We note right away that the information will not be useful for owners of the most modern laptops, because, firstly, they come only with pre-installed solid-state drives, and secondly, the installed drives have an unconventional form factor and interface.
But for owners made in a 2.5 "form factor and a SATA interface, the presented instructions will help to increase the performance of a laptop without significant costs.
You can, of course, ask for a replacement drive at an official Apple service center, but the service can be quite expensive, besides, you will probably be offered some kind of Solit-State Drive Kit - "official, from the manufacturer", the price of which, to put it mildly, will not match performance.
We, in turn, offer you to replace the HDD with an excellent SSD yourself and are ready to provide.
In the photos below, you can see the SanDisk SSD. It was this solid-state drive that ended up in our laboratory at the time of writing. This SSD is based on the SandForse SF-2281 controller, which has proven itself in other solid state drives. are distinguished by high read / write speed and increased fault tolerance.
So what do we need?
This whole procedure will not take you even 30 minutes, but the performance of the laptop will increase quite seriously - the operating system and applications will load almost instantly and in general the laptop will "respond" to your requests much faster. This is because the system will receive instant access to data, and this is exactly what is simply needed to increase the speed of work.
Plus, it doesn't make any sounds even when you're actively working with data, so your MacBook will be even quieter.
In addition, due to the significantly lower power consumption of the SSD, compared to any 2.5 "HDD, the MacBook will be able to work a little longer on a single battery charge - this is another indisputable advantage of using solid-state drives in laptops.
The only thing yours will lose is a couple of grams of weight, because an SSD is also a little lighter than a hard drive.
In the base McaBook Pro, Apple installs 5400 rpm hard drives. And their performance with modern operating systems Mac OS X (10.6-10.8) leaves a lot to be desired. And it is no coincidence that Apple is gradually, but surely, switching to installing ssd drives in all laptops.
We think it's time to speed up your beloved MacBook too. You just need to install an SSD drive into it. And so that you do not get confused by the limited ssd size - you can install a second hard drive in place of the DVD drive.
Which laptop models is this solution suitable for? - Yes, to almost all MacBooks and MacBook Pros except MacBook Pro Retina
| SSD 120Gb | SSD 240Gb | SSD 500Gb | SSD 1Tb | SSD 2Tb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RUB 9,000 | 12,000 rubles | 20,000 rubles | 55,000 rubles | 94 600 rub |
In laptops, a combination of read / write speeds from / to a hard disk at a disk spindle speed of 5400 rpm. does not even reach 50 Mb / s. A 7200 rpm disk will almost double your MacBook's life: read / write speed can fluctuate between 80 ... 105 MB / sec.
It should be noted that there are also Seagate hybrid hard drives on the market, in the design of which a 7200 rpm hard drive with a 16MB data cache and an 8GB ssd drive. With such a "combo" drive, the read / write speed can increase by another 5-7% compared to a regular 7200 rpm drive.
Read / write indicators of ssd drives differ from manufacturer to manufacturer and from model to model. In addition, prices for ssd drives have not yet reached a level comparable to conventional hard drives. The price is gradually falling, and even top-end ssd with a volume of 500 and 960GB are approaching the $ 1 mark for 1GB of storage.
Since Mac OS X is a very compact operating system, and in a set with most of the necessary programs, the total disk space usually does not exceed 30-50GB, you can safely look at ssd with a volume of 120GB or more.
Although, in our opinion, it is already worth considering ssd with a volume of 180GB or more.
Precisely because the volume of ssd in combination with its price limits most users in choosing to use ssd - we suggest you consider the option of high speed ssd and good capacity hdd installed in place of the DVD drive.
To upgrade Apple MacBook Pro 2011-2012 years of release, we need 3 screwdrivers: torx 6, torx 8 and Philips 00 or 000 Phillips screwdriver.
Remember! Discharge any residual static electricity from yourself before disassembling any device.
Unscrew 10 screws on the bottom cover, 3 of which are long.
It looks like MacBook Pro 13 "from the inside
Before you change anything in the laptop configuration, you MUST disconnect the battery from the motherboard. We don’t want to start a repair with you replacing the motherboard after a short circuit, do we?
In place of the regular "slow" hard drive, we install an ssd drive, and we can put the old drive in optibay in place of the DVD drive. In our case, we installed a new 750GB 7200 rpm disk in optibey in order to increase the speed when accessing user data, which we plan to store on the hdd.
