Bill_SnowWolf

Q: Mid 2013 128 SSD upgrade harddrive

Is there a way to upgrade from 128 SSD to 512 SSD or more?

 

Therotically, if hard-drives are in the same physcial size (width*height*length), it can be changed to another right?

MacBook Air

Posted on May 20, 2014 1:57 PM

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Q: Mid 2013 128 SSD upgrade harddrive

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  • by PlotinusVeritas,

    PlotinusVeritas PlotinusVeritas May 20, 2014 1:59 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf
    Level 6 (14,806 points)
    May 20, 2014 1:59 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf

    512 MAX SSD, and will cost a LOT

     

     

    HD are NOT the same size........., not even the smallest 5mm thick Seagates are even CLOSE.

     

     

     

    see here:

    Your Solid State Drive and having enough space inside your Macbook Air & Pro

     

    Solid State Drive usage premise, or the “more space / upgrade SSD” question

    There have been questions posed and positions taken by many people who are trying to use their Macbook Air or Pro’s solid state drive (SSD) as a mass media storage device, for either pictures, videos, massive music collections or all three combined; but this should not be the working premise of a ‘limited’ SSD and its use.


    In which, it’s the case of those users with either 128GB, 256GB, or even 512GB of internal SSD space, that have or are running “out of space”, that questions are raised. The immediate premise of some users can sometimes be “(how to / if) upgrading my SSD” when in fact in nearly all instances another approach is the logical and sensible one that needs to be looked into and exercised.


    Any Macbook containing a SSD should be idealized as a ‘working platform’ notebook containing all your applications, documents, and weekly or bi-weekly necessary files. All collections of media files such as pictures, music, and videos, unless directly needed should be kept off the notebook and on an external hard drive or likewise. While the ‘working platform’ premise is also the case with larger internal conventional hard drives of 1TB+, its implementation isn't as critical except in terms of data protection.


    Realistically, you should at most coordinate roughly 20 to 25% of your total SSD space to all audio-video personal use media (picture / music / video collections), leaving the remaining amount on an external HD.


    Nobody should consider any notebook a data storage device at any time under any circumstance, rather a data creation, sending, and manipulation device; and in the case of a SSD, this is more important for purposes of having sufficient working space on the SSD and reducing SSD ‘bloat’ in which cases someone is wrongly attempting to use the SSD space as a large media storage nexus.


    The rare exception to the collective usage and premise of SSD use in which a much larger SSD is truly needed are for those in video and photography professions that require both the extremely fast speeds of the SSD and the onboard storage for large and or many video and photography files. However this also falls under the premise of a ‘working platform’ for such peoples rather than the intent of many who are using the SSD as passive and static data storage for media files very infrequently needed or accessed.


    All on-notebook data collections should be logically approached as to necessity, and evaluated as to whether it is active or passive data that likely doesn’t need to be on the notebook, allocations of space-percentages to as-needed work and use, apportioning space for your entertainment media, and questioning whether it should it be on the notebook for more than short-term consumption.


    Considerations should be made in the mind of any user in differentiating the necessary system data (System hub) comprising the Mac OSX, applications, necessary documents that both must and should be on your internal SSD, and that of the users personal data (Data hub) comprising created files, pictures, music, videos, PDF files, data created or being created and otherwise, that likely unless being used soon or often should be parked on an external hard drive for consumption, or temporarily loading onto the internal SSD.


    You both can and should purchase whichever SSD size you need or see fit, but even in the case of the largest of SSD, unless use-considerations are made, and SSD spaces are allocated as should be the case indicated above, one can easily and immediately run into this quandary of “needing more internal SSD space”, in which instance a different approach in usage must then be implemented.

     

    However it is almost always the case, that such large media files are wanted to be stored internally rather than actually needed, in which case the external HD is both prudent as well as necessary. Additionally costs per MB are infinitely less on an external HD than an internal SSD in any consideration of data expansion needs.

     

     

     

    A Professional Example

    In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace. 

     

    You should also never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your Macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’. This is especially what your external HD is for.


    Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their notebooks internal SSD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.


    Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your Macbook has a SSD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your notebook to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.

