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OWC SSD "Upgrade" 2012 Macbook Air - Buyer Beware
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I have a MacBook Air 2012. I was just about to pull the trigger on the OWC 480gb SSD until I saw this thread! 
I have now found the 480gb Transcend drives on Amazon, which is even cheaper at £255 for the complete kit. Does anyone else have experience with these drives in a macbook air or even any other macs?
I'm mainly buying for the extra storage. As long as the speed is at least the same as what I'm getting now, I'll be happy.
I have now found the 480gb Transcend drives on Amazon, which is even cheaper at £255 for the complete kit. Does anyone else have experience with these drives in a macbook air or even any other macs?
I'm mainly buying for the extra storage. As long as the speed is at least the same as what I'm getting now, I'll be happy.
I have a MacBook Air 2012. I was just about to pull the trigger on the OWC 480gb SSD until I saw this thread!
I have now found the 480gb Transcend drives on Amazon, which is even cheaper at £255 for the complete kit. Does anyone else have experience with these drives in a macbook air or even any other macs?
I'm mainly buying for the extra storage. As long as the speed is at least the same as what I'm getting now, I'll be happy.
There is a long thread here discussing the Transcend drives. It seemed like people in the thread that installed the drives were generally pleased with them.
I installed a 480 gig Transcend in my mid-2012 MBA13, replacing the original 256 gig. Straight forward install.
I have a MacBook Air 2012. I was just about to pull the trigger on the OWC 480gb SSD until I saw this thread!
I have now found the 480gb Transcend drives on Amazon, which is even cheaper at £255 for the complete kit. Does anyone else have experience with these drives in a macbook air or even any other macs?
I'm mainly buying for the extra storage. As long as the speed is at least the same as what I'm getting now, I'll be happy.
The solution is actually trivially easy: Loosen the screws on the frame around the batteries and push it slightly to one side when inserting the drive. Then tighten the screws again afterwards.
Well, my IT guy sen me a 480 from OWC to replace my 128 in my 2011 Macbook Air. It came with he tools and a case for the old 128 HD. The install was very straight forward and I am very happy with the results. My Macbook runs faster and the extra storage is great. I hope not to have any problems that are posted, but so far so good.
Thanks
Thanks
Finally got my Transcend SSD installed yesterday. It would have been sooner, but Amazon sent me the wrong SSD. Even though I ordered the JetDrive 520 they sent me the JetDrive 500. Anyway after mildly complaining over the phone they sent me the correct one and actioned a 10% refund
So....the drive. Painless to install. I used the pdf instructions from the Transcend site. No problems so far.
I was about to purchase the Cindori solution last night, but then read about the implications of installing under Yosemite. Is TRIM a necessity? The developer of Cindori says that he is investigating a better Yosemite solution, so I'm thinking of just waiting to see what happens.
Currently these are the speeds I'm getting. Unfortunately I forgot to measure the speed with my old Samsung SSD.
So....the drive. Painless to install. I used the pdf instructions from the Transcend site. No problems so far.
I was about to purchase the Cindori solution last night, but then read about the implications of installing under Yosemite. Is TRIM a necessity? The developer of Cindori says that he is investigating a better Yosemite solution, so I'm thinking of just waiting to see what happens.
Currently these are the speeds I'm getting. Unfortunately I forgot to measure the speed with my old Samsung SSD.
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^^^^A necessity, no TRIM is not a necessity, but it's very nice to have and does improve the performance and should prolong the life of the SSD device over time. There are many threads on this forum dedicated to discussions about TRIM. Use the Search function and you will find them.
I use TRIM Enabler on both my Mac Pro and MBA with Yosemite, and so far everything is working as it should.
Lou
I use TRIM Enabler on both my Mac Pro and MBA with Yosemite, and so far everything is working as it should.
Lou
Are you using the Cindori solution on Yosemite? Any issues with disabling Kext-signing security?
EDIT: After doing some more reading, I decided to go ahead and purchase the Cindori Trim Enabler. All seems to be working fine
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Hello Forata,
I am very sorry to hear about what appears to be some sort of mix up with your replacement process. I would also like to apologize for the late response to your concerns. Please rest assured that OWC would not purposefully send you the wrong product for replacement that was not originally ordered
I would personally love to review your account and offer a resolution to this situation. Please contact me with any of your account information (email or order number) using the following email: custserv@macsales.com.
Thank you and I look forward to your reply.
