Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Any way to upgrade the SSD yourself with MBP retina?
- Thread starter gymnast79
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I am not a paid promoter for Leo Laporte, The tech guy, But if you go on TWIT.tv .com and go to the show Know how, He has a whole show devoted to the installation of an OWC aura pro SSD in a rMBP. OWC has an entire kit with everything you need to install an SSD. I believe it's the sept.6 2012 show. I Hope that helps.
Alex, this is true for the previous generations, but that SSD is not compatible with the mid 2013 MBAs or late 2013 rMBPs... The Haswell systems use a different interface.
Yeah which is dumb. I'm sure Apple changed it on purpose and will continue to do so each time so that 3rd parties can't make cheaper alternatives. So if one wants to upgrade to a higher capacity they have to do it through Apple and pay their higher costs. Sad but true.
Of course apple changed it on purpose... The new PCIe SSDs are about 40% faster than the older SSDs. Give it some time and they should become available from OWC, just don't plan around them being available soon.
I'm not talking about the PCIe thing. I'm talking about the physical connections of the SSD. The current ones are physically different then the previous generation. Apple could have kept the physical connections the same while incorporating PCIe but didn't. Now 3rd party makers have to go and make new ones to not only support PCIe but fit the new connections. Apple should have kept it the same like it was with HDD going from SATA 1 to 2 to 3. A SATA 3 HDD can work on a SATA 1 connection but yes only get SATA 1 speeds. But that HDD can be swapped to any SATA connection and work fine. The only difference may be if it's a 2.5" drive or 3.5" drive.
Apple should have kept using standard SSD connections but with PCIe so that even in the new rMBP any current 2.5" SSD could be slotted in and work. But Apple was stupid and make the connection proprietary so now none of these standard 2.5" SSDs no longer work in any of the retina MBPs. Apple is so hell bent on "thin and light" when they could have just put the retina screen on the cMBP and removed the optical drive in favour of a second SSD slot. Therefore you'd have two 2.5" SSD slots for lots of storage using PCIe and retina display. Would be a win win.
No, they couldn't.
The PCIe change meant a complete redesign one way or another.
As for upgradability:
http://www.ramjet.com/blogs/tips-and-tools/9367605-2013-mac-pro-internal-storage
"The 2013 Mac Pro will come standard with a Solid State Drive (SSD) connected via a PCIe port for faster data transfer rates as compared to standard SATA III. ... The drive slot is user-accessible, so the drive can be upgraded or replaced after purchase."
Hopefully bodes well for the Macbook Pro in the future.
I'm sure they could have kept the same design. Wouldn't have been all that difficult. It's the same thing they did with the 30 pin to "lightning" connector scenario. There was no need to change that either.
If you check www.ifixit.com and their late 2013 rMBP teardown, the PCIe SSD board, just like the SATA SSD on the first generation rMBP, is removable. That means you can have it replaced at a later time.
This is an OEM Samsung PCIe card (1TB, pictures from Ebay listing):
Link to the listing:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Samsu...?pt=US_Solid_State_Drives&hash=item4178d6010a
They have it advertised as new for $1050, which is a pretty decent price since is about $1 per Gig. So you can buy a lower size SSD spec and upgrade at a later time!
Last edited:
What's the point? Would you've put the more available mSATA drive into the PCIe connector?
If they did keep the connector design but changed the electrical parameters of the interface, people would inadvertently put in wrong technology cards. At least it wouldn't just work, at worst it'd catch fire. Either way people would start complaining. The connectors are made different on purpose, so you couldn't even by mistake plug a device with wrong inteface. It's been the same with all revisions of DIMM and SO-DIMM modules, to name a few.
Last edited: