10/2/2019 Samsung Solid State Drive For Mac Mini
Internal SSD replacement for the 2010 to 2014 “unibody” Mac mini requires considerably more effort and skill than doing so for the MacBooks and iMacs. SSD Drive for Mac. Apple Store Mac Mini. As I wrote last week, I’m going to upgrade my 2012 Mac Mini with a Solid State Drive with a goal of speeding it up and giving it some new life.
Remember the good ol’ days of carrying a spare battery, upgrading your own RAM, maybe even adding a second hard drive? If you’re an Apple user, those luxuries may be behind us, but upgrading your own solid state drive is still a privilege the Apple overlords allow us to have, for now that is. Despite retaining the ability to upgrade your own SSD, ever since Apple introduced their proprietary “blade” SSDs in 2010, the task hasn’t been as simple as it once was.
Apple talks up read and write speeds, but they rarely dive into the nitty gritty details of the technology behind the SSDs they use — drives specially designed only for Apple computers. After countless questions, both from customers and our own staff, we decided to start our own investigation into the hardware involved. You have to be a bit of a private eye to uncover the secrets behind these drives, and the deeper we looked, the more surprises we found. Table of Contents. LTR: Gen. 3A (comparable to Gen.
3B (comparable to Gen. 5A SSD Interfaces Compared Every hard drive or solid state drive you’ve used in the past ten years is likely to have used either a SATA interface, or more recently a PCI Express interface. If you’re into vintage computers and you think patience is a virtue that can only be honed by waiting for programs to respond, maybe you’re still rocking a drive with a PATA interface.
If you are, it’s time to get up to speed! Ever faster drive technology, brought about by faster spinning disks, increased cache, advances in controller architecture, and a host of other factors keeps pushing the host interface to become the bottleneck for read and write speeds. Luckily, advances in host interfaces invariably stay ahead of the pace of drive technologies, always allowing room to push speeds a bit farther. What is SATA? SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) refers to the technology standard for connecting hard drives, solid state drive, and optical drives to the computer’s motherboard.
The SATA standard’s been in use for many years and is still the most prevalent interface for connecting internal storage drives. The SATA standard has now undergone three major revisions, resulting in connectors that are identical in appearance (hurray for backwards compatibility), but with bandwidth doubling each time. This can cause some confusion in the event that you connect a hard drive that supports the SATA III standard into a SATA II connector, creating a bottleneck at the SATA II interface that will limit the potential bandwidth of the drive. But as it applies to SSDs, if you’re not using a SATA III connection, it’s safe to assume you’re limiting the potential of your drive. And even if you’re using a SATA III interface, you’re still probably limiting your SSD. In short, SATA just wasn’t made for solid state drives.
SATA Performance Interface Raw Transfer Rate Encoding Effective Data Rate Effective Data Rate SATA I 1.5Gb/s 8b/10b 1.2Gb/s 0.15GB/s SATA II 3Gb/s 8b/10b 2.4Gb/s 0.30GB/s SATA III 6Gb/s 8b/10b 4.8Gb/s 0.60GB/s What is PCIe? Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) is a computer bus standard with incredibly high bandwidth potential, and is the fastest bus option that most computers have available. It’s no wonder that manufacturers moved towards PCIe technology for their bandwidth hungry SSDs. Like the SATA bus standard, PCIe has undergone multiple revisions over the years and is still evolving at breakneck speeds. PCIe 2.0 (which is likely to be the most common PCIe revision found inside in-use computers) maxes out at 500MB/s with a single channel of throughput. Those speeds may sound a bit slower than SATA III, but PCIe has the advantage of utilizing multiple channels of throughput to accommodate the needs of the connected peripheral. Two channels of throughput (1GB/s) not enough for you?
Double the number of channels to four and you’ll realize double the data transfer rates, if the connected device can make use of it that is. PCIe bandwidth can be scaled up to 16 and even 32 lanes for a single device, but that’s uncommon in SSDs and primarily reserved for devices like graphics cards which have larger data transfer requirements. Most PCIe SSDs will have either 2, or more recently, 4 channels of throughput. In 2011 the PCIe 3.0 revision was released, and finally brings more to the table than just the ability to add additional channels. PCIe 1.0 and 2.0 both use 8b/10b encoding to transmit data (the same as SATA), meaning that for every 8 bits of data sent, the data is sent via a 10 bit line code.
