Choosing a Compatible NVMe SSD for your macOS Boot Drive

[Australopithicus]

Hi c-o-pr,
Thank you for your illuminating response. I am a lay user and have no technical understanding of Trim other than bits and pieces picked up from various articles and reports, many of which are out of date. I was motivated to write my observations as the recurring question in my mind is also expressed by others, ‘Which NVME to choose for OSX boot drive in Ventura now we have moved from PCIE 3 to PCIE 4’. I figured a comparative test would be helpful no matter how crude.

As ‘Utter Disbelief’ remarked earlier, the Tonymac86x thread ‘Choosing a Compatible NVMe SSD for your macOS Boot Drive’ refers to PC Hackintoshes, quote "However, this is related to PC Hackintoshes, and might not affect a real iMac in the same way. Your experimentation is actually a good piece of research for others upgrading their genuine iMacs".
Had I remained entirely ignorant of the existence of Trim I would be very happy. Unfortunately the simple desire to upgrade my iMac without paying AUD$1,500 for a 2TB Apple SSD, not including labour - assuming Apple would do the upgrade, leads me down an unfamiliar path. Apple now only sell an upgrade at point of product purchase and will not upgrade a computer after purchase. I talk to Apple approved dealers who themselves have difficulty getting Apple parts! This leads me to rely on my own resources and the used market. I confront technical issues and resolve them as best I can, with the help of those who are well informed. Apple is a monopoly. Now, when you buy Apple, you are committing to an expensive relationship of autocratic dependence upon Apple. Which is why these Blogs exist and are so valuable.

Your understanding on the subject of Trim far exceeds mine and I appreciate you taking the time to explain the detail. Had I found your earlier threads I would have been better able understand the NVMe performance I was witnessing and I would have written a much different report. Your questions highlight aspects of my report which I shall address:

1. Disabling Trim did not refer to a Mac NVMe, only to Trimforce in OSX Ventura (sudo trimforce enable/disable). I was trying to resolve the question of whether Trim should be on or off using the Samsung NVMe. As you state the answer is ’Off‘.
2. My ‘Update’ was not intended as a definitive statement; I was attempting to answer the question: ‘Does Samsung 890Pro PCIE 4.0 NVME work properly on OSX Ventura?’ The cloud of bad experiences from PCIE 3 Samsung 970 Evo Plus hovers over a good product I wanted to use. ‘Introduction to NVMe Choices’ is a valuable article but does deserve updating. For example it is no longer true that since 2018 Apple has not purchase Samsung SSD’s for installation in Mac laptops or desktops. My 2019 iMac came with Polaris Controller and Samsung NAND. The behaviour of the Samsung 980 Pro PCIE 4 Similarly deserves review as some of your own comments on its performance date from two years ago. I am sure many factors have changed during that period.
After reading your explanations c-o-pr, I reckon Samsung 980 Pro works well on Ventura 13.5. Apart from boot up behaviour. As you pointed out regarding boot-up "incompatibility is not necessarily a defect, but only mismatch of SW and HW". I found formatting the NVMe from Recovery improved Samsung performance by comparison with the previous cloned version of the O/S which I used. The progress bar paused for a couple of seconds then completed in good time - 17 secs.
3. As for Methodology: Benchmarking was never my intention. I simply used Trimforce commands and Spaceman logs to determine what was happening with Trim.
4. Regarding slowing Samsung 980 Pro in external drive. You commented on this fact in your post of April 13 2021.
Your explanations match my limited observations.

Is Samsung 980 Pro NVME slower?

Guys I have this problem. I have 2 nvme ssd, one is Samsung 980 Pro 2TB and another is Inland Performance Plus 1TB. When I install Mac os in Inland Performance Plus 1TB, everything works just fine but when I install mac os in Samsung drive it's very slow. Can anyone tell me what's going on?

www.tonymacx86.com

Perhaps you may be interested in taking another look at the 980Pro on OSX Ventura as your understanding would be far more perceptive than mine?

Again thank you for your valuable comments.

 

[c-o-pr]

You are using an actual Mac 2019?
I'm a little slow on the uptake regarding your setup.

