Macbook Pro hard drive type

[LordHussyPants]

I'm in the market for a Macbook, but I'm not happy with the cost of the more expensive ones, or with the storage size of the cheaper models. Because of this, I'm looking to buy one and then upgrade the harddrive myself.

To preface the rest of this thread, I have read the Macbook Pro SSD thread, I am well aware of the restrictions on later MBP models and upgrading them.

However, I need some help in determining what type of hard drive the model I'm looking at has. Because they're refurbished, and stock cycles quite quickly, it's hard to get a model number.

I wish to buy a refurbished Macbook Pro 13" Retina model, and even though the store lists them as "October 2013" - which would be late 2013 and thus subject to the PCIe hard drives - there are several things which suggest that the hard drives may in fact be sATA. So, I ask for your feedback on this.

The Apple Store for my location(New Zealand), has three sections: Standard, Education, and Refurbished.

These are screenshots of the 13" models available in each section.

Standard:

Education:

and now the Refurbished:

I've highlighted the storage specifications in each image. What is confusing me, and making me wonder, is that in both the Standard and Education sections of the website, the hard drives are listed as "PCIe-based flash storage", or are given an RPM value, which identifies it as a sATA drive.

But, in the refurbished section, there is one sATA drive, for the non-Retina model, and the Retina model HDDs are only described as "flash storage", with no mention of PCIe at all. As well as that, when you click through to the page for individual models, the Retina models only turn up one instance of the string "PCI" occurring on each page - under the Thunderbolt heading. There is no mention of it in relation to storage capabilities.

Links:
Refurbished Macbook Store NZ: http://store.apple.com/nz/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro

Refurbished Macbook Pro 13" Retina:
http://store.apple.com/nz/product/F...-24ghz-dual-core-intel-i5-with-retina-display

Education Macbooks:
http://store.apple.com/nz-hed/buy-mac/macbook-pro

 

[BrettApple]

The non retina models (mid 2012) use standard 2.5" SATA drives (9mm stock, 7mm and 12.5mm will fit) and are easily upgradable to a larger size or an SSD.

The retina models are basically not upgradable. They are PCIe SSDs built by Apple. OWC had some third party ones for older models but I haven't checked to see if they've got their 2013/4 ones out yet (Edit: They don't, 2012-Early 2013 only).

The only way to upgrade the retina models outside of purchase is with another Apple PCIe SSD pulled from another MacBook, they can be found on places like eBay.

In the end though, you just have to shell out the cash for what you want in there, or use an external drive.

For my purposes I came from a dual drive setup in my old 2008 MacBook (120GB SSD + 750GB HDD) to just 256GB in my 13" rMBP. However, I use an external 4TB USB 3.0 drive that works great for my media libraries. I keep it slim on the internal, and stuff everything else on the external at my desk. I have enough space for on the go projects, but I'm home enough to store the rest externally.

 

[snorkelman]

those are 2.4GHz 13" retina MacBookPros you have highlighted.

That makes them 11 series machines with Haswell processors and PCI-E for the flash storage blade (dont think any one does an aftermarket module for those)

The ones prior to October 2013 never came with that 2.4GHz speed of processor.

Those pre Oct 2013 i-5 Ivy Bridge 13" retinas came in at 2.5GHz and 2.6GHz and are the ones that can take a 3rd party Flash blade from OWC

I expect its marked specifically as PCI-E on the main page listing the current models as a selling point, whereas they're just continuing to use the more generic flash storage term on the other pages.

 

[LordHussyPants]

those are 2.4GHz 13" retina MacBookPros you have highlighted.

That makes them 11 series machines with Haswell processors and PCI-E for the flash storage blade (dont think any one does an aftermarket module for those)

The ones prior to October 2013 never came with that 2.4GHz speed of processor.

Those pre Oct 2013 i-5 Ivy Bridge 13" retinas came in at 2.5GHz and 2.6GHz and are the ones that can take a 3rd party Flash blade from OWC

I expect its marked specifically as PCI-E on the main page listing the current models as a selling point, whereas they're just continuing to use the more generic flash storage term on the other pages.

Cheers, and thanks for actually reading the post and seeing what I was getting at.

Looks like I'm going non-Retina!