In other words, 2 of the 10 bits are just overhead necessary to transmit the rest of the data. That 20% overhead eats into the potential bandwidth of an interface, resulting real world bandwidth that’s 20% lower. PCIe 3.0 introduced the much more efficient 128b/130b encoding, resulting in only only 1.5% overhead to eat into the potential bandwidth.
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PCIe Speed Comparison Chart. Generation 2 The second generation of Apple SSDs saw the expansion of the blade style drives into the MacBook Pro laptops and iMac desktops. 2 drives were faster than than the previous generation, but still used the mSATA III interface — finally approaching the maximum throughput capable of the SATA III specification. 2 drives were characterized by their use of two distinctly different drives; the shorter, wider Gen. 2A drive used in the MacBook Pro and iMac computers, and the taller, thinner Gen. 2B drive used in the MacBook Airs.
2A and 2B drives use the same mSATA 3 interface and the same 7+17 Pin connector type. Despite the use of identical connectors and interfaces, the drives aren’t truly compatible because the space allotted in each computer simply isn’t designed to fit the other drive type.
MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 - Early 2013) With the release of the first MacBook Pro with “Retina” screen, Apple began including SSDs standard in the MacBook Pro line, and in fact the only storage device interface is the single 7+17 Pin SSD connector. 2A SSDs used by these MacBook Pro laptops were offered in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 768GB capacities, and manufactured again by Samsung, but also by SanDisk. Both the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro laptops use the same drives, and either MBP can have any of the four SSD capacities installed. IMac (Late 2012 - Early 2013) The Late 2012 and Early 2013 iMacs had a rather different arrangement, with a traditional 3.5″ SATA III HDD standard, but the Late 2012 release also unveiled the Fusion Drive. Apple’s Fusion Drive pairs a larger capacity traditional hard drive with a smaller capacity solid state drive, offering much of the performance benefits of a SSD, but in a more cost effective package.
The operating system displays the two drives as a single drive to the user, but behind the scenes optimizes file storage so files that need to be accessed more frequently and files that benefit more from quick read times are stored on the SSD, while the majority of the files are stored on the HDD. In order to utilize Apple’s fastest SSDs in the Fusion Drive setup, the iMac logic boards now included Apple’s proprietary 7+17 Pin SSD connector, in addition to one of the two SATA III connectors found in previous iMacs, allowing you to install any combination of SATA and Apple SSDs. It’s not necessary to use the SSD in the Fusion Drive arrangement, and the two drives can act independently of each other if desired. The SSD connector can use any of the Gen. 2A options (128GB, 256GB, 512GB or 768GB), while the SATA connector can accommodate any 3.5″ SATA HDD or SSD, or a 2.5″ SATA drive when using a 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter.
One important caveat is that while the 27″ iMac always has the 7+17 Pin connector present on the board, the 21.5″ model will only have the connector if the iMac was originally configured with a Fusion Drive. If a Fusion Drive was not selected at the time of purchase, there’s only an empty space where the PCIe connector would have been, and there’s no way to add the connector to the board, short of replacing the entire logic board. MacBook Air (Mid 2012) As mentioned above, the Gen. 2B drives have a different form factor, but use the same interface and connector as their Gen. 2A counterparts. The 2B read/write speeds are noticeably slower, likely due to engineering constraints from the smaller footprint of the 2B drives. Another likely result of the engineering constraints is the absence of a 768GB option.
Samsung and Toshiba manufactured the Gen. 2B drives, which came in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB options, all of which are interchangeable in the Mid 2012 releases of the MBA 11″ (model A1465) and MBA 13″ (model A1466). Generation 3 It was clear with the Gen. 2 drives that mSATA’s 600MB/s limitation would not allow for further speed increases, so Apple’s next generation of drives began using a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface, bringing about the most substantial performance increases to date. Performance varies wildly across different devices and drives, but the fastest Gen. 3 configurations can perform at more than double the speeds of the fastest Gen.
Generation 3 also saw a consolidation of drive types, with almost all Gen. 3 drives compatible with all Mid 2013 through Mid 2015 releases of Apple computers.
