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OWC Announces Aura Flash Storage Upgrades for Mid-2013 and Later Mac Laptops

Looking forward to these. I've got 512GB in my MacBook but I'm always running low on space with all my photography and video work.

If the performance is on par with the OEM drives, I'll definitely take a 1TB drive with an enclosure for the old 512GB drive.

I wish I could up the RAM too as others have mentioned....
 
I don't understand why SSD is so expensive. I believe its just a chip compared to the conventional HDD which has many mechanical parts and discs. Its like saying a DVD player is more expensive than a VHS player, when a dvd player is just a laser lens and the VHS player has like a hundred moving complex parts.


bdkennedy1 said:
Nothing OWC sells is reasonably priced.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same, but they have been in business for a very long time so it seems people actually buy at that price point.
 
Gjwilly said:
I'm sure they meant natively supported.
OS X automatically enables Trim but only on genuine Apple drives.
Click to expand...
I don't think so, because on their Mercury SATA SSDs they state:
TRIM Support:
  • OS Dependent
SMART attributes:
  • Standard
That's a difference...
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halo1982 said:
I didn't see anyone catch this, but it explains the slow speeds:

It also uses a Marvell 9230 SATA RAID chip. So this drive is basically a SATA RAID setup converted to PCI-E 2.0.

Thus no need for PCI-E x4 speeds.

Basically I'm staying far away from this one.
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Thank you, that is very interesting!
[doublepost=1457519266][/doublepost]
QCassidy352 said:
I want to upgrade the capacity of my late 2013 13" rMBP, but these prices are just stupid. I'll deal with what I've got.
Click to expand...
The prices are actually similar to a Samsung SSD SM951-NVMe 512GB SSD, but you het a much slower drive (about 1/3 of the Samsung speed).
 
vetman35 said:
2015 Retina MacBook 12 are soldered. No upgrade, no data recovery options. Always enable encryption and use a Time Machine.
Click to expand...

ieek, did not realize that, will keep that in mind because that makes it an absolute nogo for me.
What is Apple thinking? Planned obsolescence at it's best? In 2-5 years when all erase-rewrite cycles of the flash are used up you throw the logic board away? :-/!
 
What happened to Moore's Law?

I purchased a maxed mid-2012 rMBP at first release with 768GB SSD. I didn't ever "expect" to be able to upgrade it, hence spending the big dollars at the time for the biggest SSD. I would "like" to upgrade it, but nearly 4 years later the biggest SSD available is 1TB.
 
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cruggles said:
What happened to Moore's Law?

I purchased a maxed mid-2012 rMBP at first release with 768GB SSD. I didn't ever "expect" to be able to upgrade it, hence spending the big dollars at the time for the biggest SSD. I would "like" to upgrade it, but nearly 4 years later the biggest SSD available is 1TB.
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These new OWC SSDs won't fit your mid-2012 rMBP. OWC has different ones for these since a few years. 1 TB max, though.
 
Yep, thanks. Just puzzled that we are still are 1TB max - even if I go out and buy a new 15" rMBP.

I would pay handsomely for 1.5 or 2 TB if it was available.
 
vetman35 said:
I can also confirm that a 2013 SSD on a PCIe adapter card from eBay works in a very old Classic Mac Pro 1,1. It can also be used in a PC with the adapter card, just not bootable.

1Bu8nr7.jpg
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not bootable for Windows, or not bootable for Mac OS X either?
 
The consensus of this forum appears to be a thumbs down on this product. So what is a better alternative if I want to upgrade the SSD on an early 2015 rMBP? I have 256 but I would like to upgrade to 1 TB.
 
QuiteSure said:
The consensus of this forum appears to be a thumbs down on this product. So what is a better alternative if I want to upgrade the SSD on an early 2015 rMBP? I have 256 but I would like to upgrade to 1 TB.
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This is the only option right now. Some people find system pulls on eBay, but I highly doubt you'll find a pulled 1TB drive.

Hopefully this is just the beginning, and we'll see some solutions from Crucial and Transcend in the future.
 
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ReneR said:
ieek, did not realize that, will keep that in mind because that makes it an absolute nogo for me.
What is Apple thinking? Planned obsolescence at it's best? In 2-5 years when all erase-rewrite cycles of the flash are used up you throw the logic board away? :-/!
Click to expand...
Unless you plan to run the MB as a mainframe and overwrite its SSD to the equivalent of 100 full disk writes every day, I don't think you need to worry about that stupid myth.
 
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cruggles said:
What happened to Moore's Law?

