Adding extra storage to a MacBook using an SD card is easy, but it works like a thumb drive or external hard drive and not like your permanent, built-in storage. That means you’ll have to manually manage the storage, dragging files to and from the drive. But TarDisk Pear lets you add extra flash storage to your MacBook using an SD card and 1-click setup to merge the storage with your internal drive. After a quick setup, the TarDisk SD card installed in your Mac will act as one fusion drive with your built-in storage. I’ve been testing the product to see if it works like it should…
Setup:
To get started, you simply stick the TarDisk Pear in your MacBook’s SD card slot like any ordinary SD card (it doesn’t stick out like in the image above and sits flush with the machine when inserted fully). The installer software is supposed to launch automatically, but I had to open it from the SD card itself which was recognized and popped up inside Finder after inserting.
There are a few steps to go through (more on that below), but all the formatting happens behind the scenes, with the entire process taking me around 50 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse and a few restarts.
Requirements: You’ll need a MacBook with an SD port, 8GB of free space (at least temporarily for the installation), and Bootcamp partitions aren’t officially supported. After starting the installer, it then prompted me to turn off encryption on my internal drive by switching off FileVault and to enable Core Storage (you can enable FileVault again once Pear is installed).
A little over half of the installation time mentioned above was spent on turning off FileVault and Core Storage with a couple restarts in between. I already had a recent back up, so the install time will vary depending on what your current setup is, how long your backup takes (the company not surprisingly recommends running a full backup first), and whether or not you run through the recommended steps to check the health of your current drive, remove BootCamp if installed, etc.
Using TarDisk:
You shouldn’t have to think about TarDisk much after installing it. The idea is that it merges with your internal drive so you can use it as if you have just upgraded your internal drive, and I found the process went smoothly. In my month-long test I didn’t run into any issues with my upgraded storage, and I didn’t find a noticeable difference in performance overall on the original, 2012 Retina MacBook Pro I tested it on.
How does it work? The company explained it uses “a combination of undocumented OSX commands and proprietary software.” For those that want to know a little bit more about what’s happening behind the scenes, the drive itself is formatted with Apple’s Disk Utility into Mac OSX extended Journaled. And in the background, this is how OS X will handle your storage between the two drives once installed:
- The new logically merged volume is managed by OSX.
- Internal SSD is primarily used before data is sent to the product.
- More frequently used files are maintained on SSD hardware.
- TRIM enabled SSDs maintain original speed benefits of Trim.
- Read/Write buffer (“swap-space-equivalent”) is maintained on SSD to buffer writes to files located on the product.
- Failure modes, if ever encountered, allow for direct restoration from TimeMachine backups.
Disk Utility allows users to format drives and since OS X 10.8.3 create DIY Fusion drives, but the entire process is a one-click step with TarDisk’s installer software handling everything for you.
Since the TarDisk Pear works like one drive in combination with your built-in storage, you won’t see the SD card mounted in Finder anymore. And you’ll be able to manage storage in the same way you manage the built-in storage in your Mac. Once installed, you’ll see the new drive appear under “About this Mac” and System Profiler (as pictured above).
Removing TarDisk isn’t recommended. The company refers to the product as a “permanent upgrade” and warns you’ll have to restore your old drive completely from a backup if you remove the product:
“…This is comparable to the level of involvement required to replace a hard drive. Because it creates a hybrid drive, removing it will cause files to appear as missing. Re-inserting the TarDisk remedies this problem. As with any storage device, a backup should be a part of your routine. TarDisk Pear becomes part of your hard drive, and just like your regular hard drive if it fails, you lose that data.”
Should you buy it?
Out of all the options for upgrading the storage on an old Mac— a standard SD card, an external drive, or upgrading the internal drive— the TarDisk Pear proved to be the easiest overall solution. If you can deal with the pricing ($149 to $399) and the available storage and speed options, and you don’t want to put up with the mess of upgrading internal drives on Macs, then I’d recommend TarDisk as the easiest, although one of the priciest, approaches to upgrading your storage.
The TarDisk Pear is available now in 128GB ($149) and 256GB ($399) versions. It’s compatible with MacBooks that have an SDXC port and Yosemite or El Capitan installed. Update, Apr 14, 2016: 9to5Toys has a 15% off promo until May 5th.
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I’m assuming there is not an option for iMacs?