Like most here, am a newbie seeking to replace my current Toshiba 128 SSD (a terrific performer in the 2012 MBA). However, after being in contact with the company, reading the reviews and the feedback from this esteemed crowd (including OWC's polite answers), some things are evident:
- OWC is out for a quick money grab at customer's expense. That is evident from two clear items: making it difficult to fully reimburse someone, as well as delaying the replacement. It is almost a scheme where it orders parts (or delays them on purpose) thus preventing replacements until, Guess what? you are OVER THE 30 DAY REIMBURSEMENT PERIOD. That is a known bad business practice. No respectable company is "out of stock for this item" as I have read here AND on multiple other INDEPENDENT expert reviews that also had issues.
- OWC lies, which must fit its management's profit and control mode profile. As soon as I chatted and asked about their STELLAR reviews, and knowing they filter, that convinced me they lie by denying negative reviews. Like GM, withholding quality information is seen as LYING in the industry. Apple, Microsoft, Sony any serious company allows all reviews, and uses them to build better products. OWC is all about CONTROL: control the money, control the image, control the profit. Even if it means deceiving. Zero care about a customer. OWC is not seeking to improve a flawed design and come out with a product worth the cost, but always putting the effort on the customer to get the defective items replaced.
- OWC's "industrial failure rate" issue is an interesting straw-man deflection, but a straw-man fallacy. The issue is not that industry accepts a certain failure rate, but rather that OWC's products have unacceptable, fundamental cheapness related design, cut and finish, as well as quality and failure issues ON THE LOWER QUALITY INDUSTRIAL SPECTRUM. For example, I have had MBA's with defective screens, batteries, etc. I even had issues with once every 4 months screen freeze on my Toshiba SSD. As soon as I went at Apple, the techs told me it being a known issue, and a firmware fix being there. They installed it - my current SSD NEVER FROZE AGAIN and nearly matches the claimed OWC unique numbers. 500read/290 write or so. All SSDs and HDDs I had in my life, only lost two out two dozens. both cases, they were THE CHEAP END OF THE HDD industry, both having been Maxtors. I do believe forum members suspecting that OWC failures are unacceptable high for SSDs. SSDs that are cheaply made will have MUCH MUCH HIGHER failure rates than higher end components found in Toshiba, Samsung or Apple products.
QUESTION- ANYONE HERE HAD A CPU CHIP FAIL? ARM Apple, AMD or Intel? Zero for me in 20 years and dozens of products. Why? The acceptable failure rate on these is razor thin vs other products. QC, QA and design are superlative.
Sandisk techs told me, years back, when replacing a flash drive, that there is always a 'cheap' line of products and a 'pro' or industrial grade ones. Current SSDs at the top include Sandisk Extreme Pro (10 years warranty), Samsung competitor, and a few others. The companies also have cheaper 'non pro' items that are likely to fail within 3 years of less of moderate usage. So slap cheap controllers or flash chips on a design, and its mean failure rate can be 5, 10, 100 times higher than the top. OWC seems to be using such cheap components.
Check this review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_sK0336Hto
this reviewer also received a DOA, and the replacement failed within a month!!
From what i have read here and online, with all due consideration to mean industrial failure rates, OWC grossly exaggerates the quality of its product, but consistently ships DOA or about to die cheap chips. When multiple users here have their replacements fail as well, that says it all. Let's do the math,
Assuming OWC is on par with Apple or Samsung (which is 1/1000 failures mainly due to QC screening and hours of stress testing before packaging- see How it's made) lets be more relax and assume 1/100 failures or 1 percent for OWC. That means that to have a consumer receive another failing one takes 1/100 x 1/100 odds,= 0.001 or 1 in 10,000 chances. Having two consumers here claime their replacement failed means 1/100 x 1/100 x 1/100 x 1/1000 or 1 in 100 000 000, 100 million!!! So, colleagues, for you to have repeat failures, the OWC failure rate must be somewhere to 20-40% or even higher, and nowhere near 1-10% o sub 3% like Apple. I do not believe you are serial bad lottery winners!
Therefore, if your replacements fails, this suggests that OWC's line up has a failure rate of maybe 10 to 100 times or higher that top tier products such as Apple Samsung, Intel, Toshiba etc. Math and stats cannot lie even if OWC does not disclose real numbers. OWC is NOT in the 10% range or the odds of two / three of you returning here and claiming replacement failure should be 1 in TEN TO A HUNDRED MILLION!!!
