970 evo mac pro

Currently reinstalling Mojave to see if it resolves the issue. I had a

similar problem with my iMac and restoring the OS fixed it.

Just finished Mojave restore and it's actually made the boot up time worse. I am now getting a switch on to desktop time of 50 seconds. Up from 34 seconds previously....

Thanks for your answer Smokerz it was very helpful.

As additional clarification

• Apple themselves do not sell SSDs as upgrades for existing Mac Pro 2013 models, so if you originally got 256GB then Apple will not let you buy a 512GB or 1TB drive
• The original Apple SSD uses a proprietary connector but other than that is a standard M2 PCIe SSD
• The Sintech adapter converts from the proprietary Apple connector to a standard M2 connector thereby allowing you to fit standard M2 PCIe SSD drives like the Samsung 970 Evo
• What Smokerz has shown is that the Mac Pro 2013 supports booting from an NVMe type SSD, the older classic Mac Pro models do not support booting from NVMe drives and can only boot from older AHCI SSD drives
• Samsung no longer seem to make or sell older AHCI SSD drives
• The original Apple SSD would have had a heatsink fitted to it, in general third-party SSD drives do not have heatsinks fitted to them and therefore under heavy usage in a Mac Pro 2013 might overheat, this is why Smokerz discussed using the Intel power gadget to check heat output

After installing a Samsung 970 EVO in my Mac Pro Late 2013 I experienced no issues for the short time I ran it. I used the Sintech ST-NGFF2013. I have since pulled the 970 because I ran DriveDX and this was the result.

I'm not confident using this setup. I've never found DRiveDX to be unreliable but who knows? What do you think?

Sorry misspelled Sintech. and make sure if you order this product that when it arrives the LABEL reads -C in its ending. Most likely will.

https://www.amazon.com/Sintech-Adapter-Upgrade-2013-2015-MacBook/dp/B01CWWAENG/r ef=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542983566&sr=8-1&…

and read all of this has good information

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/nvme-with-st-ngff2013-c-vega-internal-gpu-m ac-pro-2013-6-1.2085886/

I decided to not continue on with this project on my late 2013 rMBPro because I was getting into too frequent of SMC reset. I believe it has to do with the link width of 4 with the Samsung 970 NVMe. The original SSD had link width of 2 and when I did swap in my SSD from my late 2013 Mac Pro even though its link width was 4 in the Mac Pro it would be a 2 in the rMBPro. My late 2013 Mac Pro does just fine with this project. Also I'm not positive but I believe that portable Mac from 2014 thru 2017 had default link width of 4. If so then this project most likely would work without issues such as I have on my late 2013 rMBPro.

Hello tabosko,

I've just upgraded two days ago my 2013 Mac Pro (trash can) as you describe: Samsung 970 EVO and an adapter (Jser 12 + 16PIN 2014 2015 MacBook a M.2 SSD NGFF m-key) and everything works perfectly. MacOS High Sierra and a little bit tricky pushing the adapter into the Mac slot, but not so much.

I have a 2013 Mac Pro. I've installed the Samsung 970 EVO via the Sintech M.2 Adapter. It works with absolutely 0 issues. Hitting around 1500mb/s read and 1350mb/s write so it is significantly quicker (and cheaper) than the Apple OEM drive.

I did read that some people had issues with firmware updates during OS installs. I tested mine going from High Sierra to Mojave and had absolutely no issue whatsoever. It works exactly the same as the OEM drive. Your mileage may vary but its been great for me so far!

How did the MP get to 10.13.4? E.g. did it go through the noram update via Mac App Stre.

What was the format of that SSD at that time?

I would try reformatting as Mac OS Extended Journaled and try installing again.

A normal update to High Sierra included updating the Mac's firmware that included the ability read/write APFS. Updating to HIgh Sierra would also convert the Journaled file system to APFS.

Update.........

After inserting Apple SSD and update the firemware of my "diskless" Mac Pro 2013.

Intel 760p is recognized, and installation of Mojave can go ahead.

And it is noted disk formating in "MacOS Extended (Journaled)" at the beginning is no harm, as Mojave will convert it to APFS thereafter.

Thanka a lot.

Ben

Sorry it was confusing for you. I'll restate. I was asking a question as to whether anyone else had taken the new NVMe drive, put it in a portable enclosure, CCC'd their current bootable drive image onto it and then put it in the slot in the internal system. That is the only real question. Why I choose to test each NVMe is an internal studio process unrelated to the question; I probably shouldn't have included that.

If no one has done it, I guess I'll report back when I do. Just seemed kinda obvious as a step to explore and discuss instead of rebuilding from scratch as a default - as all these type threads seem to suggest. I don't do Apple migrations either; don't like them. A CCC of the OS drive to a new drive is not a migration in Apple terms; its a hardware bit for bit copy to a new drive. I have done this once and the enclosed Samsung 860 Evo 1TB SATA III did boot from the enclosure. Was a slow boot but was fine. I was just curious if it had been done as a part of this internal replacement process.

Thanks,

What an awesome thread. Unravelled a lot of confusion for me, and led to the discovery of DriveDx, which is pretty awesome.

My story: Bought a 2nd hand 2013 Mac Pro a few months ago - the previous owner had put a 500GB Samsung 960 EVO in it, although I didn't pay any attention to what SSD it was until today when the Mac Pro started repeatedly getting kernel panics either shortly after startup, or during boot up. Solved by re-seating RAM and SSD and doing an SMC reset (stupidly all at once, so I don't know exactly which action solved the issue).

Until I looked at the SSD I had always assumed it was some Apple-specific pinout SSD like my Late 2013 rMBP has. 500GB was never enough for me but I'd assumed the only option for these 2013 Mac Pros was the OWC AuraX range (which are $$$$ for a 1TB), so I bought a 1TB Barracuda and whacked it into a USB enclosure, and use that to store some of my less performance-intensive audio samples, iTunes library, etc. I thought I'd get 500-600MB/sec out of it and figured that'd be enough - but it turns out you only get 370MB/sec performance via USB enclosures.

So thanks to this awesome thread I can see now that if I really want 1TB of storage at 1300+MB/sec I could upgrade the internal one to a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD rather than this out-rigger approach I've used (and just knowing that I could be running it all faster, will probably drive me to upgrade it eventually anyway :-p ) ....

BTW, I'm also seeing DriveDx is showing the EVO 960 getting a bit hot when I run BlackMagic disk speed test - that's good to know, I'd better order me a heatsink.

Thanks to everyone for posting such a great amount of information, and thanks to the folks who were happy to be guinea-pigs. I also appreciate the focus on empirical data & answers.

Solved - got all my data off the SSD, including a complete clone using SuperDuper in Target Disk Mode at about 280-350MB/sec. Added a heatsink + a 12V fan pointed at the heatsink, and that was enough to stop the SSD from melting down. The EKWB EK-M.2 NVMe Heatsink did the trick nicely, but the SSD was eventually getting hot enough to throttle itself down to 6 MB/sec, so I added a fan and that kept things working sustainably. Super pleased that I got a complete clone of the SSD as I was only expecting to grab a handful of files that hadn't made it into the latest backup - getting a SuperDuper clone is a bonus as it will make restoring onto the replacement SSD much easier than restoring via Backblaze.

Check in Apple System Profiler first to see if Trim is already enabled.

As far as I am aware the Samsung 970 Evo Pro should support this. Remember Samsung make the SSDs Apple use even if they are slightly different.

DId the Evo have a heat sink attached?

The original SSD in the 2013 had a heat sink and a lot of PCle cards that accept an NVMe SSD include a heat sink and one can purchase the heat sink separately.