Of course, a few exceptions apply; notably the MacBook Air and iMac 21.5″. Not only are the SSDs cross compatible between the different devices, but the different computers do in fact share the exact same drives. The SSDs were manufactured by Samsung, SanDisk and Toshiba, and the same manufacturer part numbers have been found on drives retrieved from all of the different computers. Samsung seems to have appended unique endings (/0A2, /0A4, /0A6, etc.) to drives used in different devices, but the drives all use the same flash controller and our testing has shown zero performance difference between them. 3 solid state drives are all the same form factor (which we’ll refer to as Gen. 3A), except for the 1TB SSD (Gen. 3B) which is the same length, but roughly twice as wide.
3 drives use the same 12+16 Pin connector and all share a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface, except for the 1TB Gen. 3B SSD which has a PCIe 2.0 x4 interface, likely due to the larger physical size of the drive which allows for less engineering constraints. 3 drives use AHCI technology, but many of the computers that shipped with Gen. 3 drives support NVMe SSDs as well, allowing for upgrades to later generation NVMe drives. MacBook Air (Mid 2013 - Early 2014) As with previous MacBook Airs, both the 11″ and 13″ laptops use all the same drives, which include 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities, leaving behind the 64GB option found in earlier MacBook Airs.
Interestingly, while the drives are all limited to a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface, the MacBook Air logic boards all support PCIe 2.0 x4, opening up the possibility to upgrade to the faster four channel drives found in Gen. Mac Pro (Late 2013) The big revision to the Mac Pro desktop saw big changes to it’s storage devices as well. The Late 2013 Mac Pro was the first Mac Pro to have a solid state drive standard, the first to natively use PCIe storage, and to the dismay of many power users, the first to support only a single internal storage device. The Mac Pro supports all capacities (128GB – 1TB) of Gen. 3 SSDs, but originally included drives with heatsinks that are attached with an extremely strong thermally conductive adhesive.
It’s generally a safe bet that if Apple’s engineers decided it was necessary, it’s probably necessary, but it’s worth mentioning that the Mac Pros can use SSDs without heatsinks found in the other devices, and our internal testing showed absolutely no difference in SSD temperature when using drives with and without heatsinks, even under stress test conditions. The Mac Pro’s logic board has the same limitations as the MacBook Air laptops, supporting a PCIe 2.0 x4 connection, allowing for improved performance with later four channel drives. The nMP also supports NVMe SSDs and can upgrade to some of the Gen. 5 drives when running macOS 10.10.3 or later.
MacBook Pro (Late 2013 - Mid 2014) The Late 2013 and Mid 2014 MacBook Pro laptops both support all generation 3 drive options, and as with the MacBook Airs, while the included drives were PCIe 2.0 x2, the logic boards all support four channel PCIe connections. The MacBook Pros also support the NVMe protocol, and like the Mac Pro, require macOS 10.10.3 or later. IMac (Late 2013 - Late 2015) The 21.5″ iMac originally shipped with either a 1TB SATA HDD, a 1TB Fusion drive (128GB SSD and 1TB SATA 3.5″ HDD), or a 256GB standalone SSD. The 27″ iMac offered the same 1TB Fusion Drive as the standard option, with optional upgrades to a 3TB Fusion Drive (128GB SSD and 3TB SATA 3.5″ HDD), or a standalone SSD in either 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB capacities. Given that the iMacs have relatively ample free space inside, at least compared the rest of Apple’s product lines, it should come as no surprise that all drive capacities are supported in both the 21.5″ and 27″ iMacs. As with the previous generation, the 27″ iMac always included the PCIe connector on the logic board, while the 21.5″ iMac only included the PCIe connector if originally configured with a Fusion Drive or standalone SSD when ordered. If the connector is not present on the logic board, there’s no way to add it after the fact, short of replacing the entire motherboard.