"Sorry for your unfortunate experience” does not cut the reality that these OWC chips MUST BE REALLY POOR QULITY, SO MUCH SO I WOULD NEVER ENTRUST MY PROFESSIONAL OR ACADEMIC WORK WITH THEM.
OWC customer service is potentially very good but its business model deceptively oriented towards delaying replacements or preventing any reimbursement pass the 30 days, its chip design looks like something manually cut at a low end Chinese mom and pop shop, shipped, belatedly, to OWC and then to the customers, and finally, last but not least,
RAPID AND REPETITIVE CHIP AND DATA FAILURE IS SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE IN TODAY INDUSTRIAL SSD STANDARDS.
Sorry guys, but as a trained analyst, reading your posts, with all of Nick's polite OWC responses, looks like you have been DUPED with false advertising hundreds of dollars’ worth. I do not believe for a nano second that it is bad luck, that 2, 3 or 4 of your had bad luck and replacement fail as well. Statistically you have better odds at winning a lottery.
As for OWC? Once you ALLOW negative reviews on your website, like any serious company does, ONLY THEN WILL I BELIEVE ANY WORD YOU SAY.
Apple - I do believe them when they state that their parts have superior QC. Yes, Sand..x may be on their chips, but check out the BOM for their components, Apple systematically selects THE TOP CHIPS FOR ALL OF ITS SUBCOMPONENTS. And often creates engineering teams keeping these subcomponents updated. So the very pricey SSD cost Apple charges for SSD reflects, in my view, the higher grade material, which is usually 1.8-2x higher than the BOM cost. An iPhone/ Samsung Galaxy is priced at $ 599 but costs $298 to make and the sum of all those parts is indeed $ 298, from factory plant until it gest assembled and leaves the factory in China.
If these OWC drives cost 30-40% less than Apple's replacement, you can really bet that the BOM and chip quality is 30-40% less or more (assuming a x2 profit margin as well). And a multifold higher failure rate.
15 YEARS OF GOOD OWC SERVICE: OK, some people HAD 15 years of good service from OWC, but THE BEST SERVICE is when you do not have to use it. No product failure. But PAST REFERENCES IN THE TECH WORLD ARE IRRELEVANT FUTURE INDICATORS. Technology changes too fast. It is clear that OWC TRIES to keep up and establish a niche in the current Macbook after marker accessories, but cannot keep up with the incredible QC and QA that comes with current Apple, Samsung or Toshiba products, Fortune 500 companies that are stellar. IF OWC tried, my opinion, to match Samsung chip quality, their price per unit might actually double and put them out of business. They do not buy sufficiently in bulk. So just because years ago OWC had competitive products, does not mean they do that NOW. Blackberry? Nortel? Nokia anyone?
I sympathise with the forum members, and thank them for saving me, and others, the brutal headache.
Transcend seems a no brainer, purchased from Amazon or Newegg, no hassle returns.
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Since my prior posts I've had the experience of removing many dead OWC SSDs from Macbook Airs.
Many(but not all) of these were too long to fit in the slot. Some had kapton tape holding them down.
I cave. I give. They suck!
I recommend and use Transcend Jetdrive whenever possible. None have come back yet, and they all actually fit into the computer.
Many(but not all) of these were too long to fit in the slot. Some had kapton tape holding them down.
I cave. I give. They suck!
I recommend and use Transcend Jetdrive whenever possible. None have come back yet, and they all actually fit into the computer.
Well, my 2 cents
Been buying from OWC for many years, many will remember me buying large amounts of 64 GB SSD equipped MBA refurbished and installing 512 GB OWC
SSD's, and setting them up for friends, over 65 in toto, and not one failure,and As far as I know all are still running, nice record!
Recently, my Daughters 2008 MBP trackball died, she bought a new 13"MBA, gave me the MBP, where I found the battery had a bulge, pressing on the track pad, new OWC battery, and a new OWC SSD 256 GB we were in business.
Last month upon booting, got a white screen with a question mark. All indications were Logic board. On a whim, put an old hard drive, and it booted, bad OWC SSD, called them, sent back the unit, re-installed the new one, Re installed everything, and back in business.
Throughly pleased with OWC, been buying from them and will continue to forever. They STAND behind their Products! Problems? Call Them! Posting here on the forums, does nothing for you, calling them has always worked for me
Now that said, no problems are good, in a perfect world, everything is good, in this world I have never had a problem,email with OWC on my product failures, they have been honest and decent
Been buying from OWC for many years, many will remember me buying large amounts of 64 GB SSD equipped MBA refurbished and installing 512 GB OWC
SSD's, and setting them up for friends, over 65 in toto, and not one failure,and As far as I know all are still running, nice record!