Isn't the best, most cost-effective way to increase storage for your projects on actual Macs via Thunderbolt?

While it's limited to PCIe3 x4, this is not a liability for most workloads and equal to Mac's internal.

You won't have bragging rights but you'll get your work done.

1. Disabling Trim did not refer to a Mac NVMe, only to Trimforce in OSX Ventura (sudo trimforce enable/disable). I was trying to resolve the question of whether Trim should be on or off using the Samsung NVMe. As you state the answer is ’Off‘.

After you run Trimforce disable, go to About this Mac, System Report, NVMExpress...

Does it report
Trim Support: No
for NVMe drives?

I will be surprised if it says no.

If it says no I will be even more surprised if you still see spaceman boot delays.

2. My ‘Update’ was not intended as a definitive statement; I was attempting to answer the question: ‘Does Samsung 890Pro PCIE 4.0 NVME work properly on OSX Ventura?’ The cloud of bad experiences from PCIE 3 Samsung 970 Evo Plus hovers over a good product I wanted to use.

I use a 512G 970 Plus in a USB 3 gen2 enclosure as a temp data drive all day, every day and it runs at 10 Mb/s smoothly.

‘Introduction to NVMe Choices’ is a valuable article but does deserve updating. For example it is no longer true that since 2018 Apple has not purchase Samsung SSD’s for installation in Mac laptops or desktops. My 2019 iMac came with Polaris Controller and Samsung NAND.

This is the Apple supplied drive?

We should expect that drives sourced by Apple run firmware according to Apple's specs.

There's a general mis-understating that Macs are just re-purposed PCs. We should try to avoid this thinking.

The behaviour of the Samsung 980 Pro PCIE 4 Similarly deserves review as some of your own comments on its performance date from two years ago. I am sure many factors have changed during that period.

I ran 980 Pro for months and it would be fine, except for stalls during boot, OS updates, and APFS snapshots.

After reading your explanations c-o-pr, I reckon Samsung 980 Pro works well on Ventura 13.5. Apart from boot up behaviour.

Well, yes... except for stalls during boot, OS updates, and APFS snapshots.

On a half-full 980 Pro 2T, connected via PCIe 4, the stalls could take over 10 minutes.

And when trying to debug a hack, this becomes a show stopper.

As you pointed out regarding boot-up "incompatibility is not necessarily a defect, but only mismatch of SW and HW". I found formatting the NVMe from Recovery improved Samsung performance by comparison with the previous cloned version of the O/S which I used.

When you reformat or reinstall, spaceman thinks the drive is clean, so stalls go away for a while.

The progress bar paused for a couple of seconds then completed in good time - 17 secs.

17 secs is an excellent normal boot.

When that bar stops for 10 mins, yarg.

4. Regarding slowing Samsung 980 Pro in external drive. You commented on this fact in your post of April 13 2021.
Your explanations match my limited observations.

You are reminding me, I went through some weird stuff back in the day (early Monterey) with USB NVMe external drives.

External drives have been very reliable for me in Ventura.

But there were many more system bugs of equal hazard back on Monterey, such as Spotlight going wildly wrong, and Finder UI race conditions.

I've always held in the back of mind mind that stuff like incorrect USB mapping might be the culprit. I reviewed every detail of hack config I could find along the way.

But my phone and kid's M1 Macbook also do weird stuff. As does a friend's 2018 Mini. I never know what's going wrong next. Finder still screws up.

Overall things seem to get better but there's always something.

Is Samsung 980 Pro NVME slower?

Guys I have this problem. I have 2 nvme ssd, one is Samsung 980 Pro 2TB and another is Inland Performance Plus 1TB. When I install Mac os in Inland Performance Plus 1TB, everything works just fine but when I install mac os in Samsung drive it's very slow. Can anyone tell me what's going on?

www.tonymacx86.com

Perhaps you may be interested in taking another look at the 980Pro on OSX Ventura as your understanding would be far more perceptive?

Again thank you for your valuable comments.

Thanks for the props and encouragement, and for taking the time to answer my questions.

Per your request, I may or may not revisit.