The 21.5″ iMacs and the 27″ from 2013/2014 only support PCIe 2.0 x2 connections. All iMacs of this era support NVMe, but the speed increase is more limited in the 21.5″ iMacs and the 2013/2014 27″ iMacs, where the two channel interface acts as a bottleneck. Mac mini (Late 2014) Late 2014 was the first Mac mini to support Apple’s blade solid state drives, but it’s extremely limited internal space required a unique solution in order to connect the drive to the logic board. Rather than a 12-16 pin PCIe connector on the logic board where the SSD would connect directly, the Mac mini positioned the SSD on the rear of the plastic hard drive carrier, off to the side of the board, and required a flex cable to connect the SSD. The flex cable has the 12+16 pin female connector on one side and a female 40 pin mezzanine connector which attaches to the 40 pin male connector on the motherboard. This was the first and last time Apple used this smaller connector for PCIe connections in any of their product lines. PCIe connector on the Late 2014 Mac mini The connector is present on the board regardless of which storage configuration was initially ordered, so it’s possible to add a PCIe SSD to all Late 2014 Mac minis.
If the Mac mini wasn’t originally configured with a Fusion Drive or standalone SSD from the factory, the flex cable will need to be purchased in order to add an SSD afterwards. The Mac mini motherboard only supports a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface, but does support an upgrade to NVMe SSDs, but like the 21.5″ iMac, the speed increase is a modest 10-15% due to the two channel PCIe bottleneck. Generation 4 With the release of the first Early 2015 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, Apple unveiled their four generation of blade SSDs. 4 included a few variations, but for the most part was again used across all the product lines of the time, and even stuck with the same 12+16 Pin connector found in the Gen. 3 drives, making the Gen. 4 drives a great option for upgrading earlier devices. 4 drives all used a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, with the exception of the drive used in the MacBook Air 11″ which used a newer version (Gen.
4C) of the PCIe 2.0 x2 drives found in the previous generation. I’ll be referring to the 128GB, 256GB and 512GB Gen. 4 drives as Gen. 4A, and the larger 1TB drive as Gen. 4B, similar to the Gen. 3B 1TB drive from the previous generation.
Generation 4 brought massive increases in speeds when compared to their Gen. 3 counterparts, with read and write speeds that are roughly twice that of the previous generation. All the laptops and desktops released during this period could make use of the four channel PCIe connection, but only a few select models could reap the benefits of the PCIe 3.0 technology. For devices that did support a PCIe 3.0 connection to the SSD, read and write speeds were more than doubled. All in all, the fourth generation of solid state drives represented another monumental leap in drive technology. Then SSDs were manufactured exclusively by Samsung this time around, with the exception of the Gen. 4C drive from the 11″ MacBook Air which was manufactured by Toshiba.
The Samsung drives are commonly referred to by the identifier of their flash controller, dubbed UBX — or as it’s printed on the drive, SSUBX. This is quick an easy way to identify the generation four drives from the Gen. 3 Samsung drives which have SSUAX printed on the labels. MacBook Air (Early 2015 - Mid 2017) The last release of the 11″ MacBook Air in Early 2015 brought minor upgrades to a few components, but left the SSD tech virtually unchanged. The drives were the only of Apple’s product lines to keep the PCIe 2.0 x2 technology from the previous generation, but the drives were still modified with firmware changes that rendered them incompatible with earlier MacBook Air laptops. The new drives were also now branded “Apple” rather than with the third party manufacturer’s name, although the flash chips on the SSD make it clear that Toshiba and SanDisk were manufacturers.
Despite the two channel drive, the 11″ MacBook Air actually supports four channel PCIe connections, and they can be upgraded with the Gen. 4A drives found in other devices. In fact, if the 11″ MacBook Air was configured with a 512GB SSD from the factory, it already included the same Gen.
4A drive found in the other Apple computers of the era. The 13″ MacBook Air used the same Gen. 4A drives as the rest of Apple’s product lines, but didn’t support the PCIe 3.0 connection the newer drives were capable of. Despite the lack of PCIe 3.0 support, the Early 2015 release still saw read/write speeds that were 90-120% faster than the 2013/2014 models. The same Gen.
4A drives are still in use in the most recent Mid 2017 release. Like the MacBook Air laptops before them, the Early 2015 – Mid 2017 MacBook Airs lack the space to fit the wider 1TB SSDs, and are limited to the 128GB, 256GB and 512GB options. MacBook Pro (Early 2015 - Mid 2015) The 2015 releases of the MacBook Pro laptops were also relatively minor upgrades, but again the SSDs brought about a huge speed boost, especially for the 15″ model A1398. Both the 13″ and 15″ computers support the full range of drive capacities and supported four channel connections, but the 15″ MacBook Pro also supported PCIe 3.0. Both the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pros also support the NVMe protocol and upgrading to Gen.
