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Macbook air 2017 SSD Compatibility with Samsung SSD

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uehithneu

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Thank you for that feedback, Macdctr. Helpful! Nice to hear about your experiences, nice to hear everyone else's experiences with assorted storage units, adapters, procedural details.

Just now I bought a 256GB SSUBX product (eBay 20% flash-sale discount too good to resist!). SSUBX contains Samsung SM951 drive. I have plain' ol' SM951 drive, having purchased one (off eBay) a couple weeks ago. Again: My plain' ol' SM951 drive has 512GB capacity. My incoming SSUBX drive has 256GB capacity.

Questions:

(1) My plain' ol SM951 drains Y2013 MacBook Air battery quite faster than does the laptop's stock drive (Sandisk 128GB). Should I expect SSUBX and plain-ol'-SM951 to have same energy profile -- i.e., SM951 hard on battery and SSUBX contains SM951 thus SSUBX hard on battery?

(2) What about SM951 firmware? Samsung Magician? Bootcamp? ... Several posts from the big MBP thread say that if SM951 is recognized at boot (i.e., at the EFI level not at the macOS level?) as external then ya can't set-up Bootcamp and so ya can't run Samsung Magician and so ya can't easily apply SM951 firmware update? ... SM951-as-part-of-SSUBX will be recognized at boot as internal storage (right?) and so Bootcamp should indeed be doable (right?). Is SM951 firmware really a concern though or should I just not care?

(3) I don't understand the technology fully but I know enough to ask the following question lol: For two drives containing the same storage capacity how does SSUBX performance compare to non-SSUBX performance? I.e., is SSUBX-containing-512GB-SM951 faster? slower? than plain ol' 512GB SM951? What about SSUBX-containing-256GB-SM951 versus plain ol' 512GB SM951?

Thanks, everyone, for reading!
 
Macdctr

Macdctr

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42643311861_a033429e90_h.jpg


42643312901_172059b8ab_z.jpg


I recently upgraded my 13" MBA to MacOS 10.14 Mojave beta yet my boot rom shows .176

So far no issues using the older bootrom on my MBA....
 
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Macdctr

Macdctr

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With my .0176 bootrom I did not have any issues upgrading to MacOS 10.14 Mojave. My MBA seems to operate just as fast as it did under OS High Sierra so I guess there are no issues...
 
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TokMok3

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Macdctr said:
I know how you feel... I did not want to upgrade to High Sierra either but then I wouldn't be able to use my Samsung 950 PRO drive so I went all in and got the drive, formatted it in APFS (drawback is that it takes about 25 seconds to boot into login screen) and now have native NVMe support. Once the computer is up and running everything works as expected... I'm happy with this...

So far I have not experienced any issues with my current setup. If you want to go with higher storage you have 1TB or 2TB but that's using the 960 PRO which I have no experience using... I stayed with my 950 PRO because of the price point.
Click to expand...

Macdctr,

Thank you for sharing all this valuable information. For what I have read, the 950 PRO works without any problem with a MacBook Air 2013 (mid) + adapter. Can you confirm this. I would like to do this upgrade to my MacBook Air 11 2013(mid).

Will this upgrade will work with a MacBook Air 11 2013(mid)?
What adapter do you recommend?

Thank you again!
 
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Macdctr

Macdctr

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TokMok3 said:
Macdctr,

Thank you for sharing all this valuable information. For what I have read, the 950 PRO works without any problem with a MacBook Air 2013 (mid) + adapter. Can you confirm this. I would like to do this upgrade to my MacBook Air 11 2013(mid).

Will this upgrade will work with a MacBook Air 11 2013(mid)?
What adapter do you recommend?

Thank you again!
Click to expand...

Using a Sintech adapter, yes there are no problems in upgrading a 13 inch 2013 MBA using the Samsung 950PRO M.2 NVMe.

As for your 2013 11 inch MBA? I am not sure since I have never worked on one but I can only "assume" that the 2013 11 inch MBA will use similar technology as the 2013 13 inch MBA.

EDIT: I just checked out the logic boards between the 2013 11 inch MBA and 2013 13 inch MBA and the SSD card slot looks very similar. Based on visual observation of the two logic boards, I would guess you should have no issues upgrading your 11 inch MBA. If you do go through the upgrade process please post your findings here so others will have the information to do the same thing :)
 
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TokMok3

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Macdctr said:
Using a Sintech adapter, yes there are no problems in upgrading a 13 inch 2013 MBA using the Samsung 950PRO M.2 NVMe.