Unscrew the two screws on the bracket that holds the hard drive.
4 screws (torx 8) around the perimeter of the "old" hard drive are transferred to the ssd drive.
Install ssd in place of the system disk and fix it with a strap on two screws.
We install the hard drive in the optibe and be sure to screw it on the back with two screws.
Removing the optical drive.
We need to disconnect 5 cables.
We do this very carefully.
Disable
- hard drive flex cable
- optical drive ribbon
- WiFi loop
- camera cable
- speaker cable
We turn off the speaker and disconnect the antennas from the Wi-Fi module and put the speaker aside.
DVD superdrive. We unscrew the three screws and take it out.
We move the data cable and the mounting angle from the DVD drive to the optibay, observing the direction of installation of the angle.
Install optibay with hard disk in place of the DVD drive.
We put back the plastic speaker bar and connect the antennas to the Wi-Fi module.
We connect the cables and cables to the motherboard in reverse order. And we connect the battery.
We close and fasten the bottom cover.
We install the system from an external boot drive or through the Mac OS X recovery system via the Internet (using the Cmd + R combination when booting the computer).
Now, at the disposal of the owner, a very fast Apple MacBook Pro 2011 release: the system itself and all programs run several times faster than with a stock hdd. The system responds instantly. With a significant number of open applications, there are no freezes and freezes of the "spinning colored candy". Programs that use production data caching work with large files without any lag. And when processing very large amounts of information, the work time was reduced (according to the laptop owner) by 2-3 times.
It should be noted once again that the hard disk is limited by the physical read / write capacity on rotating metal plates. Therefore, its "bandwidth" does not exceed 115 megabytes / sec. (best case scenario). There are no mechanical elements in ssd, so the read / write speed on ssd can reach 550 Megabytes / sec. There is an option to theoretically increase this value to 1.2 Gigabytes / sec., But for this you need to use an external hardware RAID array that is NOT a system disk connected at best via the Thunderbolt 10 Gigabit / sec bus (or 1.25 Gigabytes / sec .) and exchanging data with another of the same RAID array over the same Thunderbolt bus.
If you own an Apple Mac Pro, you can install four or more ssd drives, make a large RAID array (but note that it will not be hardware, but software, if you do not use a special RAID controller). And even in this case, you can achieve theoretical data transfer rates of up to 750 Megabytes / sec (which corresponds to the data exchange rate on the sata bus of 6 Gigabits / sec).
In the next article we will tell you how to make a Fusion Drive yourself on an Apple laptop with two or more hard drives installed. And how, in our practical opinion, Fusion Drive differs from the operation of a conventional SSD + HDD combination.
The article was prepared based on the results of the repair work of the MacFix Service Center.
The cost of installing an SSD on a MacBook in our service center
| SSD 120Gb | SSD 240Gb | SSD 500Gb | SSD 1Tb | SSD 2Tb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RUB 9,000 | 12,000 rubles | 20,000 rubles | 55,000 rubles | 94 600 rub |
Hello everyone! Today I will tell you how I changed the hard drive to an SSD drive in my new MacBook. I already talked about on my blog, and that I bought a MacBook Pro 13 without Retina. So in this laptop there is a terribly slow HDD Hard disk, its rotation speed is 5400 because of this there are noticeable freezes when starting certain applications or when you wake up from sleep. I especially notice this due to the fact that I have been using an SSD in a stationary computer for 3 years already. games.
I'm not saying that Apple missed the mark with this laptop and made it laggy, no. It’s just as anyone, someone would not even notice it, if there was nothing to compare.
This laptop has a floppy drive, I found a lot of videos and articles on the Internet about the upgrade option by replacing the floppy drive with an optibay (dvd slim 9.5mm adapter for HDD) in which you can put a hard drive instead of a floppy drive and put an SSD in the place where the HDD was. I bought everything, both an adapter and a 256 GB Vertex 450 SSD from the manufacturer OCZ (his price is ridiculous 7890r.) Why did I choose OCZ? - For me this is a proven durability manufacturer as SSDs have a limited number of write cycles.
Optibay - The thing is very interesting, many thanks to the one who came up with this, I think such a thing will come in handy for those who have a laptop that is not entirely new, it will be possible to put an SSD instead of a drive and Windows will work many times faster even on not very powerful hardware.
I thought for a long time and decided that, in principle, I did not need a second HDD instead of a floppy drive and decided to leave the floppy drive and just put a 256 gigabyte SSD, this is not so little for a work laptop, especially since I have an external USB hard and stationary PC ...