I was going to say, this would be great for expanding the fusion drive on my 27″ iMac
Actually, I found the answer on this page:
http://tardisk.com/pages/faq
+1, I have my late 2013 27 inch iMac with 3TB fusion drive. Can’t open up my iMac to upgrade the hard drive to SSD because I still have the AppleCare until 2017. Was wondering if this would work for iMacs as well?
I would imagine it works if your iMac has an SD card slot.
It might, but if the’s not supported by the vendor, it means they haven’t tested and I’m reluctant to use my data as a test case. :)
It’s a bad approach to me. You loose the SD Card port and if the TarDisk OR the your internal SSD crashes, then you loose everything. It makes two possible points of failure.
You should also have tested impact on battery life. This has been a common issue with SD drives on MacBooks.
I don’t doubt your claim, but I’ve never heard of this — and it does not really make sense to me…The SD slot is not a high bandwidth port…I can not imagine it takes much power at all.
It’s not about that. Having something plugged in the slot prevents the Mac from going into deep sleep after 3 hours. Stand-by time will suffer.
Wow, what a great idea…But why pay for this when you can create a DIY “Fusion Drive” on you own?
Ummm… No. Undocumented API calls are not what you want to rely on for your daily files.
Does it really stick out that far?
No. It sits flush when inserted fully.
This sounds like they’re making a RAID 0 volume and splitting the data cross both drives.
“Removing TarDisk isn’t recommended. The company refers to the product as a “permanent upgrade” and warns you’ll have to restore your old drive completely from a backup if you remove the product:”
So I’m going to pair a solid HD or SSD with an SD card in a RAID 0 array and just count on the SD card to not go sideways someday? Um..yeah..I don’t think so. I like the idea of having a second internal drive for backups and an SD card is good for that. But making it a critical part of my boot drive: not a good idea.
it’s not RAID 0. That is, it doesn’t sound like RAID 0 and there’s no good reason why they’d do that with two dissimilar drives.
This article states that Swap is placed on the internal [faster] device. That indicates they’re not striping the data across both devices. I also don’t see any requirement that both drives be the same size.
Also, the whole idea of the Fusion drive is that commonly used files are migrated to the faster storage and infrequently used files are migrated to the slower storage.. because they remain distinct from each other.
To function as a “fusion drive”, the two drives will be concatenated.
For simplicity.. assume the addressing of the space on the internal SSD goes from “AAAAA” to “CCCCC”. Assume the new drive would be of the same size.. storage addressable from “AAAAA” to “CCCCC”. What the software does is ‘paste’ the SD card storage onto the end of the Internal drive addressing. What you then get is “AAAAA” to “FFFFF” where AAAAA-CCCCC is SSD and CCCCD-FFFFF is the SD Card.
If one or the other failed catastrophically.. the system very well might not boot. It should be easy to recover data from the other [still functional] drive though.
If one drive in a RAID 0 catastrophically fails, you loose everything.
If, like Swap, the software ensures that the Operating System stays on the internal storage.. it’s possible that the system might still be bootable if the SD Card failed. It depends on whether OS X can be made to tolerate having it’s boot partition resized unexpectedly. I think it’s doable.
OK maybe it’s concatenation rather than RAID. But the point remains: You’re paring your solid, reliable, internal drive with an SD card and hoping that the SD card doesn’t fail. You’re adding a much weaker single point of failure. That strikes me as an exceptional bad idea.
It’s not RAID0…RAID0 requires equally sized disks, and it’s striping evenly across all disks. It seems more like concatenation with intelligent caching / placement based on what files are accessed least.
This will probably work fine until the day that Apple releases a patch or update for OS X which changes the undocumented APIs.
You’ll know this because your system will become unbootable and you will need to restore all of your data from backup.
Once you restore, you’ll probably have to do something like the following:
1. Shrink your file system back down to fit on the original SSD
2. Back it up again
3. Remove the TarDisk
4. Restore your system again
5. Reformat the TarDisk as a regular SD card
6. Put any files on it that don’t fit on your internal SSD.
Probably you’re better off using the TarDisk as a regular SD card.
it’s unlikely Apple would change undocumented APIs in a point release of a specific version of OS X. There are many groups inside of Apple [core data, HPC libraries, Quicktime, ..etc] who might rely on the internal APIs remaining consistent. it’s possible.. think discoveryd in 10.10.. that they might be forced to make significant internal changes .
