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Review: Transcend's 1TB JetDrive Lite 330 Adds Convenient Removable Storage to Your MacBook Pro
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When the first article appeared I was entertaining the TimeMachine drive use case but completely skipped the part that it’s attached to the laptop… if the machine gets lost, stolen, destroyed so will the backup.
I still find it useful against internal drive failure… just a bit less useful for the general case.
I still find it useful against internal drive failure… just a bit less useful for the general case.
Right. An entire review without addressing the elephant in the room - the UHS spec - is really doing the readers a disservice. But at 95 MB/s, the card is obviously UHS-I which is sad because the 14" and 16" MacBook Pros support UHS-II which would be 250MB/s. Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/21/2021-macbook-pro-sd-card-reader-speed/
I had one of these in my MacBook Pro 15”, mid-2012. I had two: the first one was JetDrive Lite 350 128GB, then the 256GB. Got the 256GB installed on end of June, 2017. By the end of 2021 my JetDrive ended up getting corrupted and I lost the data on it. Thankfully I had backed up on BackBlaze.
Yeah, the flash memory in SD cards and thumb drives is only durable enough for occasional writes/rewrites. Within the past few years, I have worn out two thumb/flash drives, one is on its final leg according to the SMART status, using them like a HDD/SDD. The other also had a failing SMART status, but then activated write lock not long after. Finally, only days following the lock, had no signs of life.
P.S. No important data was lost.
What extension? It stays mounted throughout sleeps for me without anything extra. Only thing is, I've seen it overheat a couple of times and forcibly dismount, only with my CPU temp at 220˚F as I'm writing to the SD card.
My SD card in the BaseQI adapter always was ejected on sleep before. I couldn't use it. When I installed the JetDrive Toolbox on my MacBook Air, I needed to give it permission to install a system extension. Haven't had a problem since with unwanted ejections. I only use the SD card for a backup of data and my installers.
I have a 128gb that used to sit in a 2014 mbp. Now it’s in my dongle with SD…. Cos it’s the only place with a SD slot post USB3. Never corrupted data. Only really useful for those who have run out of storage and needed a convenient “onboard” after purchase storage solution. Remarketing these at this time and at this price point will just convince people to buy more internal storage.
IIRC you can select more than one drive for Time Machine backups and TM will alternate between the two (if both are connected). So there is a TM use case here: use this SD card and a NAS location for TM, then when you're out on the road you are still backing up to the SD card and have access to the backups on it, but if the SD card does fail, you've still got your NAS TM backup waiting for you at home.
I 'permanently' increased my Macbook Air's storage by taping a small Sandisk Portable SSD with 2TB of storage to the back of my laptop and connecting it via a short USB-C cable. It looks hideous but it works really, really well.
Where was the big DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME WARNING for backing up to a storage device almost permanently connected to your device? Why bother? If this is the only use-case they could come up with, I think I'll just take the banana, please.
Much slower than internal SSD, but can be used to expand storage and keep some files. Price could have been lower.
Internal storage on a new 14 or 16" MBP has roughly ONE HUNDRED times (100X) faster R/W than this SD card. I understand the need to save $100-$200 here and there, but why would you degrade your performance that much? And we're not even talking about terrible reliability. This is not a wise purchase. Other than very specific, niche, use cases, no one should be buying this.
I think it's good for non-essential, nice to have files like music, videos or photos to bring around. You'll be better off to get the amount of storage you need when you buy but it's a nice option to have and the retail price will always drop over time.
Apple - truly the pinnacle of computer design.
If only they knew that m.2 NVMe slots exist and it's now possible for the customer to put a tiny SSD module inside the computer.
Agreed, I only use mine to store random stuff like anime and the huge dirs Xcode needs to run.
Only in Apple-World could an SD card slot which wasn't made deep enough to properly fit the card in the first place become an opportunity to market an exciting new product costing about 8x the price of a regular version.
Well done everyone.
Well done everyone.
Current baseQi model:
[edit: no UHS-II, my mistake]
- fits the MacBook Pro 16" , sits (almost) flush, aluminium finish, and looks significantly better than the JetDrive Lite 330 in my opinion
- Allow to use any micro SDXC card you want (UHS-II speeds not supported though)
- Costs 30 bucks.
[edit: no UHS-II, my mistake]
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exactly! if you use SD-cards to expand your storage, I recommend using it for non-essentials. These little cards are a lot less reliable than other media i.m.o.
That is what I love about the old Macs and modern-day PCs. Just increase the size to what suit your needs. I am not a video editor, I do not need the fastest of the fastest internal SSD's. But I love to have all my files on my Mac, and to use Spotlight to search through literally everything.
It is honestly bizarre that Apple still sells Macs with 256GB of storage. The 2009-iMac offered 500GB, 1TB or 2TB's of storage as standard... And before 2020, 128GB was standard in the Macbook Air. Of course, this has always been a way to make more money. Storage is not actually that expensive, these days. I bought my external 2TB SSD for €150.
Yeah, I have a Dell laptop and my regular SD-card's do not 'stick out' to begin with!
Had one of these for an older MBP. Nice for keeping files you read often but don’t want hogging the faster main storage. What would be smart, though obviously not as profitable for manufacturer per unit/at low volume sales, is a SIM tray-like device into which you can place your own choice of SD card.
Just bought Jetrdive Lite 330 512GB for MBP M1, to store downloaded junk that I ocassionaly still need to go through (I am lazy in cleaning up such stuff), it was pretty cheap (around 80$). But with Blackmagic test the write speed on mine is 35MB/s (read is 85MB/s) straight out of the box... Any ideas why such difference to the one in test? It is formatted as exFAT...