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thewinelake2

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 13, 2015
30
15
Got a MBP 12.1 (Early 2015, 2.7 GHz) that I'd like to upgrade from 256GB to 1TB (or thereabouts).
Looks like all the drive options are really quite expensive (£600 upwards).
Is that really the case, or are there some more affordable options?
 

thewinelake2

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 13, 2015
30
15
Oh, this is handy - the "similar threads" thing seems to have found what I couldn't by searching, so no replies needed, really.
I can see that the only viable 1TB option would be a lot slower than the 4-lane Apple SSD, and that 512GB is the one to go for, as 1TB units are pretty rare and very expensive....
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,046
13,077
Unless you can get a used original-equipment Apple blade SSD for cheap, not worth the trouble.

If you need more space, get an external drive.
An alternative might be a high-capacity SD card for the SD slot...
 

thewinelake2

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 13, 2015
30
15
Unless you can get a used original-equipment Apple blade SSD for cheap, not worth the trouble.

If you need more space, get an external drive.
An alternative might be a high-capacity SD card for the SD slot...
A shame to burden a laptop (that moves around a lot) with an external device.

Looks like another way is to buy a new (used) machine of better spec and flog the old one...
 

treekram

macrumors 68000
Nov 9, 2015
1,849
411
Honolulu HI
The SSD in the early 2015 MBP uses a proprietary connector and also used AHCI (not NVMe). There are now SSD's from a couple of companies - the OWC "Aura Pro X" and the Transcend JetDrive 820. Both should fit into the early 2015 MBP. I still have not seen an in-depth technical review on either of these products so I don't know how well they work. The OWC and likely the Transcend require High Sierra. You may also be able to use an adapter and a standard PCIe NVMe drive like the Samsung Pro 960 (would not recommend the 960 Evo). This would also require High Sierra. There is along thread on this at:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-macbook-pro-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/

The title says 2013-2014 but deals with 2015 as well. Post #494 on page 20 has a poster who has used the 960 Pro in a 2015 MBP.

There are other lower-performance options if you don't want to use High Sierra. As mentioned in post #3, one can also buy a used SSD, however, at this point, I would be weary of these since one does not know (unless the seller discloses it) how many erase/write cycles the SSD has.

I see on Amazon UK that the Samsung Pro 960 1TB is £530. (As mentioned earlier, this requires an adapter.) The OWC Aura Pro X is $650 here in the US. I would consider that kind of pricing as the base price for a new, good-quality likely-to-work solution. You could spend less and that would likely involve a compromise - for example, the Samsung 960 Evo is cheaper but uses more power and generates more heat, the Toshiba/OCZ RD 400 SSD is a very good SSD (also requires an adapter) - a 1TB version is on Amazon UK for £458 but you'd have to do research to see if others have been able to make it work with the adapter in the MBP.

In the US, Apple charges $600 to upgrade from a 256GB to 1TB SSD in the 13" MBP. So you can figure out what's best for you. If you buy a SSD for the 2015 MBP, whatever it is, it cannot be used in the current or 2016 MBP - that may be a consideration for you. (It almost certainly will also not work in future MBP's.)
 
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thewinelake2

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 13, 2015
30
15
Interesting! They don't say much about about it, but it's worthy of further investigation.
Funny thing about going used is that very few 13" machines have 1TB drives installed - it's far more common in 15" machines (but DD doesn't want 15").
That upgrade price is also attractive. I wonder what they charge over here. Are prices for upgrades listed on the website? I can't see them...
 

treekram

macrumors 68000
Nov 9, 2015
1,849
411
Honolulu HI
Re-reading my post, it was unclear - my mistake. The $600 is the price difference here in the US between a 2017 13" MBP 256GB and 1TB when bought new and configured as such. So it's an upgrade when you configure, not an upgrade of an existing computer.

But the $600 figure is reasonable by Apple standards as compared to the price of standard PCIe NVMe SSD's.
 

thewinelake2

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 13, 2015
30
15
Ah! Yes, of course. RAM always used to be far cheaper to upgrade afterwards....
 
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