Trying to add NVMe M.2 SSD to PCIe - Issues

Ahhhh. Okay, i was looking at 2.5” adapters that are for M key only, not the type of pins an NVMe blade has…

The Apple OE units are expensive and only go up to 2TB, same with OWC…

Okay, running low on options then. Running the OS from an External NVMe USB enclosure had issues that I wasn’t entirely happy with. I was mistaken, SATA is now out. There’s external Thunderbolt enclosures, but they’re pricey.

Any ideas why the Crucial unit is not working?? Why there appears to be no power reaching the diagnostic lights while it’s installed? I have read something about length of pins being out, but it seemed that pins were too long, not too short.

I’ve forked out for the 4TB crucial blade and am not sure i can return it, so need to find an option where I haven’t wasted $300 on a 4TB USB drive.

@Julian N - There are some possibilities we can do to salvage the M.2 SSD using an external case either USB or if you can find a Thunderbolt 2 case (they are hard to find now). I would still try to return it or at least see if you can sell it.

As to size as much as we want deep storage there are some limitations! Here it’s the physical size and how these denser blade SSDs are cooled.

That in turn gets into the Read/Write of the drive. I prefer the term data churn as often times it’s not a canonical operation appending data to a current file, instead it’s a replacement of the file be it larger or smaller. As an example a cache file this data churn can be hard on SSDs as they are not able to be constantly re-written without risk of failure.

Because of this the boot drive should be independent from one’s data drive as you can replace that drive more readily as it’s only the OS and Apps that reside on it.

So here a a 512GB or 1TB blade SSD should be more than enough space. Leaving a good potion unused so wear leveling can move the data to less worn blocks. Then use the SATA port to hold your bigger data drive.

Hi Dan, thanks for your input. I understand, and it’s good advice.

I’m going to try to return the 4TB NVMe.

I’ll probably get a 1TB NVMe, and then a 2TB SATA SSD, per your advice.

I’ve been trying to find successful upgrades that others have achieved and am looking at a 1TB WD Black SN750 NVMe, and a 2TB Samsung 870 EVO SSD. It looks like I’ll have to disable sleep due to wake from sleep issues other have experienced. I already have the two different Sabrent adapters for the NVMe, and will need a 2.5” mount adapter for the SSD to replace the OEM seagate HDD.

Do these new purchases look like they’ll work from your better, more knowledgable vantage point?

Am i missing anything?

Many thanks in advance, Dan.

@Julian N - I get it! M.2 SSDs are cheaper! But they don’t offer the full compatibility as a direct Apple SSD or one that was designed to fully integrate into Apples systems. I’ve had to pull quite a few out as they tend not to hold up to what the clients I deal with push.

So I always go with either an Apple blade SSD or OWC’s offering as it was designed to be fully compatible.

Don’t get me wrong I love M.2 SSDs I have a RAID box which uses them. I had wished Apple would have made the smart move to support the industry standard, they had with SCSI, PATA and SATA in the case of storage. So why throw their customers under the bus here? All they are doing is creating rancor with their customers. There was no need. Even when they jumped to Flash only modules in the new Mac Pro, iMac Pro and Studio systems making so you can’t upgrade or even repair is just not smart!

So the bottomline here is I won’t put an M.2 SSD in an iMac, at least in a MacBook Pro you don’t need to pull the system fully apart to get to it.

Thanks Dan. I’ll try an OWC 1TB blade (do you work for OWC?? 😆). Does it matter which iMac one? Having trouble locating the right one off Amazon here in the UK…

Also, is it worth merging them back into a a Fusion Drive after they’re installed and working? My Time Machine backup is of the original 3TB fusion, so it’s not going to work to restore it onto a 1TB - it’ll tell me the drive is too small right?? Is there a way around this?