Let's get down to replacing this very slow HDD!
The first thing we need is a tool, we need a small Torx Phillips screwdriver, I still have it from the moment I changed the glass on my old iPhone 4. Hexagon and plastic spatula, also included. The tool in the analysis of Apple technology plays a very important role! No need to twist those little bolts with a knife! I recommend not to rush, and if you do not have the necessary tools, then it is better not to take it, but first buy everything you need.
Now I need to remove static electricity from myself, I looked on the Internet for how to do this and decided that it would be easier to just undress to panties than to look for all sorts of antistatic agents
Turn off the laptop and turn it over
Before unscrewing, draw a diagram on a sheet of paper so as not to get confused in the bolts, because in all Apple technology, almost all bolts are different. Here we have 3 Long and 7 short in these seven by 4 there is a border, this is important.
So we draw just such a thing and put the bolts in their places, so that later they can be screwed back into place without any problems! This method works in the parsing of any device, and it is very effective - why did I not know about it when I was taking apart my toys as a child?
We unscrewed, unscrewed the bolts, remove the cover and disconnect the power cable! Otherwise, if you accidentally drop a screwdriver or some other metal object on the motherboard, a short circuit will occur and that's it, the motherboard will be replaced ... or maybe something else.
We do everything confidently and neatly with a plastic spatula!
Next, unscrew the hard drive holder. Again, I am amazed at how simple and efficiently everything is done, the holder is metal, the orange rubber bands in the photo clamp the mounting bolts so that the hard drive feels comfortable, I think it even absorbs a little when hitting and does less damage to the hard drive.
After removing the holder, carefully lift the hard drive and take out the SATA cables, if it is difficult to disconnect, pry it off with a plastic spatula.
We twisted it, now we put our SSD in place, carefully connect the cable, and first insert the lower bolts into the orange rubber bands and clamp it with the holder.
We close the lid back, take the bolts from our diagram, and screw everything into place.
Don't worry about the operating system, Apple also excelled here! Now we will install everything. Yes, all data from the old hard drive will have to be transferred by connecting to a computer or via a SATA - USB adapter, I think this will not be difficult.
We connect the laptop to the Internet via a cable (this is faster) or via Wi Fi, it will offer to choose an access point, which one to connect to, enter the password and that's it.
Turn on the laptop and hold down the CMD + R keys until the progress bar appears, after the bar is full we will see the following image:
Unfortunately, they offer to install OS X Mountain Lion, although OS X Mavericks has been released for a long time, but it's okay we'll update later, we don't have a hackintosh (I used Hackintosh on my stationary PC for about a year, then my craving for Apple began, especially caught the attention of Time Machine, this thing will never be on Windows!)
Do not rush to click continue, first go to the top menu in Utilities, Disk Utility and create or partition a hard disk. After that, click "Continue", accept the license agreement, and select the disk on which we will install.
I have one, I didn’t share it:
We are waiting for the process of downloading the installation files of the system, it is not necessary to sit and wait, it will do everything to the end in automatic mode, after downloading the files, it will reboot and the installation will start, which will go through quite quickly.
Here is the result of the speed of work, using the example of launching Adobe Photoshop CS 6:
There was a case when I installed Windows 8 on an SSD using a USB 3.0 installation stick on a PC with an intel i5 processor, to be honest, I was shocked because the installation time from start to desktop took only 8 minutes! This is cool, what will happen in the future?
That's all, I think the information will be useful. Thank you for your attention! Subscribe to my blog updates... Ask questions in the comments, in the future I think I will write how I installed more RAM, but so far I am satisfied with 4 gigabytes on a laptop.
Let's figure out if you can upgrade your MacBook Air at home by increasing its memory.
This is not difficult. But there are some very important points to be aware of. Otherwise, you will lose money.
Which MacBook Air models can replace the SSD?
V MacBook Air before 2010 you can replace the drive with a 1.8-inch SSD with SATA interface. We will not talk about them today, since computers are outdated, and the SSDs themselves of this form factor are generally available and do not differ in some features critical for Mac. Just bought and delivered.
V MacBook Air models from 2010 years, you can also replace the SSD. But there is its rare form, hence the need for this article.
Apple in its repertoire. SSDs in all modern MacBook Airs have a rather specific connector. 28pin... Thank you for at least not unsoldering the drive on the motherboard.
