SSD Upgrade on Late 2013 MBP Retina

See the iFixIt teardown for some hope. The SSDs that OWC sells for 2012 and early 2013 MacBook Pros won't work, because the Nov 2013 upgrades use PCIe controllers. However, the SSD is still attached to the motherboard via a socket, and retained in place by a Torx screw, so 3rd party manufacturers should be able to make upgrades. There aren't any available yet to my knowledge.

Right, the SSD is not upgradable unless it's on a daughterboard removable module. Check with OWC as they would know and have a replacement product.

Note: changing any part of the computer that is not considered user-upgradable will void the warranty.

OK. BTW, 512 is also 480 depending on how you count bytes on a drive. The industry considers 512 to be 512,000,000,000 bytes. If you count the way the CPU counts, then it comes out to be 480 GBs. So, they are the same measure, but different counting system - Base 2 vs. Base 10.

My first help of the day. Nice to know I got something right. 😁

Of course it works. Just put the 480 (512 lol) Aura Pro 6G upgrade in my son's 2012 Retina MBP. Noticeable improvement too over the OEM 256.

Item Number: OWCSSDAP12K480

Description: 480GB OWC Aura Pro 6G SSD + Envoy Pro Upgrade Kit for 2012 / Early 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display. Includes Aura Pro 6G SSD, Installation tools, and Envoy Pro USB 3.0 Enclosure for data transfer/continued use of Apple SSD. 3 Year OWC Warranty.

Price: $469.00

Thanks for your reply. I may not have been clear enough in my post; OWCs SSDs will NOT work in the late 2013 MacBook Pros (they've clarified their website product description to make that abundantly clear); the newest MacBook Pros use PCIe controllers, both for the SSD interface and for the SDXC slot; the 2012 and early 2013 MacBook Pros use SATA; the two are NOT interchangeable, and OWC doesn't make ANY SSD cards that will work in the newest MacBook Pros (yet).

Of course, that's not relevant for the OP, who has a late 2013 MacBook Pro and wants a bigger SSD. My reply to "helpme05" was intended to suggest to him that there may BE such a product from OWC in the future, because iFixIt's teardown of the newest MacBook Pros shows that the SSD still plugs into a (mecahnically and logically different from that on the 2012 and early 2013 machines) motherboard socket.

Your response DID clear up my misunderstanding of why OWC's SSD maxes out at 480 GB; they're using the more conservative estimate of size (base 2 vs base 10), contrasting with Apple's measurement rubric. So, OWC's 480 GB is the same size as OWC's 512 GB unit.

I'm sure you've heard the joke: "There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those who understand binary, and those who don't."

Thanks again,

Jim Robertson

Any news on this now, are there compatible ssd upgrades now (1025 nov)?

I took the easy way out to expand the SSD disk storage on my MacBook Pro 15" Retina (late 2013). I purchased it with 512GB but in hindsight, I should have purchased it with 1TB. Not finding a consensus on the web whether these newer MacBooks SSD's are upgradable, I decided not to risk it. So I found a reasonably fast external SSD to plug into one of the never used thunderbolt ports (a LaCIE Rugged Thunderbolt 512GB). I currently use it to store large games and backups from my iPhone and iPad (which can be sizeable) but other things such as photos would work too. The main disadvantage of course is that I have to carry around a small external drive should I want to access what's on it. I had to do a bit of basic Unix symbolic linking to point to the external drive. For example, for my iOS backups, in the "~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync" folder, I created a symbolic link "Backup -> /Volumes/LaCie500GB/iOSBackups" - LaCie500GB is the name I assigned to the external drive and iOSBackups is the directory I created there to hold the backups". I did a similar thing for with an applications folder to hold large games; after the game was installed on my onboard SSD, I copied it over to the external drive, deleted it from the onboard, and then created a symbolic link.

If you are not familiar with symbolic links, you can study up on it. The Unix Shell command in question is "ln -s". In the above example, the Unix shell commands looked like:

mkdir /Volumes/LaCie500GB/iOSBackups

ln -s /Volumes/LaCie500GB/iOSBackups ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

All that said, I do wish Apple would allow us to upgrade the onboard SSD.

As of November 2015 I have not found a company that makes an upgrade for the Late 2013 MBP Retina. I foolishly bought the Transcend 720 upgrade drive but it is not compatible. I'm stuck with 128GB and it's killing me.

Maybe yo're interested reading this:

http://blog.macsales.com/25878-owc-gets-1200mbs-from-ssd-in-2014-macbook-pro-wit h-retina-display

It seems that Mac Pro SSD works also on late 2013 or 2014 MacBook Pro.

There'a a warning:

SSD swap not recommended
It should be noted that this experiment was done simply to illustrate potential speeds. OWC does not recommend installing a Mac Pro SSD in your Retina MacBook Pro, as we have not performed a thermal evaluation.

I was sent here:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Memory/OWC/Apple-MacBook-Pro-Retina-Upgrades-2013 -2015

Take a look:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-2015-Apple-Samsung-1TB-PCIe-SSD-for-MacBook-Pro-iMac -MacPro-Late-2013-2015-/151605593746?hash=item234c65c692:g:9gsAAOSwf-VWXZjy

does anyone tried one of these?

IF still searching, found 256gb oem drives for 100.00 last night bought one. https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/121942232058