Change harddrive on the new macbook pro M1

It is also about Apple saving money as it is cheaper than including extra sockets and cables which are less reliable and hinder the ever shrinking size of the laptop. Plus with soldered components Apple can more easily achieve higher transfer rates without having to worry about connectors that can affect performance that may also require extra circuitry to make them function at the same speeds. It is the same reason your iPhone and iPad don't have removable SSDs or memory. Apple is going for super slim and lightweight laptops which require this integration in order to achieve such slim and lightweight laptops. If you don't like it, then you are definitely purchasing the wrong computer.

Years ago computers such as the Commodore 64 were made where most of the chips on the motherboard were installed into sockets so that the chips could be easily removed for troubleshooting & repair. But very quickly the manufacturers moved to soldering many of the chips to the motherboard in order to save money (it removed the cost of the socket and the extra cost to insert the chip into the socket). Then in later production runs they ended up soldering all the chips to the motherboard (even the large 40 pin ones). It isn't always about a company trying to hinder you, although I'm sure Apple enjoys that as an added benefit since they clearly don't believe in the user's Right to Repair since Apple blocks independent repair shops from purchasing the required electronic components to actually repair a Logic Board.

I agree these laptops will become paper weights once their SSDs fail since it will not be cost effective to have the laptop repaired assuming the laptop is even still supported. Unfortunately society has become a disposable society where nothing is made to be repaired to keep it functioning like in the early 20th century and earlier. Some of it does have to do with complexity of newer items, but even in less complex items repairability is becoming a thing of the past.

FYI, you can remove the drive from your old laptop and use it externally on the new M1 laptop by using a USB to SATA Adapter, drive dock, or enclosure.

Just an FYI, it's not only Apple. I have a Dell XPS 13 laptop and the memory is soldered to the motherboard in those as well, not upgradeable. I've heard that it's the case on some other ultralights as well. By the way, you or some of the other posters seem to be confused about something. In the M1 laptops, the memory is actually part of the processor. It's not separate. That's why it can't be changed. And connecting an external SSD via Thunderbolt connector gives you a pretty fast storage solution if your internal storage isn't large enough.

No, unfortunately the technology in your 2011 MacBook is completely different.

i Think it’s mainly because the memory and storage are soldered directly onto the motherboard of the newer generation Mac’s, most probably because of space constraints inside the case

No.

So, what’s the next best option?

I have a late 2011 MBP, with expanded RAM and a 1TB 2..5” 6G SSD, so very similar situation to the original poster.

I never saw any prospect of reusing my RAM which I presume would be incompatible with the M1, either slotted or soldered.

I presume my best reuse option is with the hard disk using a a 2.5” ssd enclosure with USB 3.0 port and a USB-C cable.

My laptop use is fairly light. I have an iMac for most work, but pre-Covid I might use the MBP occasionally for work trips. I also had a 90GB Bootcamp partition for a small number of Windows only apps I use. I use Dropsync to mirror the files. I only use the Cloud for backup from my iMac, currently IDrive. My largely a agricultural clients can be in remote locations, with poor or nil bandwidth, so a pure Cloud solution doesn’t suit. I can use Dropsync for USB drive backup from the MBP on the road.

So, comments & thoughts?

As a Mac user since 1984 I have had my gripes with what Apple has done over time. Goes from no longer offering 17" MBPs to the fact that now NOTHING can be replaced or upgraded with the latest MBPs.

I was able to stretch older Macs with self performed upgrades to an almost 10 year life span. Currently running two 2015 MBPs with OWC SSDs, of which one died.

The lesson from that dead one is to have all important files backed up. No recovery was possible and as somebody wrote with an SSD it's almost impossible to get anything useful recovered.

It is easy to criticize Apple , however if you step on the other side you will have to admit that a very small percentage of Mac users want to tinker inside their machines. Most users just want their MBPs to work.

By locking down what's inside their machines Apple avoids many calls for issues they did not cause and they still provide a satisfactory experience for the majority of Mac users.

About the only drawback I see is that one has to plan how long one wants a purchase to last.

My MO is to buy the top shelf configuration and it usually ends up on the bottom or being the standard over the years.

Expensive , but again over the years a bargain. Mac in my experience last very long.

I'll switch to the M1s and 2s and 3s when the operating system leaves my current 2015 MBPs in the dust.

Nobody will force Apple to change what they are doing by not buying the M1s (Soon to be M2s).

About the only thing these days that is upsetting is the anemic memory they give these new machines,.

It's embarrassing to still offer 8GB memory and 128 GB SSDs although by Apple's thinking one should have all the rest in the cloud.

I guess it's all personal preference and for those who insist on tinkering, there are windows machines.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

Raed143 wrote:

Yes just don’t buy it. This is the only way to force them change their way. I will never buy a laptop where I don’t have the option to upgrade/replace my storage drive.

You DO have the option to replace the drive with an EXTERNAL drive. The Mac has never booted from a default drive, always from the drive last specified in "Set Startup Disk".