5 SSDs can bring a modest speed boost to the 13″ model A1502, but the 15″ model A1398 with its PCIe 3.0 connection really allows the NVMe technology to shine. Read speeds increase by 40% and write speeds can increase by 60%. IMac (Late 2015) The Late 2015 iMacs see a lot of the same trends found in earlier iMac releases. The 21.5″ iMac only has a PCIe connector on the motherboard if the computer was originally configured with a Fusion Drive or standalone SSD. To the dismay of many people, the 1TB Fusion Drive now only included a 24GB SSD paired with the same 1TB SATA HDD, and continued offering an option for a standalone 256GB SSD. The 27″ iMac also tweaked the 1TB Fusion Drive to include the smaller 24GB SSD, but the 2TB and 3TB Fusion Drives still included the 128GB SSD.
The 27″ iMac also continued offerings of 256GB, 512GB or 1TB standalone SSDs. You might have noticed that there had not been a 24GB SSD option until this point in time, and in addition to bringing about a new capacity, the 24GB PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD was also Apple’s first removable NVMe SSD. Another interesting oddity with the 24GB drive is that it’s actually designated as a 32GB drive on its label, with 25% of the available space reserved and unusable to the user. All SSDs have some portion of their capacity reserved to replace bad blocks that have become unreliable due to the natural wear introduced during the writing process.
Reserving a quarter of a drive’s capacity is highly unusual, but considering that the drive is designed to act as a cache for the Fusion Drive and will likely take a lot of wear, it makes total sense that a large segment of the drive would be allocated to replace worn out sections. Unfortunately this is the only NVMe drive available during this period, and NVMe SSDs didn’t become widespread in Apple’s lineup until Gen. All of the SSDs found in the Late 2015 iMacs are of the new PCIe 3.0 x4 variety, but the A1418 only supports a PCIe 2.0 x4 connection. The 27″ iMac on the other hand is the only device other than the 15″ MacBook Pro to support a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection.
Both iMacs support the NVMe protocol though, and can upgrade to later Gen. 5 SSDs for a big speed boost. Generation 5 The fifth generation of Apple SSDs introduced a few major changes. On the performance front, all the Gen.
5 SSDs support the NVMe protocol, and the devices that included these drives all support PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe connections. These two changes meant that not only are the Gen.
5 drives quite a bit faster, but all the Apple computers of this era saw the same benefits. 5 also saw changes to the form factor, now with two distinct SSD types. 5A drives use a brand new, significantly smaller form factor, and a new 22+34 Pin connector. 5B drives continue to us the 12+16 Pin connector found in the Gen.
3 and 4 drives, and have the same form factor found in the Gen. 3B and 4B 1TB SSDs. Despite the larger connector on the Gen. 5A drive which one might assume could help performance, the Gen. 5B drives have superior read/write speeds, topping out at 2,700 MB/s reads and 2,350 MB/s writes. MacBook Pro (Late 2016 - Mid 2017) Starting with the Late 2016 release, Apple began releasing two versions of its MacBook Pro laptop: the non Touch Bar (nTB) version, and the version with Touch Bar. Only the 13″ MacBook Pro was offered in the nTB version, and notably, the nTB version is the only MacBook Pro of this release that has a removable SSD.
All of the MacBook Pro laptops with a Touch Bar share the same PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD, but the SSD is soldered to the logic board and is not removable/replaceable. The only way to upgrade the storage on the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is to replace the entire logic board. The non Touch Bar MacBook Pro that does have a removable SSD uses the new Gen. 5A variety of drive, and is the only Apple computer to do so.
The Late 2016 MacBook Pro offered either a 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB SSD, while the Mid 2017 release also introduced a 128GB option. All of these Gen. 5A drives are compatible with both releases though. If you’ve got this far and are looking for more, I’m sorry to say this is the end of the line. This post has attracted more attention than our average post so I’m currently in the process of adding more and better information. I’m planning on adding lots more info, speed tests, part numbers and more upgrade guides. This post ain’t dead yet, so check back soon.
