Samsung 860 EVO with MB Pro 2012 won't boot

GooseTalk wrote:

I went to Best Buy yesterday afternoon and picked up the 512 GB SanDisk Ultra. Installed it as internal drive and booted via external. Installed OS X on SSD and had exact same symptoms.

OK - likely an issue that can be solved with a new cable. We had a little discussion about what the underlying cause of SSD incompatibility is, but there is no solid answer other than a new one seems to help, even if the root cause is a mystery.

MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Mid 2012 Hard Drive Cable Replacement - iFixit

MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Mid 2012) Hard Drive Cable (923-0104, 923-0741, 821-1480-A, 821-2049-A) With Bracket / New - iF…

@GooseTalk & @Grant Bennet-Alder - THANK YOU very much for posting your experience with a Samsung 860 EVO and MBP SATA cables. BIG help.

It was driving me crazy that I could not complete a clean install of MacOS High Sierra 10.13.3 on my MacBook Pro 15" late-2011 machine after installing the Samsung 860 EVO.

Most frequently receiving the light grey circle with a line through it (prohibited?).

I eventually booted off a bootable flash drive (SD card actually) and installed the OS while the SSD was plugged in as a USB drive. But when I re-installed the SSD internally and booted, the performance was horrendous. Running Disk Utility off the bootable flash (SD) drive and performing a Repair on the SSD told me it was fine. Yet the MBP was so slow it was effectively unusable.

Then I found this thread :-)

Unlike you I was actually able to see a performance difference after carefully prying the paper-thin SATA cable from the MBP and attaching it only via its plug. The Samsung 860 EVO was simply sitting on my anti-static mat. Fired up the MBP and it was blindingly fast in comparison to the "properly" installed SATA cable.

So while I've ordered a replacement SATA cable, I also followed the guidance posted by @Grant Bennet-Alder about insulating with tape (I even used Red tape!), slapped it back together, and it's working like a champ!

So the Samsung 860 EVO is compatible with a MacBook Pro 15" late-2011 model running MacOS High Sierra 10.13.3. You just need to not ruin the SATA cable when installing it!

Thanks again!

RE: SATA Cables:

Brue computing posted an interesting Video on Youtube. The proposition was that the SATA cable problems in certain MacBooks was caused by abrasion against the machined inside of the aluminum case. Their solution? RED TAPE!

(The drive has been removed for photographic clarity)

One strip applied to the case, and one strip applied to the underside of the cable.

You should use RED tape because it is associated with higher speeds, and will therefore keep the high speed bits from spilling out of the cable and accumulating inside the case.

OGELTHORPE insists that I have a fiduciary responsibility to tell you that--^

Many Users prefer to simply replace the cable than get involved with all this "red tape".

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

There are a lot of reports of internal cables working fine with a regular drive, failing with a faster drive like an SSD. It's anecdotal, but there is a preponderance of evidence.

Sure. It's pretty obvious that a solid connection seems to work, and a marginal connection (the abraded trace) may not work. However, at this point it seems to be more an effect without a precisely determined cause. However, there's plenty of signal integrity analysis for various systems that conclude that marginal traces or solder connections are more likely to fail due to RF interference.

I won't go any further. This is probably too esoteric a topic for this forum.

GooseTalk wrote:

Is there any reason a new 500GB Samsung 860 EVO would be incompatible as a replacement internal HD on a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)? The Samsung site says it should be compatible with SATA 3 and 1.5 Gb/s interfaces.

I have installed various versions of OS X using various methods on the drive. When I try to boot, there are several different scenarios that occur, seemingly at random. The common element is the appearance of the prohibitory symbol during boot. Sometimes the symbol is steady, sometimes with an intermittent Apple logo that flashes, and sometimes it switches to Apple logo with progress bar that appears to be booting, but usually then back to prohibitory symbol. Sometimes it does actually boot into the login screen and allows me to sign in, but the system is extremely slow, with lots of lag between the mouse/keyboard actions and there effects.

When I boot from the drive connected externally via SATA to USB adapter, it works flawlessly.

Any suggestions?

Replace the internal connecting cable, the SATA cable. Yours is a well known issue, cable replacement is a 100% cure.

y_p_w wrote:

Csound1 wrote:

I tend to think that this issue has a simple cause, sandwiching a printed mylar connecting ribbon between an abrasive surface (the inside of the case) and a hot vibrating one (the hard drive) and then leaving it there for years is very likely to cause some degradation of the traces in use. Add to that the substitution of a drive requiring very much greater bandwidth than the cable has ever seen before this moment and the result seems inevitable. But, it's cheap and easy to fix, I routinely replace them whenever I replace a drive.

The bandwidth is the same since it’s an electronic front end where the hard drive controller communicates directly with the host at SATA III data rates .

Believe whatever you like. If the cable fails the bandwidth is 0. If it is failing but has not yet completely failed the bandwidth will be somewhere between 0 and 6Gb/s.

