MacBook Air 11 inch , Mid 2012 is it possible to add more storage?

You need to change the premise of your SSD use. 😊

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

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.

SlippySlope wrote:

I notice that you don't mention optical disc
I understand that it's a 'setting sun' technology

I DO, I just didnt mention it YET, in THIS thread.....😉

No, its not a setting sun technology except in terms of software and movies, ......for DATA preservation, there is optical and there is NOTHING else.

Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection

Professional Archival grade DVD media is a necessity for anyone taking data protection seriously

True longevity, long-term professional data protection. The Gold and Platinum standard

When it comes to long-term data protection, there is optical and there is NOTHING else, period. While modern notebooks and macbooks have forgone, for the most part internal optical DVD/CD readers/writers, this is most entirely due to the fact that commercial videos and movies have gone to online rentals and Itunes purchases, additionally nearly all software now is online purchase and download. The other reason for this is the removal of a 'high' failure point of an internal optical drive which is both mechanically complex, prone to dust on the laser diode lens due to users inserting dusty disks / media, and that the superdrive is not currently capable of fitting in the super-slim form factor machines such as the current Imac, Macbook Pro and especially the Macbook Air. However external USB DVD burners and readers are going nowhere anytime in the foreseeable future,... and until a new optical technology emerges for data preservation, DVD writers aren’t going anywhere.

Online media and software however has no bearing or impact on the fact that the fragile nature of ferromagnetic storage has not gotten any better now than it was 20 years ago aside from improved production specifications in physical hard drive builds. There are many that would point out in incorrect conjecture that “optical is a dying or dead medium”, such people don’t know what they're talking about and are directing their comments at optical based movies and software, not data archiving and protection which in fact is growing in scope, not declining.

While low grade consumer DVD blank media has a life between 8-15 years best case, professional DVD blank media has both a different standard of manufacture and chemically a different read/write layer that has serious professional longevity with 19 years real world testing and age-stress progression testing proving that at the very minimum, 60 years viable protection if stored correctly and in some patented mfg. standards, 100+ years data retention and preservation. While "gold" disks have been superceeded by even better technology manufacted disks, this is still a term of reference as implying professional DVD blank media.

In fact a new breed of disks that use a higher powered write-laser are commercially available and have a rated life of 1000 years and are referred to as M-DISK. Governments, military, and professional businesses have much time and money invested in high-importance data storage on optical media out of necessity given the extremely fragile nature of ferromagnetic storage. Such new optical technology creates permanent pits in the disk surface, which are not affected by light like consumer DVD media which uses a organic dye layer to write and read from of the data.

While DVD media are only 4.7GB single layer in scope, and cannot store massive amounts of data, not even by the 100-pack, most vitally important priority data people own are picture collections, texts, audio, and other small scale media. In such an evaluation, high priority data is necessitated out of prudence, to be written to professional archival grade DVD media, not low-grade consumer DVD blanks. Such professional DVD blank media is only roughly 30% more expensive than low grade consumer DVD blank media.

SP's suggestion is the most straigh-forward solution. Here are alternatives.

On any Mac that has a MicroSD slot, one can add up to 128 GB of inexpensive portable storage using the following options that cost less than $100. This is cost-effective alternative to upgrading the internal SSD on your MacBook Air for $185 (120 GB) to $300 (240 GB). One can use multiple microSD card to multiply the storage they carry with them.

Time Machine does not backup these microSD cards so using an alternative backup program, such as Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper! would be prudent. One could partition their Time Machine backup drive(s) with 64 or 128 GB partitions (one per microSD card) so another backup hard drive is not needed.

For more about backups:

Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

Most commonly used backup methods:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045

Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031

TheMiniDrive.com Adaptor: $30 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_pc?ie=UTF8&field-brandtextbin=TheMiniDrive.com &node=541966

64 GB Flash 30 MB/s: $47 http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-microSDXC-Memory-Adapter-SDSDQU-064G-AFFP-A/dp/B00 9QZH6JS/ref=pd_bxgy_pc_img_y

Total $77 for 64 GB of portable storage.