I track the status reports from more experienced hackintoshers and developers and if nobody talks about improvements in stuff like Trim compatibility, I assume there have been no improvements.

I relegated the 980 Pro a USB-attached safety backup and expect I will leave it at that.

SKHynix P41 and WD SN 750 Black always work well internally.

In worst case, I can boot from external 980 Pro as a hail mary and system is very usable. No boot delay because no Trim on USB. While USB can't keep up with internal, it's still twice as fast as a SATA drive.

With 2 bootable backups I'm sure I can recover quickly even if things go very wrong. I see every macOS update on my hack as a potential catastrophe, so I boot into a backup, verify that updates complete fine on a backup, then update my main drive. The other backup I retain just in case it takes a while to discover things went wrong. Then at the next update I catch up my older backup, and start the next cycle.

In bigger picture, my hack ended up costing more than $30K in admin time, so I can only chuckle at others' griping about Apple's prices. Now that my hack runs as reliably as my old 2008 Mac Pro did in its heyday, and I get the max expected performance for my build, I prefer to work on other stuff.

But I still peruse these forums and speak up about stuff if I think it might help someone else.

Best to you.

 

[trs96]

But I still peruse these forums and speak up about stuff if I think it might help someone else.

This is what these forums are about.

Except for stalls during boot, OS updates, and APFS snapshots.
On a half-full 980 Pro 2T, connected via PCIe 4, the stalls could take over 10 minutes.
And when trying to debug a hack, this becomes a show stopper.

Anyone can use whatever NVMe drive they'd like. If someone is a Samsung fan, has their products already and can live with the consequences of TRIM and controller incompatibility in their hack, they could still use them. There's no way we as a community can recommend that anyone buying a new NVMe SSD go with Samsung for their macOS boot drive. Hacks can and often do require debugging on many occasions.

I'm reporting on what Acidanthera, me and others in this community have discovered in the past two years. Practically all of the Mods and Admins here have used WD NVMe SSD drives in their personal hacks with no issues reported. We have had hundreds to thousands of issues reported of slow boot times with Samsung NVMe drives. So it's just basic common sense to use the former and avoid the latter. If Samsung ever does fix these macOS compatibility problems we will certainly recommend them for use again.

From the introduction in post #1.

Our general recommendation at this time is to use specific WD (SanDisk) drives that have proven to be stable and reliable in our hacks. This is done to make a complex topic less intimidating for beginners looking for a new SSD to install in their current build.

 

[Australopithicus]

Hi c-o-pr,
1. I hate desk clutter. External drives are small and powerful but I prefer the convenience of using a 2TB NVMe and 2TB Sata internal on my iMac i5 3.7GHz 27" 5K. With one 1TB external Samsung T7, 10Mbps drive carrying a spare complete system on one partition and TM on the other. Similar to yourself - no bragging rights.
2. Regarding Trim reading: I dislike Ventura as the old familiar and useful System Report has been reduced to System Settings which offers less system information. The Apple Marketing Dept at work! Apple says System Settings makes iMacs more consistent with iPads. Tail wags dog. I am seriously considering reverting to Big Sur. Monterey has a Bluetooth bug which prevents me connecting my Sony WH-1000XM3 earphones. I can plug in cable earphones but then cable is a pest. But I digress.
Point being no Trim indicator in Ventura at all. Must use Terminal; system_profiler SPSerialATADataType | grep 'TRIM' and log show --predicate "processID == 0" | grep spaceman | grep -i trim. That gives Trim logs.
3. Absolutely is an Apple supplied drive. The same Samsung Polaris/Nand is used in both of the 2019 iMacs I have opened which suggests it is a standard component.
4. My understanding is it is the o/s APFS version interferes with NVMe boot drive performance via Trim hence my interest in reverting to simpler more forgiving early days of APFS Big Sur. I have not used the 980 long enough to experience stalls with o/s updates and I have yet to use APFS snapshots. Well you have confirmed the wisdom of internal WD Black. 10 minute stalls are not enjoyable! As for living with problems I agree entirely and blame Apple frequent updates. Reverting to a solid o/s makes more sense to me.
5. Regarding bootable backups you have indeed a solid procedure in place. We seem to have a similar outlook regarding these issues except mine are more cheapskate and start from a lower base.

