'm restoring. 7.8GB so far and 35 minutes to go... fingers crossed.]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2019 09:53PM by reezekeys.

The continuing saga, if anyone cares - actually I’m hoping my symptoms ring a bell with someone.

The TM restore worked in that the MBA now boots from its new internal drive. When I log into my daughter’s account though, the pinwheel spins for a bit then the screen goes black! I have to force-restart, where I’m back in the same loop.

I can now boot from another external with Mojave, so I did, and tried running a few disk utilities like TTP and Disk Utilities, they all report no problems.

Well I’m a little closer!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2019 11:36AM by reezekeys.

I re-downloaded Mojave, re-installed it, and things are working! All seems good, except for one downer - I got a KP waking the MBA from sleep. Hoping it's a fluke. I've slept & woken the computer a few times without incident since then. I know there are issues with "deep" sleep where you can't wake up without a crash... but, 1) the battery is at 100%, and 2) I *think* this is not an issue for 2015+ macs anyway.

Fingers crossed that the KP was a fluke and we're good here...

Seems like a lot of time/work/aggravation for not a lot of saving$.

---

Aloha, Ken


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It was the first time doing this and I considered it a learning experience. Regardless, I got a 256GB NVMe drive for $40, the adapter for $18. OWC wants $120 for a 240GB drive that fits the MBA. Sure, I took a chance but I think I saved a decent amount.

Congrats! Enjoy your new old machine!

Thanks! Looks like I may have a little more to deal with though – last night the laptop was slept with the battery at 63%, this morning I checked and it's at 48%. It's possible this is because of the battery's age (it's an early 2015 Macbook Air) but I've heard of power management issues with some SSDs. Gonna do some more research.

[edit – my "research" has shown that this may be a Mojave issue. Some great information here: [appletoolbox.com];



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2019 11:02AM by reezekeys.