If you don’t use TimeMachine, use something like ‘ SuperDuper!’ to create a copy of your macOS installation. Step 2Įnsure you have a backup of your MacBook! If you’re using TimeMachine, manually run a backup so that you can be certain a recent copy exists. Update your MacBook to the latest version of macOS available - This will ensure you have the latest boot ROM firmware loaded. Conservative with power, meaning it doesn’t affect my battery life too muchįrom left to right: Original Apple SSD, ADATA XPG SX82000, Sintech adapter, & a SanDisk USB for scale (and to boot from) Step 1.It ran fairly cool (the popular Samsung 970 series are known to run quite hot).I picked the ADATA XPG SX8200 SSD after following the MacRumours thread intensively. A P5 Pentalobe & a T5 Torx Screwdriver ( iFixIt have a great kit, but there is a budget option).Are there any ‘gotchas’ that I need to be wary of?Ī huge thread on MacRumours answered almost all of these questions, as well as raising some new ones along the way, as people started experimenting with setups.Which NVMe drive is best in terms of speed and compatibility with macOS?.Which adapter is needed, and where can I get one from?.Does this work on the early 2015 retina MacBook Pro?.What followed was some late nights gathering answers to the following questions Talk of an adapter that can be used with the super-speedy NVMe SSD drives suddenly catch my eye. I believe OWC sold some upgrade kits, but they were outside of my budget.įast-forward to earlier this year, and my search results change. Occasional searches every 6 months or so revealed that whilst the SSD is removable (and about the only thing that is on that machine!), any upgrades were hugely pricey due to a proprietary connection used by Apple.

Whilst at home, I also have a USB dock connected which has a couple of external hard-drives connected, but again, suffer with being slow. This doubles my usable space, but is a second-class citizen of course, as it’s inherently slow. With only 128GB of disk space, I quickly added a Transcend JetDrive Lite to the machine, which sits flush in the SD card slot on the right-hand side.

Entry-level 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM it is then! As it turns out, they were just drop-shipping the standard builds, which meant any customisation (upgrading the RAM etc.) was out of the question. For those of us in the UK, it is managed by the same company that also do the Cycle To Work Scheme vouchers etc.Īt the time, I had a capable but old MacBook Pro (2011 I believe), so the temptation of an upgrade was too great, and I jumped at the opportunity for a shiny new retina MacBook Pro (Early 2015). It’s early 2016, and my employer comes up with a scheme that can help us purchase a laptop and spread the cost over 12 months.

Best ssd for macbook pro 2015