Change harddrive on the new macbook pro M1

As a tinkerer and unafraid person to wreck whatever I am "repairing/upgrading" I do not like Apples no repairability

stance. However one should consider that only a small percentage of users (Would be interesting to know how many) is capable of doing work inside their computers or even wants to.

Add to that the many calls Apple will no longer get when somebody who tinkered now has issues.

What is missing is a path to at least be able to have a failing SSD exchanged at a reasonable price.

Had a 1TB fail in my 2015 MBP and thankfully it was possible to put a new one in.

I tend not to upgrade to the latest MBP models, when what Apple offers annoys me. For example the constant removal of all ports requiring dongles is a no go for me. Apple assuming I am willing to have EVERYTHING in the cloud is false.

Looks like the next gen of MBPs with M2 will get some of the ports back. At that point I'll be interested to upgrade and most likely bite the bullet to max out the MBP. Counting on somebody figuring out a hack to get at least the SSD replaced after warranty is expired.

Let's also appreciate how long the majority of Apple computers last and how long they support their system software.

Anybody who does not like their products should just buy what works for them.

The limiting factor for a SATA drive will be its maximum SATA transfer rate, which will be limited by the SATA interface. Since the drive is already speed-limited, USB 3 or 3.1 will NOT be a bottleneck. Do not pay extra for USB 3.1

In fact the USB 3.1 SATA dock that I am looking at is cheaper than the USB 3.0 dock.

The MBP M1 specs only specify support down to USB 3.1:

“Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports with support for:

• Charging
• DisplayPort
• Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gb/s)
• USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
• USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)
• Headphone” https://support.apple.com/kb/SP824?locale=en_AU

However, I assume USB 3.0 support is grandfathered into the standards?

The USB 3.1 dock promised an actual speed of 430Mbps, but the USB 3.0 dock promised the theoretical speed of 5Gbps so I was comparing apples and oranges and betting the oranges had fewer overheads!

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".

<< and 128 GB SSDs although by Apple's thinking one should have all the rest in the cloud. >>

Macs with drives under about 512-ish GB are aimed at secondary school students who are keeping all their files on other drives or on services like GoogleDocs.

Regular home or business users should never even THINK about purchasing such machines.

Agreed, however my point is that with Apple's purchasing power the price difference between putting in 8 vs 16GB and at least 256GB as a starting configuration is probably negligible.

The low spec users may want to look into an AIR

It seems hard to believe Apple would now insist on booting from a specific drive.

But you DO have to have change your boot-up permissions to allow alternate boot devices. (Seen as a security issue to keep thieves from being able to take over your stolen notebook computer.)

On a Mac with a T2 chip, only drives containing VERIFIED versions of MacOS many be chosen as alternate boot drives for this specific Mac.

You need to have made the appropriate changes in Startup Security Utility, and allowed your Mac to verify the MacOS installed on that proposed Boot Drive (and allowed your Mac to connect to the Internet to complete the verification AND possibly updated that MacOS) before you can boot from that alternate Boot Drive:

About Startup Security Utility - Apple Support

.

Hey there, some of these things I'm not sure if people covered but I feel they are critical to understanding the M1 Mac and why things are done the way they are.

I'll start by saying I have an extremely powerful windows desktop with 4tbs of ssd storage and m.2 nvme ssd 1tb, amd ryzen 5, rtx 2060 super, and plenty of ram. Since buying my first MacBook and I had been waiting for something like the M1 for years from Apple as to why I hadn't bought one before.

So, the M1 MacBook sounds super unimpressive on paper and without understanding what it is, it seems terrible. The M1 chip manufactured in Taiwan, designed by apple is a ARMS based processor. My Ryzen and intel pcs run on X86. ARMS has been around for 35 years and you use it everyday in devices you wouldn't even consider. All apple chips run on ARMS, and have expect for the Macs. Heres the kicker and you can do benchmarks yourself or just watch YouTube videos. The M1 chip will keep up in processing power to some Intels BEST CHIPS. So far there hasn't been much advancement in the X86 and each year its starting to become a rehashing from intel. Apple wanted Intel to make the M1 but they refused saying no way ARMS would ever beat X86. Well here we are, The chipsets that allow data to flow on the M1 have practically 0 latency being they are all right next to each other on the same chip. I'm sure you could see how that's already super handy, and makes a faster system overall even if it sounds bad on paper. With out the option to use an external gpu though, don't be expecting fantastic gaming performance. That's not what this Apple Silicon is set to take on.

Does anyone know if it's a technical requirement that forces them to do this, or if it's yet another attempt to kneecap people working on their own machines?

ryancole85 wrote:

Does anyone know if it's a technical requirement that forces them to do this, or if it's yet another attempt to kneecap people working on their own machines?

Are you serious?

I get the ram. What I don't get are things like battery and ssd's being completely built in.

yes, you can. try desoldering the ram and ssd soldered and get ram desoldered from your ram chip, thus get ssds from usb flash drives desoldered to your desired storage.

Probably the latter, imho.

So, I found a USB3.1 dock, so the first comment is my own that I’m not limited to USB3.0.