Storage Expansion on a Late 2013 Macbook Pro
24/11/14 12:42 Filed in: Apple
I needed to expand the storage on my late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina - see how I did it here.
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One of the MacBooks I have has been running a bit tight on space. This one is a late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina with a 256Gb SSD. I’ve seen that you can get SSD upgrades for some models from a few different suppliers however I couldn’t find one that fitted the late 2013.
I did however stumble across this:
Transcend JetDrive
These are small SD Cards that fit flush with the machine and give you extra storage. Quite a cool idea really, I’d not thought of going that route. When I say they fit flush to the machine and you can forget about them - you really can:
You really don’t notice it once fitted.
What about performance? Well, it’s not too shabby - of course it’s not as fast as the internal PCIe based SSD but it’s no slouch:
To compare that, have a look at the speed test on the internal 5400RPM 2.5” SATA drive in my 17” Macbook Pro:
So it’s pretty much similar to a traditional 2.5” SATA spinning drive. Not fast when you’re used to an SSD but it’s completely workable.
Another thing to think about is how you use the drive - I don’t like having to ‘remember’ to save things in different places, it’s a pain. Instead what I do, is use symbolic links to redirect folders/storage areas to that external drive. You can read about how to do that in my article here:
Redirecting Folders on Apple OS X
So currently I have my DropBox, screenshots and a Fusion Virtual Machine that I use for one specific purpose all on the Transcend Drive - and it works just great, very impressed.
One thing to be aware of is that if you do want to swap cards in to the SD Slot then getting the JetDrive out can be quite fiddly - you have to get your nails behind the ends of the card and wiggle it out. Not a problem if you only do it once in a while, but if you swap cards a lot it would be irritating.
There are a couple of sizes available as well - 64Gb and 128Gb. They’re also available for other machines too - in fact have a look at the Amazon link below. It shows you the options, and of course the pricing.
Transcend JetDrive 330
You’ll see that there’s various options for different machines (Click the image to see a larger version):
Anyway, at GBP64 it’s a cheap and easy way to expand the storage on your Macbook without resorting to carrying around external storage.
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