My bigger concern with the reliance on undocumented APIs is that there would be no notification if Apple decided to modify or remove them in OS X 10.12. You’d want to be extremely careful if you were using this before you did a major upgrade to the next version of OS X. The point updates are much less likely to blow things up.
Indeed – there is absolutely no guarantee that this will continue to work in future releases of OS X, and when it breaks you’ll have to reformat and restore from a backup if possible. Caveat emptor.
Sounds like a great way to slow performance on your Mac.
Agreed. If I have a speed SSD in my MacBook, why would I want to push critical files off to a slower and more easily-damaged (or lost) SD card?
You didn’t read the last part of the article did you? He states he didn’t encounter any slowdowns of performance issues during the full month of using it.
I have not experienced any slowdowns while using my TarDisk! :)
What happens if somehow the flash card is removed while writing vital data to the hard drive? What if you just knocked the flash drive? This seems kind of risky to me.
i don’t know for sure, but i presume that you lost your data and errors appear on the programs in the SD, like taking a HDD in an instalation
with that price i prefer a real SSD drive, maybe can cost a little more but i have the velocity and the security of a real drive not a SD memory design for mold in the macbook unibody. i understand the advantages (easy configuration, no dismount) but 400$ for a 256 gb is too much, i have seen SSD drives for macbook air with 500gb in amazon for less.
This is the most idiotic idea EVER. I’ve had some of those other SD expansion options (Nifty Drive, JetDrive etc.), and no matter how flush they are with the case, they WILL at some stage come close (when taking the MacBook out of a bag or some other mishap). Even if they stay put, sometimes the OS forgets it has an SD card inserted. Not exactly the kind of scenario that encourages you to spread ALL you data (system, docs, mail etc.) over two drives.
Just buy a SanDisk 512GB Class 10 category memory card, SanDisk comes with a micro-sd card reader.
Use it in Mobile, DSLR & Computers including the iMac, still faster than a spinning hard drive.
Despite the issues raised by others, I see some positives that (for me) outweigh the issues.
My 256Gb SSD ran out of room 2 years ago. I evaluated whether I could-off load some files to the cloud or a network drive and concluded that is a non-starter in my case because of the times I may need access while away from the office without internet access. I installed a 128Gb SD card and moved my less frequently used files to the SD card. I have not been able to get time machine to include the SD card and so far have failed to get it to sync automatically with my Diskstation. So backups are manual.
Why do I not create a fusion drive manually with my existing SD card? Because when I researched how to do it, not only was the process complex, but there was no evidence that a fusion drive would work with an SSD in a MBA or MBP.
I am now running with about 15 Gb of free space on my SSD with no easily identified group of files to move to the SD card. An upgrade to a 2016 MBP (about $3,000) looks like it is needed in order to get my storage under control. Or a $400 TarDisk card – that should work to extend the life of my machine for 2 to 3 years.
The only increased risk I accept with TarDisk is a change to the APIs – something that could be remedied by not upgrading to an OS that changes those APIs. If that does not work, max loss is $400 and potential need to upgrade the MBP immediately. There is no significant risk increase due to SD card failure. It’s an issue I have today – but with the TarDisk there may be some additional work required to recover the data compared to a regular SD card failing.
The TarDisk gives me the benefit of an integrated drive managed like a single volume with automatic Time Machine backups. Those automatic backups would be a significant benefit. All I would need to do is carry the USB device that will hold an SD card in case I am ever in a situation when I need to load an SD card to my machine.
So my decision is:
do I stick with my current SD card setup and try to remember to make manual backups for the next 6 to 9 months when I can upgrade to the next MBP; or
do I accept the risk from TarDisk’s use of undocumented APIs and extend the life of my current machine for 2 to 3 years?
TarDisk looks very good to me.
Any flaws in that analysis?
Almost certainly an astoundingly bad idea, but I might consider if it were an officially licenced Doctor Who TARDISk.
If you remove the Paired SD it your mac will freeze once this is re inserted you can reboot and continue as usual with out restoring from a back up, this isn’t for someone who wants to remove sd card often, there are some work arounds that would amend critical system operations, they are not being implemented as of this time. It is a fairly clever apple hack all in all.
It’s really easy to install and great for expanding HD.