Post from site (@ site) Dec 6 2017 at 11:53 PST
Because of this, replacing the SSD becomes much more difficult, and the following options remain:
1. Purchase an original SSD for your MacBook. You will have to look for such components, and the price for them is frankly not happy.
2. Find a similar third-party SSD drive. Again, everything depends on the price, as they say, the game is not worth the candle.
3. Use a special adapter. A small adapter for $ 13 on Amazon or $ 9.5 on AliExpress allows you to install almost any modern M.2 drive instead of the standard one.
A suitable 256 GB SSD will cost 7-10 thousand rubles. For 15-17 thousand rubles. (difference between MacBook Air models) 512GB model can be found.
After the upgrade, you will still have a 128 GB stock disk in your hands, which can be sold.
Important: just buying a "flat" SSD is not enough
Not every SSD is suitable for use with an adapter.
Firstly, SSD must overexpose Serial ATA interface and AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) mechanism. This is usually indicated in the specifications of the device.Secondly, the drive must have a connection key M or universal B&M but not key B.
Thirdly, the length of the SSD board must not exceed 80mm, otherwise it will not fit. If the drive is too short, or if an adapter board is used, you will most likely not be able to get into the mounting hole and will need to use double-sided tape to secure the drive.
How to replace an SSD on a MacBook Air
Attention! Replacing computer components yourself will void your warranty. All actions you carry out at your own peril and risk.
To replace, you need a pair of screwdrivers: T5 Torx and P5 pentalobe.
1. Using the P5 Pentalobe, unscrew the 10 screws on the back of the laptop.
2. Gently pry off the cover near the display hinge.
3. It is recommended to disconnect the battery to power off the laptop and prevent it from being switched on accidentally. To do this, you need to find the power connector and pull on the plastic tab.
4. Using a T9 Torx screwdriver, detach the SSD securing screw.
5. Install a new drive and repeat the operations in reverse order.
That's not all, you need to configure macOS
After replacing the disk, you can perform a clean install of macOS or roll a backup. In any case, after starting the system, you will need to perform one more operation.
When using a third-party SSD with macOS, you need to enable the TRIM command. Otherwise, over time, drive performance will degrade and write operations will be slower.
From version OS X 10.11 El Capitan you can activate TRIM on all SSDs using the terminal command:
Apple has always ranked hard at drives in its devices. For iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks, every step of increasing storage media costs a pretty penny. And gigabytes from Apple are significantly more expensive than the market average. There is no doubt, usually these are very fast gigabytes, and you don't have to regret the overpayment. Yet sometimes the toad chokes. And you buy an option with a smaller drive. You hope to shrink and interrupt somehow. But always, absolutely always, you are faced with a lack of volume.
In the case of the iPhone and iPad, the problem is partly, but on relatively old MacBooks (up to 2016), you can change the SSD. But in the case of using original components, this is a very expensive pleasure. For example, a 256-gigabyte drive will cost 30 thousand rubles, if you take a new one, and 18-20 thousand for a used one. It bites, you know. Meanwhile, "just an SSD" of this size is sold for 9-10 thousand. For 16-18 thousand, you can take a 512 gigabyte model. The proprietary Apple connector is bypassed with an adapter, which costs about 1000 rubles on Aliexpress, and 2-3 thousand in Russian stores.
An autopsy showed ...
I will tell you about my own experience with the MacBook Pro 13, model Early 2015. I got it from a 128 gigabyte SSD, which, in general, was enough, but still somehow itching - suddenly it will be necessary to mount some incendiary video, and not enough space? For some reason I didn't want to spend 30 thousand. But even with non-native SSDs, everything is not so simple. The fact is that Apple has its own troubles, due to which disks from other manufacturers are seen by the operating system only after dancing with a tambourine, to enable TRIM, shamanism is also required, and there are still problems with hibernation, which you have to disable.
In particular, such overlays happen with the Samsung 960 EVO, which is often bought for upgrading MacBooks. I didn't want to face something like that.
It's even funny that Samsung SSDs are trying to fail in MacBooks, because, as you can easily see, the original SSD (pictured below) was made by someone. Deep googling revealed that Kingston KC1000 is considered one of the least problematic SSDs for MacBook Pro Early 2015. The 240 GB model (I certainly don't need more) costs an average of 8,500 rubles. For this we get a drive with the declared read speed of 2700 MB / s, and 900 MB / s writing. For comparison, the original Apple SSD gives out 1200/700 read and write respectively. Here it is worth mentioning that Kingston's recording is relatively slow only on the junior model, and already from 480 GB it grows to 1600 MB / s. But, again, I do not need such a volume, and the overpayment would not make any sense.