     

     

    Slim USB3 1TB external hard drive

    toshiba_slim_big4.jpg

    External Hard Drives

    External hard drives are both extremely cheap and regardless of the size of your internal SSD (or even internal hard drive if the case), you need an external hard drive with your SSD equipped Macbook for several reasons:

     

    1. Data backup and protection.

    2. Redundancy for important data.

    3. Necessitated ideal space for large media files for collections of pictures, videos, and music etc.


    While ever changing in price, typical portable 2.5” external hard drives in USB3 run roughly $65 for 1TB or $120 for 2TB small portable USB3 hard drives. Such drives range in thickness between 5mm and 15mm, with recent improvements in storage of 500GB drives in 5mm profiles.


    There is almost no premise in which a small 12mm thick 1 Terabyte USB hard drive cannot be taken along with any Macbook as an external large storage extension inside any Macbook carry case or pouch. Typically such external HD profiles are not much bigger than a deck of cards.


    External hard drives are a foregone necessity for purchase with any Macbook for at the very least Time Machine backups, data redundancies, and ideally for large media storage.

  • by Bill_SnowWolf,

    Bill_SnowWolf Bill_SnowWolf May 20, 2014 1:59 PM in response to PlotinusVeritas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 20, 2014 1:59 PM in response to PlotinusVeritas

    Since i'm upgrading 512, it is not gona be a problem.

  • by PlotinusVeritas,

    PlotinusVeritas PlotinusVeritas May 20, 2014 2:01 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf
    Level 6 (14,806 points)
    May 20, 2014 2:01 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf

    OWC sells them

     

    http://eshop.macsales.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=adwords &gclid=CKGyptyyu74CFWsS7AodSQgAag

     

     

     

    youll need to know (sure to tell them your MODEL and YEAR) , because its can be microSATA or PCIe connection.

  • by kevin_,

    kevin_ kevin_ May 20, 2014 2:01 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf
    Level 4 (1,554 points)
    May 20, 2014 2:01 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf

    According to OWC who sells Solid State Upgrades for the MacBook Airs, They do not have one yet for the 2013 model.

  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy May 20, 2014 2:03 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf
    Level 10 (270,190 points)
    Desktops
    May 20, 2014 2:03 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf

    Firstly, the SSDs in new laptops are not user-replaceable. Secondly, the models do not use standard marketplace SSDs. They use Apple's proprietary flash storage.

     

    Apple will not upgrade the computer for you. You can check with OWC to see if they have developed an upgraded SSD package for your model.

  • by Bill_SnowWolf,

    Bill_SnowWolf Bill_SnowWolf May 20, 2014 2:07 PM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 20, 2014 2:07 PM in response to Kappy

    So there is no way to upgrade hard-drive after you bought from apple right?

  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy May 20, 2014 2:11 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf
    Level 10 (270,190 points)
    Desktops
    May 20, 2014 2:11 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf

    Only if you purchased it new within the last 14 days. There is no hard drive in a MBA. Just an SSD. You can, however, connect a much larger external drive via USB or Thunderbolt on which to store your least used data in your Home folder in order to make more space available on the SSD.

  • by PlotinusVeritas,

    PlotinusVeritas PlotinusVeritas May 20, 2014 2:15 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf
    Level 6 (14,806 points)
    May 20, 2014 2:15 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf

    OWC doesnt have them YET......., you can get them 'gently used' on Ebay.

     

    Mid-2013 MacBook Air models all use a new PCIe-based SSD rather than a SATA-connected one like earlier SSD-equipped MacBook Air models.

     

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7058/2013-macbook-air-pcie-ssd-and-haswell-ult-ins ide

     

     

    Heres a new 256GB SSD PCIe for 2013-2014 Macbook Air

     

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-SSD-256GB-Apple-MacBook-Air-A1466-and-A1465-Mid2013- w-OSX-MAVERICKS-PCIe-/291134702171?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43c8fb025b

     

     

    I see no 512 for sale right now.

     

     

    I did however last week.

  • by kevin_,

    kevin_ kevin_ May 20, 2014 2:14 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf
    Level 4 (1,554 points)
    May 20, 2014 2:14 PM in response to Bill_SnowWolf

    Not on the model that you have. 

     

    If you need more storage space you might want to look at a High Speed USB Flash Drive.  Corsair makes one that runs at speeds near SSD speeds. (http://www.corsair.com/en-us/flash-voyager-gs-usb-3-0-256gb-flash-drive)