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I recently upgraded my MacBook Air's SSD to a Crucial 1 TB SSD (model name: Crucial P2 1TB PCIe M.2 2280SS - part number: CT1000P2SSD8) from Amazon. The SSD is attached with an Etzin M.2 NVME SSD Convert Adapter Card.

From time to time, I am facing restart issues with it.

Configuration:
macOS Monterey (12.6.5)
Model no: MacBook Air Mid-2017 (non-retina)

Problem report: Problem report (image form)

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System information:

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I don't understand the problem report. Can someone please help overcome this problem?

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    Welcome to Ask Different. The first line hints at a timeout issue: "3rd party NVMe controller. Command timeout. Write." What is the model name/part number of the SSD?
    – jaume
    May 11 at 7:32
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    The SSD may not be 100% compatible with your Mac, but there's a chance that upgrading its fiirmware helps, see crucial.com/support/ssd-support/p2-support for details.
    – jaume
    May 11 at 8:33
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    Too bad you can't upgrade the firmware. I can't say if the issue is caused by the adapter, the SSD or some other factor. I have the impression that either the adapter or the SSD (or both) doesn't respond "fast enough" when waking from sleep mode, which causes the "command timeout" message. I don't know how to prevent this issue, but you can try disabling "Put hard disks to sleep" and "Keep your Mac from going to sleep automatically" (see support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/…), though I'm not sure if the former only applies to HDs.
    – jaume
    May 11 at 12:33
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    If you have a different computer, you can take the SSD out and attach it to something that can upgrade the firmware, then put it back in your Mac.
    – Peter Cordes
    May 11 at 17:40
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    I've had no-end of problems with "special mac SSD" to standard M2 adapters. Stick your new card in a normal PC, do the firmware upgrade, and then try again in your mac. If that fails, either buy the proper apple part and pay the apple tax, or go back to your original SSD and use the new one in an external case on USB/thunderbolt/etc.
    – Criggie
    May 12 at 0:40

2 Answers 2

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Your problem sounds very similar to an issue I had with a 2014 13" retina macbook pro with a third party ssd installed (purchased from Other World Computing).

The computer was constantly crashing/rebooting when sleeping, or when waking up from sleep. If it was asleep for only a few minutes (10 - 20 minutes maybe?), it could wake up without crashing.

The solution that worked for me was to disable 'Standby' mode by running the following command in the terminal:

sudo pmset -a standby 0

According to Other World Computing, this modification probably does not significantly affect battery life.

Here is the link to their knowledge-base article on this topic: https://eshop.macsales.com/Service/Knowledgebase/Article/26/785/NVMe-SSDs-Standby-Mode-Issue

Note: This solution does not disable sleep functionality. Your computer will still sleep as usual. Standby mode is what is disabled. This is a deeper type of sleep mode where the contents of RAM are fully copied to the SSD, and the RAM is powered down. Disabling standby will mean that the battery drains slightly faster while the computer is sleeping, but probably not enough for most people to notice.

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There’s likely too much additional troubleshooting needed and hands on skills / spare parts needed to just answer this sight unseen. (We don't know your skill, if parts are damaged visibly or not visibly) However, here is the framework of next steps I would advise for someone that did a good job with the repair. If you may have done a poor job or lack the skill/experience to know - take it immediately to a pro - repeating an unskilled or damaging repair can be costly.

  1. Install the same OS on an external drive and make sure it's not just the OS / Mac causing the timeouts.
  2. Consider altering the power manager as suggested by several astute people here. Specifically, prevent the sleep -> standby transition. The Mac will still sleep and power off normally, just not progress to standby before hibernation.
  3. Contact the sales company and ask for support.
  4. Contact the drive and connector manufacturers and ask for support - validate compatibility - find someone or ship the drive to them for needed firmware updates.
  5. Repeat the repair with the same parts (or optionally put the original SSD back in or another working one if possible to test) - often reseating all the cables can resolve many intermittent or permanent repair failures.
  6. Keep detailed notes on what / when you do and see and test - you will need more detail and a timeline to solve this (which generally works less well on a site like this).
  7. Seek out a good repair tech and consider paying them to assist or choose a part from a company that will offer support - for SSD I like OWC / MacSales but we don’t know where in the globe you might be so it could be you have different or better options than that.
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