Can I update the 2017 MacBook Pro 15" SSD?

This is a total disgrace and yet another sign of self-defeating corporate greed. Want a 2TB hard drive in your Macbook? Either pay £4,000 for a new computer (£4,000!!!!! and you're not able to replace the hard drive or CD drive if they give out, since everything is soldered in). Or keep going with your 2011 Macbook and install a new hard drive in it. Not only does this tarnish Apple's reputation, but they're losing revenue. If their products were priced correctly, I'd be more than happy to upgrade to a new Macbook

y_p_w wrote:

Worst case scenario is that if the internal SSD is damaged that one can still operate off of an external boot drive. With an external SSD and Thunderbolt it can be pretty fast. I remember there was a topic where someone was OK with it compared to the cost of a new logic board.

Just to put some numbers out -- Apple 128GB SSD yanked from 2015 13" MacBook Pro could do about 1.8 GBytes/s in the NVMe-to-PCIe adapter. If you are *very* lucky, that same drive will max out at 200 MBytes/s in the OWC-branded external enclosure.

As far as Thunderbolt external enclosures, last time I looked (admittedly a while ago), they required external power source (nonstarter for laptop boot drive) and were priced higher than the cost of the new logic board. If you know of bus-powered inexpensive Thunderbolt enclosures, please, share.

The most basic model of the new MacBook Pro costs £3,600, which is more than double the cost back in 2011 (I paid £1,500 for a top of the range 15” back then - the equivalent today, at £4,000, is again more than double in cost).

Meanwhile the 2tb hard drive I have had fitted into my 2011 MacBook Pro this year cost £80.

Whilst I appreciate other people may not need 2tb drives (I do), that has nothing to do with the absurd price being charged, which, as I said, is ultimately self defeating for Apple as I would be quite prepared to spend the expensive but reasonable price of around £2k for a new one (‘only’ an increase of 30% since 2011)

jalber1 wrote:

The most basic model of the new MacBook Pro costs £3,600

That's rough... but, maybe you have VAT to thank for that, not Apple. In US, you can get Apple certified refurbished 15.4 MBP for $1,700.00, throw in 2TB SSD from OWC for another $1,300.00 and end up with pretty respectable package for the equivalent of £2,150.00. You will have to do song-and-dance every time you are doing bare-metal restore -- OWC support suggests using Migration Assistant and I can confirm from personal experience that this is only slightly more painful than you basic TimeMachine restore.

Note: I have picked 2015 because I could not stand the keyboard on the 2016/2017 MBP.

Oh, yeah... you can sell the 256GB SSD, your MBP came with, to some poor sod in the need of upgrade or replacement to further offset the cost 🙂

incanter wrote:

y_p_w wrote:

Worst case scenario is that if the internal SSD is damaged that one can still operate off of an external boot drive. With an external SSD and Thunderbolt it can be pretty fast. I remember there was a topic where someone was OK with it compared to the cost of a new logic board.

Just to put some numbers out -- Apple 128GB SSD yanked from 2015 13" MacBook Pro could do about 1.8 GBytes/s in the NVMe-to-PCIe adapter. If you are *very* lucky, that same drive will max out at 200 MBytes/s in the OWC-branded external enclosure.

As far as Thunderbolt external enclosures, last time I looked (admittedly a while ago), they required external power source (nonstarter for laptop boot drive) and were priced higher than the cost of the new logic board. If you know of bus-powered inexpensive Thunderbolt enclosures, please, share.

Not inexpensive, but there is a pretty fast bus-powered Thunderbolt 3 drive that uses an m.2 SSD.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusiontb3pcieflashdrive.html

I'm pretty sure some company is working on a bare enclosure where one could use a standard SSD for the user to mix and match. The prices are bound to come down.

I think LaCie has a few bus-powered Thunderbolt drives, although they used a SATA SSD internally.

Everything in the new models is soldered or glued on. Unless you order it with the upgrade, no one will do it (you can ask a third party service place, but since apple did not intend for it to be upgraded, you might void the warranty. Here are the specs and remarks for a 2017 MBP:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i7-3.1- 15-mid-2017-retina-display-touch-bar-spe…

But, you can buy an SSD and put it in an external enclosure, format it, clone your system to it, and use that as a bootup drive.

marcin.berman wrote:

The OWC parts have bad reputation

Off topic, but wherever did you get that idea?

It is.

I don't mean to start a debate but does that mean that Apple replaces the entire motherboard in order to fix a bad SSD or RAM?

As Apple have publicly said APFS is not supported on rotational drives or external drives of any type, it is for internal SSD's. The problem you speak of is exactly what is expected.

APFS behavior/compatibility is Apple's doing, not OWC.

My point exactly -- OWC has rotational parts in their SSDs 😁

To quote my original post: "Not necessarily OWC's fault, but not a recommended upgrade any more."

I will listen and pay attention to what Apple say about their file system, I will happily ignore yours.

As I said before, what you do with your drive is up to you.