Unfortunately that may not be the case with an M1 Mac. I've read that the internal SSD is required for booting the M1 Mac. I don't have a link to that information at the moment, but the signs have already been there with all the Retina model laptops where it can be impossible to upgrade macOS without a functioning internal SSD (or even install macOS to a USB drive if the built-in SSD is missing since the firmware updater requires a properly formatted and functioning internal drive).

That’s actually really a silly assertion, SAS, SATA, and M.2 are all perfectly reliable interfaces for storage, and on the subject of solid state actually far outdo the reliability of the flash itself in 99% of cases. These stunts are exclusively for the purpose of making money, it doesn’t matter what Apples R&D department has to say because they’re the same R&D department keeping lightning alive despite the objective superiority of C. Additionally, the choke point of laptops is typically in soldered components anyways, GPUs will fail laptops far before RAM or the sockets they are slotted in and much less a simple m.2 slot, this stunt is only to drive up sales of higher storage laptops and deincentivize personal repair.

This may very well be the ostensibly stated reason, e.g., soldered components may well in fact be more reliable, but the fact of the matter is that, with both the transition to Intel, and the unserviceability of their kit, Apple effectively empowered the Hackintosh community for a number of years. What I mean to say is, that was the appeal of Hackintosh: upgradeability, user selection of customer parts, etc. It empowered the enduser, whereas Apple continued to shrink and solder. They might say that this makes their kit more reliable, but it also makes it less repairable as well, and forces those who want more memory or larger storage capacities to pay the "Apple tax." Just for comparison's sake, the following is available from Dell, with a touchscreen and 32GB RAM, and with a 2TB NVMe SSD, https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-xps-13-touch-laptop/spd/xps-13-9310-laptop/xn9310cto240h

For only $2049.

It has an 11th generation Core i7, etc. I know it's apples and oranges (ha!) when comparing PC & Mac, or Intel and M1.

To get similarly specced MacBook Pro, but with only 16GB RAM (cause that's all it supports at present) with 2TB storage, it's gonna cost $2299 out of the gate. No touch screen, limited ports, no upgrades possible.

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch-space-gray-apple-m1-chip-with-8-core-cpu-and-8-core-gpu-512gb?part=MYD92LL/A

Again, this may well all be about reliability, but don't sit there telling me it doesn't benefit Apple's bottom line! "Hey, Apple! My 256GB SSD is full! What can I do?" "Well, you could buy this external hard drive, upgrade your storage on iCloud (make sure you save your desktop/documents to the cloud!), and/or trade in your laptop you just bought on a new model... Will that be cash, or charge?"

emanuele78687 wrote:

what happens if ssd will broke. Can it be replaced or you need to trash the motherboard?

If the internal SSD fails on a USB-C Mac (Intel or M1), then the Logic Board (aka motherboard) will need to be replaced which is an expensive repair.

Make sure to always have frequent and regular backups. It is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD after the Trash has been emptied plus an SSD can fail at any time without any warning signs. If a 2018+ USB-C Mac has any type of hardware failure which prevents the Mac from booting or entering Target Disk Mode or DFU Mode, then you will need an expensive professional data recovery service to even attempt data recovery (with no guarantee of success). I've seen numerous reports where a simple macOS update has made it so a USB-C Mac needs to be erased in order to be able to access the internal SSD which makes it a catch-22 for recovering data.

I deliberately said having components that are removable, and the SOCKETS they sit in, are a cause of unreliability.

This branch of Component Engineering is well studied, and there are graduate Electrical Engineering programs in Component Engineering. The US Military has published huge volumes of information and a method for computing mean-Time-Between- Failures. None of what I said is unsupported speculation.

But Conspiracy Theories are certainly a lot more fun.

Funny you mention the US military, I guess you weren’t made aware that we still use cables and slotted components, but why would you understand something you assert when you can’t even cite it. MTBF is irrelevant here, when the SSD fails (not if, smarty) in a soldered situation it is irreplaceable and the laptop is a brick, this is the irrefutable truth of this argument that you seem incapable of recognizing. The only thing increasing the unreliability of slotted components is incompetent technicians, but if you’re incompetent enough to miss the key on a DIMM or M.2 then you’re not fit to have opened a laptop in the first place and you probably didn’t even pass that bar to begin with either, so it’s effectively a non issue. Soldering memory and storage renders cheaper, slimmer laptops and that’s all, sorry you just aren’t in the loop.

The MacBook Pro is a lightweight, portable computer that runs on batteries. Being portable, it can easily be subjected to multi-G forces daily, just by being moved about in a completely ordinary way. This is extremely stressful to electro-mechanical equipment.

Apple has Not soldered down the RAM and drives in most of its desktop computer line.

If you manage to unseat an unsoldered RAM or SSD from your laptop by mishandling, dropping or whatever else abuse you do to your machine, then you'll have far more than reliability issue with RAM and storage. I don't buy the argument that those are soldered for "reliability" reason one bit!