Today, aftermarket Mac upgrade specialists OWC announced that the long-awaited PCIe flash storage upgrades for late model Mac laptops are now available. MacBook Pro, as far back as the Late-2013 product cycle, and MacBook Air, as far back as the Mid-2013 product cycle, are eligible to upgrade. Upgrades include a 480GB or a 1TB PCIe-based flash storage solution.
Considering that many of these Macs shipped with anemic 128GB or 256GB SSDs, this can be considered a major upgrade. For instance, with MacBook Airs that featured 128GB of flash storage space, a 1TB upgrade equals 8x the storage space, a significant increase in eligible storage.
As someone who owns a Late-2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display, I’ve long been frustrated with the lack of available storage space internally. Up until now, no solutions were made available to address the issue, but after an extended wait time, OWC has fulfilled its promise to bring flash storage upgrade solutions to late model Apple laptops.
OWC’s Aura SSDs feature the following:
- Tier – 1 Flash – Top-rated flash for superior performance and dependability.
- Superior Error Correction – Three levels of error correction for improved reliability and RAID-like protection for your data.
- Global Wear Leveling – An algorithm that helps evenly distribute data across the SSD, and extends the life of the drive by preventing premature wear.
- Cell-Level Data Refresh – The SSD controller monitors data blocks and maintains correct charge at the cell level, improving data integrity and extending drive life.
The great thing about using OWC for upgrades is that the solution is generally straightforward and painless. On its website, OWC states that the upgrade is as simple as removing a few screws with the compact Torx T5 and Pentalobe P5 drivers included with the upgrade kit.
Not only is the upgrade easy to perform, but for an additional cost, OWC will include an Envoy Pro SSD enclosure meant for repurposing the old factory-installed flash storage drive that you replace. You can then use the Envoy Pro to move your data to the new upgraded drive.
For someone like me who often edits with Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X, low storage space is always something I’m having to contend with. True, I’m used to having external drives attached to my MacBook throughout the day, but after this upgrade, it will certainly be nice not to have to do that as often.
Here are the MacBook Pro models that are eligible for the storage upgrade:
- MacBookPro11,1
- MacBookPro11,2
- MacBookPro11,3
- MacBookPro11,4
- MacBookPro11,5
- MacBookPro12,1
And here are the eligible MacBook Air models:
- MacBookAir6,1
- MacBookAir6,2
- MacBookAir7,1
- MacBookAir7,2
Kits start at $347.99 for the 480GB upgrade without enclosure, and $399.00 with the enclosure. 1TB models go for $597.99 sans enclosure and $649.00 with the enclosure. You can purchase an Aura PCIe-based flash storage upgrade via OWC’s website, although the drives won’t be available until near the end of March. All Aura drives come with free shipping, a 30-day money back guarantee, and a 3-year warranty.
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Finally! Might have to dive right in to the 1TB!!
I’m likely going to update my MBP this year. My fear is eventually they will go to a soldered on the motherboard SSD. Like they’ve done with RAM.
they already done it on mb 2015 12”
Yeah. I am going to start with my 128 MacBook Pro. Then my older daughter’s MacBook Air, and then when it is out of warranty, the younger daughter’s MacBook Air
> My fear is eventually they will go to a soldered on the motherboard SSD
Not going to happen for two reasons:
1. Neither you or Apple can’t restore your data when motherboard is dead.
2. Businesses can’t destroy the data when they need to decommission or give the machine to someone else.
The argument is not upgradability here. It’s security policies.
It can only happen in very far future when 100% of data is encrypted & 100% backed up on the cloud.
You’re on point but to a mid-large business its only a few $k laptop. we’d shred the laptop with soldered on storage and just buy a new one.
This is freaking awesome!
own SSDs are slower though
8x faster mate!
So happy. I refuse to give Apple 300€ profit for more ssd storage space.
it’s kind of annoying that apple charge you so much to do a little step up from 128 to 256… they dont even give the option separately to increase the storage anymore – even though it is obviously possible and cheap enough to add up to 1TB SSD… another reason why apple are not in my good book – their standards are slipping.
Was going there was an SSD option for 2014 Mac mini owners who bought the spinning drives.
Transcend already had a kit that does exactly this, JetDrive I believe. Nonetheless is a new player on the market always a big plus!
jetdrive is for older models…this is for newer models
JetDrive is for the SD card slot. I have a 128GB version – it’s slow. But it was cheap.
nope. you’re thinking the jetdrive lite. there is another version that is an ssd option that installs internally but like pdixon said, it’s for early 2013 and older models.
nope. you’re thinking about the jetdrive lite which yes, goes into the SD slot. they make an ssd internal drive for early 2013 and older macbook models.
Does this mean I can add 1 TB to my existing 1 TB?
No. There’s only storage slot on any retina Mac laptop.
Thankfully online storage solves most of my issues…
I’d rather just use an SD card — it’s not perfect, but it’s much cheaper and means i don’t have to open up my mac and mess around with reinstalling the OS etc.
http://www.transcend-info.com/apple/jetdrivelite/
transcend also offer the OWC above – but for the older macbook pros/airs — at a cheaper price, with enclosure… sadly they havent brought out versions for new macs yet :-(
Finally!!
Can it be compared with the native ssd by the speed? There is nothing about it
I see OWC is not bragging about the speeds of these? Or did I miss something?
How are they different to the older aura pro ssds which were also compatible with the rMBP 10,1 – and why is this one not compatible? Not like the pcie slot changed or anything
It did change. Not the shape, but the type of interface.
As someone who repairs Apple hardware for a living, I’ve lost count of the number of times customers have brought in the old style SSDs hoping I could make them work. Unfortunately, it simply isn’t possible.
yeah I looked it up afterwards. You are right, same shape and connector but different pin arrangements (mSATA vs PCIe). Shame they didn’t use PCIe originally because I swear I remember in the keynote in 2012 them boasting about this new awesome PCIe drive they developed.
It’s all fine and dandy until there’s an issue with the chip and they deny your warranty because you bought the machine from a friend and they won’t cover their own part. I’ll never use another one of their Aura solutions.
How do i know what macbook pro I have? what does the 12,1 11,5 11,4 mean?
apple logo > about this mac > system report > hardware > model identifier ……
Hope it helps.
$600 for a 1TB SSD? You might as well invest that on a new Mac.
You can get a 960TB SSD for around $230 now :) http://amzn.to/1TLchG8 Prices are falling.
that SSD from the link is not going to work for the macbook pro
FYI, according to OWC’s product page for these drives, they are NOT compatible with bootcamp. In may book, that is a major problem that they shouldn’t be hiding as a footnote at the bottom of the product page.
Thanks for pointing this out! I was thinking of buying one, but I absolutely need to use Boot Camp.
thanks for pointing this out. this is why i love comments section
finally… this is very exciting but these prices are a bit steep for now. i do understand, however, that these prices are still cheaper than upgrading while ordering lol.