Good news first: most older Macs and even some current Macs can be easily user-upgraded to include SSDs. With limited expertise and only three tools, I was able to swap out my 2011 iMac’s old hard drive for an SSD in roughly 30 minutes. Which Mac Models Can Be Internally Upgraded? Not all SSDs are equivalent in reliability and performance, but ones from top-tier chip companies are pretty incredible.
Samsung m2 ssd drive for mac air pro#
Running cooler, quieter, and with superior energy efficiency than traditional hard drives, SSDs have fewer failures, and reputable manufacturers tend to warranty them for longer than their predecessors.įor instance, Samsung’s consumer drives generally have 5-year warranties, and if you’re willing to pay more, its PRO series drives have 10-year warranties, eclipsing all but the most expensive enterprise-class desktop hard disks. Nine years later, dramatically faster and smaller SSDs with the same capacities can be had for less than a tenth of those prices, so every current Mac either has an SSD by default or as an option. The January 2008-vintage original MacBook Air was the first Mac with the option of a 64GB SSD (for a $1,300 premium over the laptop’s base price), and 1TB SSDs were going for roughly $4,000 - Apple didn’t even try to sell 1TB SSDs at that point. A Mac that once took over a minute to boot can now start working in seconds Macs built with SSDs can awaken from sleep instantly.ĭespite superior performance, high prices led Apple to slowly stagger solid state drive adoption across individual Mac product lines. Even without changing a Mac’s CPU, GPU, or RAM, replacing the hard drive with an internal SSD instantly leads to much faster macOS performance, app loading, restarting, and file accessing. So this is a perfect time to revisit the topic of SSD upgrades if you held out before, now’s the time to jump in!įor nearly a decade, SSDs have been acknowledged as the “future” of Mac storage. With this week’s release of macOS High Sierra, Apple has officially made SSDs its preferred Mac storage solution, introducing the new APFS standard to further optimize SSD performance over Fusion and traditional hard drives. Once unthinkably huge 2TB and 4TB SSDs are now commonly available, too, albeit at eye-watering prices. Replacing your old 500GB hard drive with a same-sized SSD from a reputable manufacturer costs only $150, while 1TB drives are under $330, each $100 less than only a couple of years ago. Today, high-capacity SSDs are more affordable than ever. All for much less than the price of a new Mac. Replacing a Mac’s 500GB or 1TB hard drive with a same-sized SSD required at least $250 back then, but the benefits were tremendous: even an aging machine became markedly (5x) faster, silent, and - unexpectedly - more fun to use. Any ideas how I can reliably wipe the drive without physically damaging it would be greatly appreciated.When I first wrote about using solid state drives (SSDs) to radically improve the performance of older Macs, high-capacity SSDs were just beginning to become affordable. I know servicing Macs is very much a moving target since they're always changing their configurations, but this model has been out for a couple of years, and I'm a bit surprised that I can't find any SATA or USB adapters for it. The SSD has a 16 + 12 pin configuration on one side, and an 11 + 14 pin configuration on the other. Do any of you know where I can find an adapter for this, so I can connect to it and wipe it? Here are the specs:Ģ56GB SSD (Samsung model #: MZ-JPV256R/0A2) Two days later and I still can't find an adapter that will allow me to access the drive on another Mac (I don't have another 2015 MBA to use). I restored their data from a backup and they're in good shape now, but now I want to wipe the MBA's SSD to prevent any of their personal data from ending up in the wrong hands. They took it to a Genius, whose repair quote was high enough that they decided to buy a new MBP instead. The user spilled liquid on the keyboard, and now it won't boot. I am working on a 2015 MacBook Air for a client.
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