PNY StorEDGE 128 GB: $95 http://www.amazon.com/PNY-StorEDGE-Memory-Expansion-P-MEMEXP128U1-EF/dp/B00DC9U2 Q8/ref=pd_cp_pc_3

Thanks go to wwynne23 for pointing me to this miniSD solution.

PlotinusVeritas gives some great suggestions for purchasing external hard drives in this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5602141?tstart=0

Thats another big mistake most people make, any single external backup is a choke point of horrible failure.

redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.

Yes, however the SD card library backup is far less than ideal to be certain.

ext. HD are cheaper than dirt, buy at least one more ext. HD for data archives.

2 ext. HD = 1, and 1 = none.

The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be

Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.

Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.

Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.

Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.

see:

Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection

The disk storage is not soldered, however the memory is.

There are third-party solutions for expanding the disk storage.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Air-Retina/Apple-MacBook-Air-2012-Drive-I nternal-Flash

The SD solution makes for a good one on the 2013 Air, but the 2012 is a bit more problematic.

The 2012's SD bus connection is a USB 2.0 specification. This makes for slug-slow performance. You can use the fastest "Extreme or Ultra" SD card and it takes "forever" to move large chunks of data on and off the card.

The 2013's slot is much faster and I would be far less hesitant to use the cost-effective solution of SD. Unfortunately the OP has a 2012 model.

SP Forsythe wrote:

The SD solution makes for a good one on the 2013 Air, but the 2012 is a bit more problematic.

The 2012's SD bus connection is a USB 2.0 specification. This makes for slug-slow performance. You can use the fastest "Extreme or Ultra" SD card and it takes "forever" to move large chunks of data on and off the card.

The 2013's slot is much faster and I would be far less hesitant to use the cost-effective solution of SD. Unfortunately the OP has a 2012 model.

SP Forsythe - I just read your post...disappointing because I'm trying to solve the same issue as BlueXorcist on my wife's MBA. She keeps running out of storage space because her iPhoto library is 61GB and her iTunes library is 15GB. I put the libraries on an external HD but that kind of defeats the purpose of the Air (having to be connected with an imbilical cord). I thought of just using a 128GB extreme SD card, which would be out of sight and nice and neat but then I read your post (and she has a 2012 MBA). I could use a 128GB USB thumb drive (not out of sight and neat) but it most likely has the same USB 2.0 specification making it very slow. ??? Is that a correct assumption?

Wow...and, thank you. We backup all of our Mac's with TimeMachine on a 3TB TimeCapsule. I agree 100% (that's what I do with both my MBA and my MBP) but I'm dealing with my wife (who usually "forgets" to eject the external HD and just unplugs it). Still, can I efficiently use a ScanDisc 128GB extreme SD card in the MBA SD slot for her iPhoto library?

Thanks again (and, again, I agree). Although, I haven't thought of it in the terms that you have expressed, I do have multiple backups, and, TC at two different locactions (home and work) and different archival HDs. Now, I'm going to be purpose driven with the archival backup. I notice that you don't mention optical disc (I understand that it's a 'setting sun' technology but as long as you have a drive, the media will last a hundred years). My son is an animator and he used to have a strategy of saving all of his work to an external HD and then the external HD failed...I took the HD to a recovery place and they said they couldn't see anything on the drive. I took the drive out of the cover and used some recovery software and saw everything (I think he was using a drive that was formatted for a Windows PC and suddenly his Mac decided it couldn't read it - and neither could the HD recovery company - but I could?) Don't know the answer but he now does redundant backups.

Now, I will as well but just trying to get my wife's iPhoto library onto something nice and tidey.

Thanks again PlotinusVeritas

Good point.

Interesting match. The 2013 MBA internal SSDs are not upgradeable (yet) and they work OK with the SD cards while the 2012 MBA SSDs are upgradeable (but pricey).