Best to you c-o-pr

 

[Australopithicus]

That's the Samsung boot trim issue.

You can be verify by enabling boot console log and noting that the stall occurs at messages mentioning "spaceman" (space manager trimming free blocks)

Interrupting the stall by rebooting shouldn't help its just a matter of it working through all the free space and maybe it's close to done by the time you decide to interrupt it.

A partial workaround is to add the Kernel Quirk SetApfsTrimTimeout set to 0, which can mitigate the execution of spaceman Trim, but there are some cases where it runs anyway, such as OS Updates and APFS snapshot maintenance.

---

Regarding macOS reporting "Incompatible Drive".

That word on the web is that's not a HW incompatibility, it's a APFS format macOS version incompatibility.

Due to both the constantly evolving status of APFS -and- that APFS uses a more complex "container" partition layout than HFS+, mixing formatting and usage between macOS versions can lead to problems.

APFS formatting is best be done by the installer for the same version of macOS the that will run. macOS Updates will perform APFS updates.

A reported workaround for installations that report "incompatible disk" is to completely erase a drive to an alternate format such as HFS+, then erase it back to APFS. This step ensures that an existing format will be totally rewritten.

---

This sounds like it means something, but I don't know what.

I imagine you are nursing some anxiety that magical things are working against you, and I know how that feels.

Regarding your points about "killed" drive, there's a big difference between macOS wrecking drive HW and just leaving the drive in an unusable config.

In my parlance, killed means unable to operate the drive on any system.

There are reported cases of drives being bricked by macOS, and I have seen it myself. But there's no theory of why, and no information on whether it's a defect in the drive design.

For these reasons, hackintoshers have adapted with an idea of WD being a go-to because no one is reporting problems.

But many others use non WD.

I am happily using an SK Hynix P41 Platinum for more than a year on latest macOS and it's been smooth and fast, never a single glitch.

Hi o-c-pr,
Following these comments I tried formatting the Adata with Mac OS Extended (journaled) GUID. And again with MS-DOS (Fat) Disk was erased each time but would not mount after erase, Until I get access to a Windows PC I shall assume Adata is RIP for Mac. Disk utility no longer offers the APFS option or HFS+.

If the Adata is dead for APFS perhaps it can be resurrected on an earlier HFS+ o/s? Perhaps Mojav?

 

[Australopithicus]

This is what these forums are about.


Anyone can use whatever NVMe drive they'd like. If someone is a Samsung fan, has their products already and can live with the consequences of TRIM and controller incompatibility in their hack, they could still use them. There's no way we as a community can recommend that anyone buying a new NVMe SSD go with Samsung for their macOS boot drive. Hacks can and often do require debugging on many occasions.

I'm reporting on what Acidanthera, me and others in this community have discovered in the past two years. Practically all of the Mods and Admins here have used WD NVMe SSD drives in their personal hacks with no issues reported. We have had hundreds to thousands of issues reported of slow boot times with Samsung NVMe drives. So it's just basic common sense to use the former and avoid the latter. If Samsung ever does fix these macOS compatibility problems we will certainly recommend them for use again.

From the introduction in post #1.

Absolutely agree. I have no problem with that. My difficulty has been in understanding why some Samsung SSD’s work as expected and others do not. The variables are many and confusing to me. Given my tests, your comments and those of c-o-pr, I better appreciate the consequences of NVMe choice. The WD SN770 sits happily in myNVMe slot and I am free of glitches. I have returned the Samsung to Amazon as incompatible.

BTW, why do you think WD do not make drives with AES security?

 

[trs96]

why do you think WD do not make drives with AES security?

Their website says that they do offer some drives with AES. Not sure which ones those are. They do have a "contact us" page where you ask them directly. https://www.westerndigital.com/company/contact-us?selectedValue=looking-to-purchase

 

[Australopithicus]

Their website says that they do offer some drives with AES. Not sure which ones those are. They do have a "contact us" page where you ask them directly. https://www.westerndigital.com/company/contact-us?selectedValue=looking-to-purchase
View attachment 570418

Thanks, I shall follow up at leisure.
Cheers,

 

[c-o-pr]

Hi c-o-pr,
1. I hate desk clutter.