Recently, my Daughters 2008 MBP trackball died, she bought a new 13"MBA, gave me the MBP, where I found the battery had a bulge, pressing on the track pad, new OWC battery, and a new OWC SSD 256 GB we were in business.
Last month upon booting, got a white screen with a question mark. All indications were Logic board. On a whim, put an old hard drive, and it booted, bad OWC SSD, called them, sent back the unit, re-installed the new one, Re installed everything, and back in business.
Throughly pleased with OWC, been buying from them and will continue to forever. They STAND behind their Products! Problems? Call Them! Posting here on the forums, does nothing for you, calling them has always worked for me
Now that said, no problems are good, in a perfect world, everything is good, in this world I have never had a problem,email with OWC on my product failures, they have been honest and decent
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Been buying from OWC for many years, many will remember me buying large amounts of 64 GB SSD equipped MBA refurbished and installing 512 GB OWC
SSD's, and setting them up for friends, over 65 in toto, and not one failure,and As far as I know all are still running, nice record!
Recently, my Daughters 2008 MBP trackball died, she bought a new 13"MBA, gave me the MBP, where I found the battery had a bulge, pressing on the track pad, new OWC battery, and a new OWC SSD 256 GB we were in business.
Last month upon booting, got a white screen with a question mark. All indications were Logic board. On a whim, put an old hard drive, and it booted, bad OWC SSD, called them, sent back the unit, re-installed the new one, Re installed everything, and back in business.
Throughly pleased with OWC, been buying from them and will continue to forever. They STAND behind their Products! Problems? Call Them! Posting here on the forums, does nothing for you, calling them has always worked for me
Sorry Dave, but most MBA owners are, according to just about every survey, more sophisticated professionals seeking a higher priced, but superior quality product. Compromising that reliability with OWC seems ... the very opposite to that.
I recently had a Dell Alienware R4 MOBO fail during a final MA paper. Specifically, SATA controller failed, and took away logically the two attached drives- the errors were too much to save them. The HDD was no longer recognizable or detected. The brand mew 240 GB Sandisk Extreme SATA was freezing. All caused by a bad controller - I later learned that a bad controller will compromise attached drives. My paper, 7 days more work, was on those two drives. My MBA had it as well, but a week plus old.
So what did I do? Go to my Nov 2003 PC, ASUS MB etc, plugged the two drives into a SATA 1 or 2 port. The 3 Tb Seagate HDD was gone. All data lost. Would have needed a specialized service. The 240Gb Sandisk SSD was recognized, went in my user, retrieved the paper, and moved it to my Mac. Troubleshooting though took me 2-3 evening or 3-4 days delay.
The dealt with Dell, delay was LOONG. My MBA saved my paper, I submitted 3 days late, mainly as tipping on 13" not intuitive. Dell felt SO BAD about putting me through call that they replaced my 2400$ R4 with the brand new Area 51 $ 4500 before taxes (equal or better) unit. Point is, I was delayed days, and had that been caused by a faulty SSD I would have found that UNACCEPTABLE. After years of assembling PCs, (still running as backup that overlocked P4 3.2Ghz since Nov 2003), I went Mac to no longer have faulty crappy components fail me, at critical moments.
Your endorsement of OWC's customer service misses the point advocated by most esteemed members posting here, ie something IS AMISS with OWC QC and QA, and IT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN IN THE FIRST PLACE. I need an SSD that does not fail in 4-5 years of daily usage (got over 400 cycles on my MBA). Toshiba makes them. Samsung. Crucial. Sandisk. NOT OWC, and that, the forum has argued beyond a doubt.
Am glad OWC customer service was prompt with you. For most users, the product fails if we even have to call them once, let alone troubleshoot freezes, overheating or external case shorting!! At $ 300-500, UNACCEPTABLE.
More unacceptable Dave, is that when an SSD fails, DATA IS VIRTUALLY IRRECOVERABLE. Forget what I did, connecting it to third PCs and so on. Would not work.
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Agree that Apple uses name-brand components and not crappy ones that will fail frequently.