I purchased a maxed mid-2012 rMBP at first release with 768GB SSD. I didn't ever "expect" to be able to upgrade it, hence spending the big dollars at the time for the biggest SSD. I would "like" to upgrade it, but nearly 4 years later the biggest SSD available is 1TB.
Click to expand...

This is 2.5", right?

Micron 1TB, 2014, $600 at launch
Samsung 2TB, 2015, $650 currently
Samsung "4TB", 2015, $2000 currently

- Each node approaches more the limits of current technology and becomes more complex to fabricate below a certain point (EUV still improving)

- But the Samsungs use 3D layering, on the other hand, so that the feature size does not need to be so aggresive.
 
mbosse said:
I don't think so, because on their Mercury SATA SSDs they state:
TRIM Support:
  • OS Dependent
SMART attributes:
  • Standard
That's a difference...
Click to expand...

The Mercury is a standard 2.5" drive that can be used with Mac, Windows, Ubuntu, etc, so yes, Trim support is OS Dependent.
These drives aren't being used with anything but a MacBook and OSx so they say no (native) Trim support which is true.
Did you want them to say Trim support, yes, but only after a hack?
 
T'hain Esh Kelch said:
Unless you plan to run the MB as a mainframe and overwrite its SSD to the equivalent of 100 full disk writes every day, I don't think you need to worry about that stupid myth.
Click to expand...

What stupid myth? Ask the users queuing at the genius bar, ...
Things can always fail earlier, bad monday device, with too much dust in the fab, or some earth vibration, optical out of focus, ...

And there are power users, using Xcode and VMs on the go to get work done.

So if the SSD is worn out you want to throw the whole logic board away, right? Awesome.
 
Horrible speeds for the price. Since it's your only choice for a 1TB, it's a win/lose scenario, but the prices are ridiculous for low-performance SSD.
 
Yeah..... what's going on is Apple wants to have as much of the repair business as possible for everything it sells.
If you design a machine so a whole board needs to be replaced when one component on it fails, you discourage 3rd. party repairs from being done. Meanwhile, you can offer the "flat rate $280 servicing" fee that Apple does to have your local store overnight it out to Apple's facilities, where they swap out whatever needs replacing and get it back to you in 24-48 hours or so.

For smaller repairs, Apple will do them on a part by part basis, in the local store (such things as replacing a bad keyboard/trackpad assembly if the rest of the computer is ok), and you might pay more like $190-200 for that.

Everything Apple has done in recent years from using those Pentalobe screws to soldering on RAM is aimed at putting the squeeze on "Joe PC Fix-It Guy" undercutting Apple's repair prices and doing it himself.


ReneR said:
What stupid myth? Ask the users queuing at the genius bar, ...
Things can always fail earlier, bad monday device, with too much dust in the fab, or some earth vibration, optical out of focus, ...

And there are power users, using Xcode and VMs on the go to get work done.

So if the SSD is worn out you want to throw the whole logic board away, right? Awesome.
Click to expand...
 
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urkel said:
I'm an Aperture user that benefits from large capacity drives for media creation. I guess I'm just one of those customers Apple has no need for anymore.

Storage is the primary reason I'm stuck on a 2012 15" MBP with dual drive 256GB SSD/2TB HDD. I wish I had a lighter machine with retina screen but I can't give up my internal storage solution so I'm riding this out until it dies and then I'll have to figure out what to do later. I really hope a solution comes along but I don't think there's anything in the pipeline for dinosaurs like me.
Click to expand...
Apart from the screen, the 2011/12 mbp's are great machines, especially once you juice them a high end ssd and 16G 1600MHz ram. Plus you can continue to upgrade the drives as better ones become available. I'm going to continue with my 17" till something dies.
Don't forget you can do the 4.1 Bluetooth and usb3 cards as well, and then there's the heat sink clean and polish with Arctic silver to replace the original gunk.
 
cube said:
This is 2.5", right?

Micron 1TB, 2014, $600 at launch
Samsung 2TB, 2015, $650 currently
Samsung "4TB", 2015, $2000 currently

- Each node approaches more the limits of current technology and becomes more complex to fabricate below a certain point (EUV still improving)

- But the Samsungs use 3D layering, on the other hand, so that the feature size does not need to be so aggresive.
Click to expand...

No, mid-2012 rMBP is Apple-profile SSD, not 2.5".

I'm just saying that Moore's Law, while still operating to a certain extent "in the industry", unfortunately does not seem to be operating at Apple. Either that, or no-one has physically been able to squeeze more than 1TB into an rMBP yet.
 
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