If it's about fashion then cost is no concern.

2. Regarding Trim reading: I dislike Ventura as the old familiar and useful System Report has been reduced to System Settings which offers less system information.

The System Report is still in Ventura.

Chose About This Mac and follow the Settings panel. It's at the bottom under More Info...

So please tell what it says re NVMExpress Trim Support.

3. Absolutely is an Apple supplied drive. The same Samsung Polaris/Nand is used in both of the 2019 iMacs I have opened which suggests it is a standard component.

Well that's Apples and oranges.

Even back in days of spinning drives Apple OEM drives are sourced (e.g., Toshiba with with an Apple logo on the sticker) but can work differently than a PC drive. For example I have found that some Apple laptop 2.5 in drives don't work in external enclosures that otherwise host aftermarket drives just fine. Sometimes the drive won't be detected at all. In one instance, the Apple drive is detected, and formatted, then written to, and all seems well, but later when plugged into another system, the written files are just not there. It seems like a mistake or crazy, but it illustrates my point that Apple rolls their own which are not necessarily compatible with commodities PC kit. This isn't surprising because commodities PC kit isn't always compatible with commodities PC kit.

4. My understanding is it is the o/s APFS version interferes with NVMe boot drive performance via Trim hence my interest in reverting to simpler more forgiving early days of APFS Big Sur. I have not used the 980 long enough to experience stalls with o/s updates and I have yet to use APFS snapshots. Well you have confirmed the wisdom of internal WD Black. 10 minute stalls are not enjoyable! As for living with problems I agree entirely and blame Apple frequent updates. Reverting to a solid o/s makes more sense to me.

Ok, this is fine. I always over embellish my diatribes... The complaint about Samsung is entirely related to Trim and maintenance chore stalls.

It's commonly said, as @trs96 repeated in a previous msg, that Samsung drives are "defective" and Samsung needs to "fix" them. But it may be that they are more correct given a strict reading of the NVMe spec!

They're just incompatible because Apple arranges its drives to run Trim in a particular way that suits its design.

I will say again, the spec leaves it up to the device maker to determine Trim support. SW must to adapt to whatever the device-maker does. Well, Apple commissions the drives and writes the OS. And they're not interested in aftermarket comparability! So done and done.

But there's another more serious compatibility problem that is more rare — but It's happened to me — that the drive is rendered unusable by running in macOS. I mean wrecked.

As to "compatible controllers" this is just a short-hand in a search for some pattern in the reports.

There's no science of Mac NVMe compatibility. There's been no study of designs. There's no theory.

Phison got singled out, probably unfairly, but maybe reasonably because it seems it might be a common trait of difficult drives. But all of this is anecdotal among hobbyests.

Of course, it's wise for most of us to just follow the herd because it's too difficult to do anything else.

I mean, if finding System Report is a challenge, and it is, we're never gonna get to the bottom of drive design. These drives are as complex as entire PCs were at the time flash memory was introduced.

 

[Australopithicus]

Greetings c-o-pr,

1. No it is not about fashion, it is about efficiency.
I am an artist and graphic designer. I want my desktop clear to sketch,draw or paint. That requires brushes pallettes and drawing materials which I store on left side cabinet drawers. Images may be scanned into computer or tracings scanned into computer for use in Vector programs.

2. Well you made me stop and consider where System Report was lurking. I did eventually find the famiiar report in General>About>System Report at bottom of page. Thank you for making me work at it.
SN770 NVMe Trim support = Yes
Samsung 870 Evo SATA Trim support = No

3. Apples and Oranges indeed. Perhaps I should have said Samsung. I assume the 128Mbps NVMe is purchased from Samsung to meet Apple specs. So it is a Samsung NVMe. ordered by Apple for the model 19.1 iMac.
I have not tested it in external enclosure as size does not fit and capacity too small to be useful.

I appreciate your comments and background history. People being what they are, if the Samsung trim issue where resolved tomorrow, it would takes years before Apple users trusted Samsung again.

Cheers,