That being said, please don't rely on them too much. Apple is not immune to the occasional unforeseen design/manufacturing defect. A lot of SSDs in ~2012 MBAs failed recently and there was a recall. A lot of hard drives in recent iMacs were recalled too. Macs were just as susceptible as PCs to defective nVidia chips a few years that ruined (probably) millions of laptop motherboards. Anyway, it's important to back up your data frequently no matter what kind of computer you're using.
And that's the KEY!!!! How many recalls has OWC had? That's right - NONE!!!!
The Apple MBA SSD issue, was a firmware issue, and most of those affected, were available to fix the problem with a firmware update before they were affected.
And MOST DEFENTLY - BackUp and Redundancy will always be your friend. I've been using Macs since 1986, and have never lost data in all that time. And yes, I have had HDD failures over the years, but my backups were always there to save my bacon.
Lou
I agree with you, but the margin of error on Apple is incredibly low. In its earning figures, Apple disclosed a 10% or some USD 100,000,000 million quarterly funds to failures. Assuming a repair cost of $500 per unit (could be faulty MBAs, phones, screens AND staff overhead costs), divide 100,000,000 /$500 and, at 500$, it is 200,000 units! Two hundred thousand macs, phones, pads etc TOTAL!!! How many of these are faulty drives? Staff and tech repair cost? Considering that they ship MILLIONS OF UNITS PER QUARTER, lets say 10 000 000, and the actual average hardware repair is exaggerated to $500, that means 1 IN 20,000 units have a defect, or 0.005 percent, or 200 times less than 1 percent... That is the industrial reality; you multiply this tiny figure by 5 and suddenly, Apple's quarterly must become $ 200,000,000 towards repairs.
How many of this 0.005% are SSD failures? I can bet a far lower figure. It simply cost TOO MUCH to put crappy parts inside a top product. Hence the industrial genius of top 500 companies. Steve Jobs started it. Once I understood this metric, never had an issue with Apple.
BTW the new Microsoft surface is also a top grade product, similar numbers.
I admit not understanding the nuance of the OWC recall figure. WHY WOULD THEY HAVE OR PAY FOR A RECALL? THE CUSTOMER, ALL OF YOU, PAY OWC AND THEY ARE FULLY INSURED WITH THE MOM AND POP CUTTING STORE WHERE THEY MAKE THIER CHIPS. OWC would not survive a single recall.
Do most customers realize they subsidize OWC's poor line and parts replacement? How many consumers had the OWC SSD part replaced and not had to pay for shipping or restocking... I am betting only a tiny fraction. So like GM that bet on making money even if it had to pay for 44 but no more than 50 highway fatalities, OWC is betting that paying a minority customers for returning parts is still cheaper than making a recall or improving their products.
gents, Apple, Samsung Microsoft are so gigantic that BOM cost states, factually, that they get the LOWEST INDUSTRY PRICE FOR JUST ABOUT EVERY PART. Chip. memory. SSD. Gorilla screen. Battery. So the Apple upgrade is the lowest price you will ever pay for that part.
http://www.techinsights.com/teardown.com/apple-iphone-6/
http://www.computerworld.com/articl...e-than-other-apple-laptops--says-analyst.html
Check out the study on why Apple iPhones, MacBooks have Aluminium finish, and the competition cannot afford it. Apple has pre-booked a huge quantity of worldwide Aluminum production for its macs/Macbooks, and anyone else wanting to build Aluminium finish PCs etc, have to pay a higher price than apple, AND CONSEQUENTLY CHARGE MORE THAN A MAC. So they go plastic or fibreglass.
By deduction, OWC can only compete, price wise, with much cheaper parts. it cannot afford the discounted price Samsung or Apple pay.
BTW, the most failure prone part in Apple tech is, like all other brands, LI-ION battery failure. 10% at best. Sometimes a single day of heat inside a car will destroy a battery, and most people assume it is Apple.
however, unlike the previous owner, I WILL NEVER AGIN PAY 1/3 PRICE to add a OWC type battery inside my Mac. Dit so, 3d parts did everything form overheating, shortening, melting, all short of catching fire. Even Apple's batteries have sophisticated resistors, chips and capacitors...
Do not mean to down people's optimism on OWC, but I thought that the reality cannot be ignored. Switch to Transcend or genuine Apple. By the time you have shipped a part a 3d time to OWC, you likely matched that Apple part cost AND yours keeps failing.
This is picking nits now but it was an issue with those Toshiba SSDs because they had to be replaced eventually even if you did patch your firmware. The firmware must have been some kind of stopgap workaround that made it less likely that the drive would fail.