In the meantime, if you have and questions or comments, leave them below because I probably already have the answer. Hello Cody I am so thankful to see this article you posted, like John Albergo said, this article has most useful info that I have saw from other websites, it helps me a lot. Thank you But I still have some questions that I hope you could help me out. In the article, you mentioned NVMe is supported for Macbook Pro after Late2013 iMac after Late2013 (21.5” has two channel bottleneck) Mac Mini after Late2014 ( has two channel bottleneck) Mac Pro after Later 2013 And you also mention NVMe is supported when running macOS after 10.10.3 But Read more ». I just found your amazing post on Apple SSD’s and it is a treasure trove on informations! Great work and thanks!
I have a MBP 13″ Retina, Mid-2014, and after reading your article, i still have a few questions: 1) Will the Mid-2014 MBP be able to accommodate the 12-16 pins 1 TB SSD Gen3B or 5B? Since the drive is larger, is there room inside the laptop? 2) I understand that the MacBookPro 11,1 is has PCI 4x, and NVMe. Is there a substantial speed advantage to go with the Gen 5B 1TB model over the Gen 3B, since Read more ». Cody, do you know whether my MBA 6,2 (mid 2013) which original 256GB SSD had controller link width x2, should support link width x3 with Transcendent TurboJet 820 960GB SSD?
I have Sierra OS X installed on my MBA. Would upgrade to High Sierra increase the speed to x3 (NvME)? Do you think I should rather go to Samsung SSD and upgrade to High Sierra in order to get full performance of chipset controller? Also, could you please advice compatible and high speed / low power consumption 1 TB SSD for my MBA? Many thanks!!
Great article. I’m left wondering something about the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina. I’m considering purchasing either the 13″ early 2015 MacBook Pro A1502 or the 15″ mid 2015 MacBook Pro A1398. In either case I will likely go with the highest memory and processor speed with a 1 TB drive. I like the 13″ for size and lower weight but am concerned about longevity vs the 15″.
You state that both the 13″ and 15″ support NVMe, but the 15″ supports PCIe 3.0 (implying that the 13″ only has a PCIe 2.0 interface). Also stating that because of the 15″ Read more ». Cody, truly incredible and diligent work on this guide, I am extremely impressed. It is quite clear that you are the only man who can finally answer this question, so here I go.
I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase a brand new factory sealed 2017 MacBook Air model number MQD32LL/A from Best Buy on one of their one day sale’s for $600.00 I truly didn’t need the machine, but just couldn’t pass up the opportunity at that price. Now that I have it the 128Gb SSD that comes from the factory is clearly inadequate my use. If Read more ». Cody, Out of respect for your guide I separated my other question from my question about the SSD, as I was not sure if you wanted it included with posts that were more specific to your guide. Again, I am sure you’re opinion and recommendation will serve me well.
If you were going to use the SD slot as a storage option, even though it is not secure and potentially volatile, how would you go about maximizing the slots deminished potential, in the most productive fashion. Again, I thank you in advance for your kindness and incredibly hard and diligent Read more ». Hi – thanks for this awesome page, a proppa treasure trove of info! I’m struggling though with the iMac late 2014 27inch 5k (15,1). Above you say that this supports 4 lane apple SSD’s (which pushed me to attempt an upgrade), but everything I’ve seen points to it only supporting 2 lanes. It comes with an SSAUX SSD (2 lanes).
From discussions on a separate forum, I know that people have tried an SSUBX 4 lane model SSD and they still only see 2 lanes. I’ve upgraded my original SSD with a 512gig SSPOLARIS SSD and I see the switch Read more ».
Thanks for this guide. I had a question about the mid 2012 MacBook Air. I had been looking to upgrade my ssd and had been hearing of issues with using non proprietary drives when I was looking into options like the Samsung Pro 860.
While you explained everything pretty thoroughly, I still wanted to know if the drives available here are comparable to the Samsung Pro 860 manufacturer model sold on Amazon? And what are the main differences between this and the Transcend JetDrive 520? Based on what I am reading, the products here seem to be, essentially, factory sourced Read more ». Excellent article Cody! Very thorough and I love the detail you provide which Apple sadly doesn’t.
