Chosen Solution

Hello, In past discussions @danj mentioned that ifixit had done tests that showed CRC errors with M2>Apple Interface adapters with SATA drives. I was wondering if there was detailed information on this somewhere before going with the common way of replacing the internal drive with a retail SSD.

I wanted to add my own answer that for this specific macbook air (that uses msata/ngff not pcie), the straightforward pin adapter works well. I installed a WD BLUE 500GB for $50, and got a short adapter from ebay as full length adapters had notes that said they squeezed against the bottom plate. I’m getting 400MB Read/Write so it has been a significant upgrade. No errors yet

Correction! It was not iFixit! The company I had worked at did the testing of M.2 PCIe/AHCI SSD’s and did a little with PCIe/NVMe SSD drives in 15" 2012 & 2014/15 retina MacBook Pro’s. The information was never published as it was for internal use on our usage for upgrading the systems we had as we needed more storage than what Apple was offering at the time and also wanted to find cheaper solutions as well. It was not good! We tested over a dozen SSD’s using at the time five different carriers. Some where better but the error rate was still too high! Remember that was at that timeframe, the carriers have likely improved, I have not done any further testing as I just don’t have the resources I did back then. I still don’t recommend them as the systems I work on are mostly high end users who need reliable solutions artists, sound engineers, photographer & videographers. I either use real Apple Samsung or OWC SSD’s internally. Often times I guide my clients to get the system with the largest SSD they will likely need and as most of my clients use desktops I push Thunderbolt2 or 3 (USB-C) external drive solutions for their mass storage needs. Update (04/01/2020) Here’s a better view of the M.2 interface

The mSATA is the Red path, AHCI & NVMe use Lime path via PCIe Here’s a deeper reference on the different Apple SSD’s The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs