OWC Upgrade SSD Questions

[Yebubbleman]

I'm considering upgrading the 128GB SSD on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012). I'm honestly surprised the drive hasn't caused me to go insane yet (especially considering I've owned this computer since 2016 and that's the drive that was in it when I first acquired it).

I'm considering one of two possible upgrade options:

(A) A (likely used) OEM Apple SSD; either a 512GB or a 768GB drive

(B) A new OWC Aura Pro 6G SSD

I'm leaning against (A) as the drives are likely as old and as used as the one I'm about to pop out and they're a bit more expensive (even being used) than OWC's.

That being said, I have two questions regarding OWC's drives (particularly the Aura Pro 6G that would go in this computer):

1. I have heard complaints that OWC has thermal issues on some of their SSDs. Is this true? Should I be concerned in shopping for this kind of replacement drive?

2. This Mac is going to spend most of the rest of its functional life as a Windows 10 machine (considering that Catalina is the end of the road for it, I'm likely going to solely have Windows 10 installed on it going forward). I hear the OWC drives have their own hardware garbage collection built-in to the drive rendering the need for OS-based TRIM support moot. I know that macOS will not enable TRIM on a non-Apple OEM SSD on its own (which is totally fine in the case of the OWC drives). Does anyone know if Windows 10 is able to determine that the SSD is doing its own garbage collection and therefore shouldn't have TRIM enabled on it? I know you don't want TRIM enabled on an SSD that does its own garbage collection, which is why I ask.

Any information here would be most appreciated! Thanks!

 

[aangvento]

You don't need to buy an Apple SSD. It shouldn't make a big difference if a difference at all. Most of them are just rebranded by apple.

SSDs wear down just like a battery, even if they take much longer to wear down. I would recommend buying a new one because if it goes bunkers your data might be lost forever, which is much worse than getting out of power. And even then you don't buy a used battery most of the time.

I hope you didn't bean 6GB. You likely don't need more than 500Gb, speaking with experience, but I don't know your computing needs. But if you are using it dual right now, you might want to get into the 700's if you can afford it and give 500 to your main OS and 200 to the other.

You can likely just get a cheap SSD from Kingstone or Sony. They are all the same. Just be sure you are buying the right model (which I think you already know). I know old MAcOSs had a problem with some SSDs, but I do believe this is not a problem anymore.

PS: Windows 10 and all modern OSs, like Ubuntu, know how to TRIM an SSD. Without this, the SSD will likely not even work. Windows is not the best system ever, but it is usable. The reason why it owns almost all of the market. Any SSd should do in Catalina too.

 

[robvas]

Don't forget with the 2012's, you can buy an mSATA adapter (Apple wasn't using PCIe SSD's yet) and use any drive you want. mSATA drives are a little harder to find now, but I used Samsung and Crucial drives in the past to upgrade the early Retinas.

 

[Yebubbleman]

I hope you didn't bean 6GB. You likely don't need more than 500Gb, speaking with experience, but I don't know your computing needs. But if you are using it dual right now, you might want to get into the 700's if you can afford it and give 500 to your main OS and 200 to the other.

No, the OWC SSD model series for this Mac is the "Aura Pro 6G". I'm guessing the "6G" refers to the fact that it still uses the 6Gbps SATA III standard for data transfer.

You can likely just get a cheap SSD from Kingstone or Sony. They are all the same. Just be sure you are buying the right model (which I think you already know). I know old MAcOSs had a problem with some SSDs, but I do believe this is not a problem anymore.

Apple uses a proprietary connector for the SSDs on this Mac. I know OWC isn't the only option out there, but it's, by far, the most well known.

PS: Windows 10 and all modern OSs, like Ubuntu, know how to TRIM an SSD. Without this, the SSD will likely not even work. Windows is not the best system ever, but it is usable. The reason why it owns almost all of the market. Any SSd should do in Catalina too.

Windows will run TRIM on SSDs automatically, same with Ubuntu. macOS will run TRIM on its OEM SSDs automatically, but not on third party SSDs without manually enabling it in Terminal.

However, given that the OWC drives have hardware TRIM support, I DON'T want to have software TRIM and hardware TRIM operational at the same time. Hence my question about OWC drives in Windows.

I want to make sure that Windows doesn't automatically turn on TRIM on my SSD that is already handling it as that would be disastrous!

The fact that Apple only enables it on their own OEM drives works out as I don't want macOS enabling TRIM on an OWC drive that already has hardware-based TRIM. Incidentally, considering this Mac's days of running a supported version of macOS are effectively numbered, I'm more focused on Windows 10 here.

Don't forget with the 2012's, you can buy an mSATA adapter (Apple wasn't using PCIe SSD's yet) and use any drive you want. mSATA drives are a little harder to find now, but I used Samsung and Crucial drives in the past to upgrade the early Retinas.

I've been hearing wind of this. Who makes the adapters? How much are they? And yeah, mSATA drives don't appear to be all that plentiful these days. They seem to have been pretty much wholesale replaced by both M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe (PCIe) drives.

 

[aangvento]

Apple uses a proprietary connector for the SSDs on this Mac. I know OWC isn't the only option out there, but it's, by far, the most well known.

You can use an adapter, it is not that uncommon. But if you don't want to, the Aura is likely your best option yeah.

You can find those SSD adapters for quite cheap on ebay or even Amazon I believe.

I am quite sure that Windows will not trim the SSD if it is doing it itself. Otherwise, no SSD with this functionality would work on windows as the data would be torn apart by the two Trim sessions at the same time if it happens. I believe it is some of the information stored on the chip that is sent to the OS. However, it's been a longtime since I learnt about it. So much so I didn't even consider it to be a real problem. If you find evidence against this reasoning, please let me know!