Do you have or can you recommend a link that explains the issues surrounding why a mac will boot from some SSD PCIe drives but not from others? I’m trying to learn what a drive needs in order to boot without an external boot manager (Obviously I’m referring to non-mac SSD drives and I am aware that they need pin converters but the cost savings are just too good to not make an attempt at an non-apple drive upgrade). Thanks again for the Read more ». Hi, First of all I have to say that this is absolutely the best manual of Apple SSDs in the entire internet. Thanks a lot for this!
Moreover, I would appreciate if someone could please help me a bit with advice. I have a MacBook Pro 13” (Late 2013) with the stock 256GB Gen 3A PCIe 2.0 x2 drive running the latest macOS High Sierra.
I need more storage space, hence I want to replace my existing stock drive with a 512GB one. In addition, it would be great to have not only more space, but also more speed.
Given Read more ». First of all, a big thanks. It is important to know what is going on hardware-wise when Apple’s Internet Recovery uses only old Operating Systems on Internet Recovery and even then needs to have the drive GPT-formatted in order to allow for Disk Utility to see it and to install a new OS to it / restore a backup onto it. I managed to run a Samsung 970evo in my Mac Book Pro 11,3 (15in Mid-2014 A1398). However, the external monitors now stay black. I assume this is because now PCIe X4 is used instead of PCIe X2 Read more ». Big massive thanks for this article, couldn’t believe that Apple went for such a clumsy politics on ssd blades and Cody’s report helped me a lot in orientation.
I ignored all this compatibility issues before reading here few days ago. I unfortunately purchased a new Mac Mini in november 2017 from Apple Store (Mac Mini late 2014!) with a 250Gb SSD installed by the manufacturer and I want to replace it with an 1To or 2To faster SSD. Does the Mac Mini late 2014 really accept the Gen 2.0×2 only as stated in the article or (as suggested by Read more ».Mac Mini Late 2014 recent purchase NVMe upgrade. Big massive thanks for this article, couldn’t believe that Apple went for such a clumsy politics on ssd blades and Cody’s report helped me a lot in orientation.
I ignored all this compatibility issues before reading here few days ago. I unfortunately purchased a new Mac Mini in november 2017 from Apple Store (Mac Mini late 2014!) with a 250Gb SSD installed by the manufacturer and I want to replace it with an 1To or 2To faster SSD. Does the Mac Mini late 2014 really accept the Gen 2.0×2 only as Read more ». Great page and thread. Excellent for a relative Mac newbie. I’m in the UK in case that makes a difference. Can anyone advise me please?
What are the 1TB upgrade solution options for my early 2015 Macbook Pro Retina 13″ A1502 (S/N C02PLDM5FVH7)? The original SSD is dead (Samsung SSUBX 512GB MZ-JPV5210/0A4). I’d like a larger drive than 512 but I’m looking for a good bang for the buck solution rather than the fastest solution, but of couse a speed increase over the SSUBX would be welcome also. I could manage with 512GB to keep costs down. I’d have no Read more ». Both my college-age kids have MacBook Pros.
Daughters is Retina Mid-2014 13″ – MGX72LL/A. – MacBookPro11,1 – A1502 – 2875. Encouraged by post saying that Enver was able to run a Samsung 970evo in his Mac Book Pro 11,3.
Notwithstanding the cable issues and getting external monitors to work (we’ve all been there) is it likely that the aforementioned Samsung 970evo will work in the 11,1 version of MBP? What’s changed? EveryMac seems to list the 11,3 as having the same Apple-proprietary PCIe 2.0 x2 connector.
I really appreciate the level of detail you went in to in breaking this Rotten Apple down. I changed circa 2k05 due to Windows crashes, and enjoyed my 2k09 and 2k11 MBPs which are still kicking. DJ lessons for someone left me bewildered and pissed off at a soldered on RAM chip when I was talking upgrades; the soldered SSD is absolutely ridiculous. Now I am left scouring the used market for the only MBP with a removeable SSD – the few models around 2k17, and with a 16GB RAM Logic Board weird to say. I call Apple support per Read more ».
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