Upgrade SSD in MB Air

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 2, 2010
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Little sister is running out of drive space in her early 2015 MB Air (13''), so I'm looking into swapping in a larger drive. I think there's a 256GB in there now, but we'll be looking into a 500GB-1TB option. Found some How-Tos and the physical drive swap seems easy enough, just looking for the best way to go about moving the software over.

So it looks like one option is to clone the old drive to new drive. Is there a recommended app best suited for Macs or will any do? Being that the clone would be smaller than the new larger drive, would I then be able to adjust the partition size from within Mac OS or could the cloning app handle this if it supports it?

Another option appears to be using Time Machine. Before swapping drives, use this to back up old drive to an external drive, then swap drives, format/fresh install of OS, then launch Migration Assistant to restore from the external backup?
 
+1 for time machine
Hate to break it to you though, you won't might no be able to swap the drive if its a 2015, depending on the version most of those are soldered to the motherboard and non-upgradable (unless you're up for paying several hundred for the upgraded board).

If it does have a slot I might have a compatible sized SSD upgrade from an earlier version let me find the model number for the 500GB one I have, hit me up with a PM.
 
Spartacus09 said:
+1 for time machine
Hate to break it to you though, you won't might no be able to swap the drive if its a 2015, depending on the version most of those are soldered to the motherboard and non-upgradable (unless you're up for paying several hundred for the upgraded board).

If it does have a slot I might have a compatible sized SSD upgrade from an earlier version let me find the model number for the 500GB one I have, hit me up with a PM.
Click to expand...

The storage is not soldered on the Macbook air. It's just an M.2 drive with proprietary 12+16 pins.
 
In that case I have a MZ-JPU512T/0A6 512g drive if you're interested I could do for $100 shipped (its from a 2014 macpro iirc, not 100% sure on compatibility but likely should work)
If you look up the model of the original in the system info you should be able to compare specs with it.
 
I've had this drive swap on the back-burner, bumping this for more info. As an Apple hardware noob, I did totally start this thread thinking I could fit any standard m.2 drive, how foolish of me lol. Also finding that not any Apple drive is guaranteed to work, even if it fits. Spartacus, thanks for the offer but I think I have to pass due to incompatibility.

Found my external drive so I'll be using Time Machine.

Question now is, what's the easiest way to get MacOS on the replacement drive? Looking at used drives on ebay, some vendors offer it preinstalled but I'd prefer to do a fresh install myself. I have access to the current laptop myself if I need it to make some sort of installation media aswell.
 
You just need to hold command + R on start and you can reinstall the os from apple’s online boot recovery site to any compatible drive.
 
Here's my thread about installing a Intel 660p in my 2017.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tel-660p-1tb-installed-ssdpeknw010t8.2170465/

I went with the Intel because it showed to the best combination of low power consumption and good price. I don't need 3000MB/s in my laptop, just like I don't need a chassis that is on fire and a 5 hour battery life. You have to be careful with NVME, because the high speeds also includes high power.

Do a full Time Machine backup. Make a bootable USB drive with the High Sierra install media. Reboot, hold option. Select the USB install media. Format the NVME drive and install. Then when it asks you to make an account, choose to import from Time Machine from your external drive. That will transfer over all your Applications, settings and other stuff. But you DO want it do a fresh install of the NVME drivers and stuff, so you don't want to just "clone" the harddrive from old to new. If you're using icloud and Time Machine, Apple makes a harddrive rebuild pretty painless.

Oh, and you might need to have your laptop already on Majave or something for a firmware update that allows NVME on the older models. I can't remember when that cutoff is. The 2017's didn't have that issue, so I didn't worry about it.
 
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