• What to do with MacBook Pro SSDs?

    From D.M. Procida@21:1/5 to All on Fri May 31 19:54:29 2024
    I have a 512GB SSD from a 2014 MacBook Pro, and a 256 GB SSD from a 2017 MacBook Pro (non-touchbar type).

    They are different, but I understand both use different proprietary connectors not used by anything else.

    It would be nice to be able to use one as external USB storage, or with a PCIe 2.0 to M.2 adaptor on a Raspberry Pi - but I'd also need an adoptor for the Apple module first.

    Apple life seems to mean attaching adaptors to adaptors nowadays.

    Have you had any luck doing this?

    Daniele

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  • From Theo@21:1/5 to D.M. Procida on Sat Jun 1 13:39:40 2024
    D.M. Procida <daniele-at-vurt-dot-org@invalid.com> wrote:
    I have a 512GB SSD from a 2014 MacBook Pro, and a 256 GB SSD from a 2017 MacBook Pro (non-touchbar type).

    They are different, but I understand both use different proprietary connectors
    not used by anything else.

    It would be nice to be able to use one as external USB storage, or with a PCIe
    2.0 to M.2 adaptor on a Raspberry Pi - but I'd also need an adoptor for the Apple module first.

    Apple life seems to mean attaching adaptors to adaptors nowadays.

    Have you had any luck doing this?

    The 2014 ones were an AHCI SSD - they have a PCIe interface but look like a SATA drive to the OS, rather than the more modern NVMe. For them you'd need
    an adapter to PCIe or M.2, something like:

    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005443100975.html

    Because they aren't NVMe you can't put them in an NVMe to USB adapter but
    the above would probably work for a Raspberry Pi with PCIe - although not
    sure if the Pi can boot from AHCI, so might need to boot from SD card first.

    The 2017 appears to be PCIe but yet another strange form factor. A brief
    look around Aliexpress didn't find adapters - you can get 'forensic'
    adapters: https://www.acelab.eu.com/news/the-new-macbook-pro-a1706a1708-20162017-pcie-ssd-adapter-is-in-stock-now
    but they are probably not cheap.

    Pricewise you'd probably be better off selling the SSD and buying a regular
    M.2 NVMe, as they're very cheap nowadays.

    Theo
    (I've put NVMe in Macbooks but not tried going the other way)

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