For a number of reasons I stopped recommending Samsung SSDs for older MBPs. Theoretically they should be compatible but many of us have discovered that they have all kinds of issues with Mac notebooks. The strange thing is, as you have found, the drive while connected via USB in an enclosure or dock works flawlessly, but install it in the Mac and...not so good. Now it is possible your problem is the SATA cable. A flaky SATA cable can work with slow rotational drives but fail to function with fast SSDs - I've seen that happen. But I've also replaced Samsung SSDs that didn't work with a Mac with other SSDs that performed flawlessly. Most maddeningly? When it happened to me the Samsung 850 EVO that wouldn't work in my Mac not only was flawless in an enclosure but work flawlessly when I installed it in my Windows computer.

Csound1 wrote:

I tend to think that this issue has a simple cause, sandwiching a printed mylar connecting ribbon between an abrasive surface (the inside of the case) and a hot vibrating one (the hard drive) and then leaving it there for years is very likely to cause some degradation of the traces in use. Add to that the substitution of a drive requiring very much greater bandwidth than the cable has ever seen before this moment and the result seems inevitable. But, it's cheap and easy to fix, I routinely replace them whenever I replace a drive.

The bandwidth is the same since it’s an electronic front end where the hard drive controller communicates directly with the host at SATA III data rates . All data goes through the DRAM cache. SSDs do the same thing, although they take longer before they need to stall the host.

The throughput obviously isn't the same though.

Mechanical weakening of the connection is probably the reason, but why SSDs seem to be more affected hasn’t been adequately explained.

Update: Purchased new SATA cable installed it and now the SSD works perfectly! Performance is Night and Day! Hopefully there will be no problems with the replacement SATA cable or the EVO 860 but happy to report the Samsung EVO 860 is very good so far!

Hello GooseTalk,

How did you setup the drive? I have seen reports of people setting up drives, and installing the OS, in external USB enclosures and then installing the drive internally. I think that might not be possible anymore. An external disk, especially USB, is a radically different environment on many levels. Thunderbolt, however, is a bit special. It may be treated as an internal device.

I suggest installing the drive in the machine and then booting from an external drive. Erase and partition the internal drive and install the OS. Then it should work fine.

I tend to think that this issue has a simple cause, sandwiching a printed mylar connecting ribbon between an abrasive surface (the inside of the case) and a hot vibrating one (the hard drive) and then leaving it there for years is very likely to cause some degradation of the traces in use. Add to that the substitution of a drive requiring very much greater bandwidth than the cable has ever seen before this moment and the result seems inevitable. But, it's cheap and easy to fix, I routinely replace them whenever I replace a drive.

Whoops didn't realize there was a second page! I will try swapping the cable! Thanks!

I have the solution to this problem.

First my experience with this ssd:

I wanted to use it with an iMac late 2012 via an external enclosure. The thing is that I pressed CMD-R to reinstall macOS High Sierra and the install succeed, but not the boot process. My solution was to download on my MacBook Air macOS high Sierra from the Mac App Store and install and set up from there. Then the next step is to press on the Mac you want to use it CMD-OPTION-R, connect your ssd to the Mac you want to use it and select the startup drive from the Apple logo on the recovery screen.

GooseTalk wrote:

What SSD would you recommend for a Mid-2012 MBP like mine?

Where are you located? If it's in the US, I got a 512 GB SanDisk Ultra 3D last week at Best Buy for $139.99. The 512 GB size is Best Buy's exclusive, but they also have the 500 GB version at the same price. I also saw a price drop the next day and I got $10 and tax back to the credit card (they only do after sale price match on their own prices). The road was kind of bumpy, but I wouldn't go back to a hard drive now unless it was an emergency.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk-ultra-512gb-internal-sata-solid-state-drive -for-laptops/5969506.p?skuId=5969506

The thing about SATA drives is that they're all already on the edge of the SATA III interface specs. Look at the specs and most already have maybe 560 MB/sec read and 520 MB/sec write. As long as it's fairly new, they all perform about the same. It might be different in the future though once they wear.

dwb wrote:

I dont know why but I know that I experienced it myself. As to drives I recommend, OWC’s and Crucial

I started thinking about it, and about the only thing I can think of is the possibility of RF interference and signal integrity issues with a marginal ribbon connector. I was cloning my boot drive to an SSD in an enclosure with the cover off. I could literally hear it buzzing. It sounded a lot like hard drive clicks, even though I knew there were no mechanical parts. Hard drives of course have stainless steel covers, and some SSDs come in metal cases rather than plastic.

I don't know how safe it (and I don't recommend it) but there's discussion about wrapping SSDs in aluminum foil and/or ESD bags to sort of shield them. My big thing would be that a loose conductor inside the case might cause a short somewhere.

http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/EMI-shielding-for-SSD/td-p/55124

I've had no real issues with a SanDisk SSD. I believe WD Blue are virtually identical.