Considering that I had never upgraded MacBooks before, I asked the guys from the Fixed.One service for help in this matter. Running a little ahead, I will say that if you have special screwdrivers (five- and hexagonal stars), the operation can be done at home.
Let's go. First, we unscrew the back cover and admire how everything is beautifully arranged inside. The SSD is secured with one screw. Easy movement - and the slot is free.
Above a Kingston SSD with an adapter already installed The adapter came from China, it looks modest, but, on the other hand, it doesn't need to do miracles. There is no electronics on it - everything is limited only to redirecting contacts from the Apple connector to a regular M.2 connector. Something similar happened with proprietary Sony cards: it quickly became clear that ordinary microSD cards can be perfectly inserted into a portable PSP console through a penny adapter.
The installation procedure is as follows: first, insert an adapter into the connector, then a new SSD into it. If we are talking about a capacious model (for example, per terabyte), it makes sense to wrap the contact point with thermal tape for secure attachment and additional heat dissipation. But in our case, it would be clearly unnecessary, because this Kingston model heats up very moderately, and in conjunction with the existing adapter protrudes above the board just above the original and perfectly contacts the thermal interface on the lid. In length, the match is complete, so the KC1000 was fixed with a screw from its predecessor.
When turned on, the MacBook expectedly swore at the lack of a boot disk, but after inserting a flash drive with the High Sierra distribution kit, he immediately saw a new SSD and offered to install the OS on it. A very important point: it is impossible to install a third-party disk without upgrading to High Sierra, and you need to upgrade the operating system BEFORE replacing the drive.
The installation took place without the slightest overlays. That's real - there is even nothing to tell. Upon completion, I restored all data from a copy of Time Machine on a flash drive. It turned out to be significantly faster than by air, but still slow relative to the capabilities of the flash drive. It can transfer up to 300 megabytes per second, and the restoration proceeded at an average speed of 20 megabytes, only occasionally increasing to 40-50 megabytes.
Immediately after the recovery, I launched the benchmark and, frankly, was pretty discouraged: according to its data, the read and write speed was below 400 MB / s. At the same time, the speed of work was the same. Launching applications, switching between them - that's it. I had a suspicion that the matter was in background tasks with which the system loads the disk, and in particular - the Spotlight indexing service. The latter works furiously in the first days after installing a new drive, re-examining files, letters, contacts, etc., which leads not only to slowdowns, but also to increased energy consumption. You can disable indexing by entering the command in the Terminal sudo mdutil -a -i off... But it’s probably better to just wait until the system realizes itself again and calms down.
Actually, the very next day the benchmark showed completely different, more pleasing numbers. This is not at the peak of the SSD's capabilities, but is noticeably higher than on the original drive, released, let me remind you, three years ago.
What pitfalls can arise? First, with a non-native SSD, the MacBook Pro tends to wake up incorrectly from hibernation - it crashes and goes into reboot. I've had this a couple of times, but only on the first day, when FileVault data was encrypted in the background. After its completion (pah-pah-pah) everything became normal. If you have the same problem, you need to type the command in the terminal sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25... But the best thing, experts say, is to reset your laptop and set it up from scratch, rather than restore it from Time Machine. Then there will be no problems getting out of sleep. I haven't checked it myself yet, but I believe in experts.
Secondly, the drive may not work to its fullest. This is also stated in honest descriptions of adapters: they do not pump more than 2 GB / s. Plus, not all PCI Express lanes can work, for example, only two instead of the maximum four. In my own diagnostic utility, x2 and x4 are shown. This does not affect performance. And by the way, I don't even know - maybe the original SSD also jumped.
But in general, especially after the release of High Sierra 10.13.3, third-party SSDs work decently, and if you are lucky with the adapter, you will save a very significant amount. To be lucky, it is still better to buy it in Russia and in companies that conduct preliminary testing of this kind of hardware.
Many thanks to Fixed.One for helping with the upgrade. The Kingston KC1000 has shown complete suitability for use in a MacBook, and given the fact that they have a maximum capacity of 960 GB, this will allow someone to increase the storage volume to a very impressive size at a very reasonable cost.
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