As for your 2013 11 inch MBA? I am not sure since I have never worked on one but I can only "assume" that the 2013 11 inch MBA will use similar technology as the 2013 13 inch MBA.

EDIT: I just checked out the logic boards between the 2013 11 inch MBA and 2013 13 inch MBA and the SSD card slot looks very similar. Based on visual observation of the two logic boards, I would guess you should have no issues upgrading your 11 inch MBA. If you do go through the upgrade process please post your findings here so others will have the information to do the same thing :)
Click to expand...


Thank you so much for the information. If I decide to upgrade, I will post the information here.
 
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uehithneu

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Readers, do you know about removing heatsinks? Would you please give me suggestions?

I purchased on eBay a Samsung SSUBX drive, which comes from a Mac Pro and so is enveloped (partially) by a heatsink. The width of the heatsink--in this case I use the word 'width' to refer to the small dimension -- i.e., the distance between long edges of a rectangle--is too big to fit in my 11-inch MBA (Y2013).

How can I remove the heatsink without damaging the drive?

Thanks for reading!

[This message posted also in the MacBook Pro subforum.]
 
U

uehithneu

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May 19, 2018
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Thank you, Audit13, for good feedback! In case photos would be helpful here's two!

Anybody knows how to remove the heatsink without damaging the drive?

Thanks for reading!

s-l1600.jpg
s-l1600b.jpg
 
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dudaslaszlo

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Jun 6, 2018
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Audit13

Audit13

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Try removing and re-inserting the adapter.

I understand the Macbook had High Sierra installed but is the disk utility from Sierra or High Sierra when using Internet recovery?
 
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dudaslaszlo

macrumors member
Jun 6, 2018
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Hungary
Audit13 said:
Try removing and re-inserting the adapter.

I understand the Macbook had High Sierra installed but is the disk utility from Sierra or High Sierra when using Internet recovery?
Click to expand...

The recovery is High Sierra too. I've tried many times, but it doesn't work.
Can you suggest any kind of adapter, that should work with macbook? When I applied the drive with the adapter, it lifted a bit, but when I inserted to the motherboard it fitted fine.
 
Audit13

Audit13

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dudaslaszlo said:
The recovery is High Sierra too. I've tried many times, but it doesn't work.
Click to expand...
Is it possible that the drive or adapter is not working? Do you have any way to test either part?

I know it is not an idea solution but could you find some tape to temporarily put on the adapter and try again? You could try some clear adhesive tape just to see if the drive is detected in disk utility.
 
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dudaslaszlo

macrumors member
Jun 6, 2018
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Hungary
dudaslaszlo said:
Is it possible that the drive or adapter is not working? Do you have any way to test either part?

I know it is not an idea solution but could you find some tape to temporarily put on the adapter and try again? You could try some clear adhesive tape just to see if the drive is detected in disk utility.
Click to expand...

I haven't tested it with another adapters.
Another question, when I take back the old apple ssd, I am trying to open the internet recovery, but I can't. There is a -2100F error code, after when the globe appears and I'm waiting about a minute. What kind of method should I have to do to solve this irritating problem?
 
Audit13

Audit13

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How about downloading the High Sierra iso and creating a USB installer?

I just booted to internet recovery on my early 2015 Air running an Intel 600p. Internet recovery comes up. Entering disk utility shows me my Intel 600p under "all devices".
 
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dudaslaszlo

macrumors member
Jun 6, 2018
31
4
Hungary
Audit13 said:
How about downloading the High Sierra iso and creating a USB installer?

I just booted to internet recovery on my early 2015 Air running an Intel 600p. Internet recovery comes up. Entering disk utility shows me my Intel 600p under "all devices".
Click to expand...

Thats a good idea. I hope it will work now...
 
D

dudaslaszlo

macrumors member
Jun 6, 2018
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Hungary
dudaslaszlo said:
Thats a good idea. I hope it will work now...
Click to expand...

Yesterday, I have sucessfully installed the 970 EVO drive, without any problems. First of all, I made an NVRAM reset and removed the new drive and inserted again. The disk utility recognized finally and after 1,5 hour, with time machine backup, it works perfectly. There are no kernel panics, hibernation or wake up problems.
Thank you for your help!
 

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Audit13

Audit13

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dudaslaszlo said:
Yesterday, I have sucessfully installed the 970 EVO drive, without any problems. First of all, I made an NVRAM reset and removed the new drive and insterted again. The disk utility recognized finally and after 1,5 hour, with time machine backup, it works perfectly. There are no kernel panics, hibernation or wake up problems.
Thank you for your help!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the update. Glad you got it working :)

Use it for a while and let us know about the battery life.
 
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