How to upgrade a macbook air ssd?

[26139]

Yep!

First rule is to backup your library of course

I have never had problems combining multiple iPhoto libraries.
I just recently combined 7 separate libraries, whenever I format my hard drive I'll copy my iPhoto library to storage and date it.
Once I reload iLife, I open iPhoto, File, and Import to Library, point to the folders.
Every photo now in one library.

I'm sure some must have screwed some stuff up before so be careful and backup before doing anything.

Nor have I, but like you, I have always made sure to back up and copy my entire iPhoto library, not just some of the files inside it.

 

[Jamie37211]

Thanks. This was very helpful. I don't know why but I have a tendency to overcompensate for any problems I'm having. I was thinking of the 480GB originally and was put off by the cost but I suppose I could go for the 240GB which might be enough as long as I don't put my entire music and photo collection on it. Plus I'll have an external drive though I wonder if it'll be any smaller than the Samsung I have which I linked to above. I'll have a think about this. (Why are the OWC ssd sizes so irregular and different from apple sizes!)

I remember reading something about the reason for the quoted capacity of the OWC drives being different from those of the stock Apple SSDs, but couldn't track down where. It might have been in one of the tutorials I read before I made the purchase. But it has to do with how OWC quotes the actual usable capacity of the drive.

The external drive enclosure is about 6 inches long, 1.5 inches wide and about .5 inch thick at its thickest point (it tapers back to front to mimic the taper of your Air). So, longer and skinnier than the external you linked above, but still quite tiny. It is also USB 3.0 as I recall, but backwards compatible with our 2010 Air USB 2 ports.

And I guess this has me questioning precisely how large your iTunes and iPhoto files are. I have a moderately sized iTunes library (around 60 GB) but my iPhoto library is comparitively small - I don't recall the size at the moment and don't have my Air with me to check. So, for me, 240 GB is vast and spacious.

 

[hfg]

Hmm. So there goes my iPhoto relocation idea. To be quite frank I don't really need iPhoto. The only reason I use it is so that I can flick through photos quickly and delete the bad ones. Doing so in preview is well impossible as far as I can tell. So I can probably just stop using iPhoto. I'm quite happy to browse through image files manually without needing to store them on the SSD. If you guys know of a decent image browser let me know. Good point about photostream - I hadn't realised these go into iPhoto too. Not to mention the iPhone imports on every connect.

Just in case it was overlooked ...

If you do a lot of photo deletion in iPhoto, you have deleted the iPhoto "trash" (not the OS X trash, the iPhoto trash)? If not, you probably have a LOT of space being wasted on your drive with deleted photos.


-howard

 

[wolfpuppies3]

OP: You mentioned that 256 GB is the largest SSD available for MBAs. Not true, my 2012 has a 512 GB SSD. My 2011 has a 256 GB SSD, the largest available then but the largest now is 512 GB. You are right, though, they are pricey.

 

[Narada]

Just in case it was overlooked ...

If you do a lot of photo deletion in iPhoto, you have deleted the iPhoto "trash" (not the OS X trash, the iPhoto trash)? If not, you probably have a LOT of space being wasted on your drive with deleted photos.


-howard

Thanks a lot for this. I had no idea. I had 159 photos in iphoto trash. I deleted them. I did a before and after check on the terminal but it didn't seem to make much difference but nevertheless at least it's cleared.

Before:

Filesystem                          Size   Used  Avail Capacity  iused     ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2                       112Gi   76Gi   36Gi    68% 19956322   9456046   68%   /

After:

Filesystem                          Size   Used  Avail Capacity  iused     ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2                       112Gi   76Gi   36Gi    68% 19961901   9450467   68%   /

My HD info is as here after some attempts to clean up as per the advice on this thread. I've also got a samsung 1TB portable external hd attached.

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OP: You mentioned that 256 GB is the largest SSD available for MBAs. Not true, my 2012 has a 512 GB SSD. My 2011 has a 256 GB SSD, the largest available then but the largest now is 512 GB. You are right, though, they are pricey.

You're right but 256GB is the largest you can get *if* you buy in the retail store which I always do. I rarely ever order Apple machines online. I just prefer the in-retail-store environment plus it's easier to get certain discounts signed off like student discount etc. Retail stores at least in the UK keep three different specs for mac notebooks and the highest spec for the MBA unfortunately has a 256GB. Understandably as 512GB would be far too expensive for most people and Apple wouldn't sell any of the top spec if they were to put that in.


NOTE: Btw the delay in me responding is due to the forum not emailing me when there's a new post. Not sure what's going on there.