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Transcend Debuts JetDrive SSD Upgrade Kits Up to 960GB for MacBook Air, Retina Macbook Pro

runbuh said:
Yeah - this is what I was talking about with respect to battery life.

With the JetDrive Installed, fresh boot, full charge, and surf the web for a few minutes until the "Remaining" time shows, maxes out at 4:09. I put the original 768GB drive back in my Mac, did a PRAM and SMC reset, let it charge for a few hours, and repeated the "fresh boot, full charge, surf...". "Remaining" time maxes out at 6:24. And that's about how the life works out between the two drives. Quite a difference using the two drives.
Click to expand...

Do you mind testing it by timing until full depletion?
By playing a movie at fixed brightness for example.

I'm waiting for the mid-2012 model to buy one, but a huge decrease in battery life is pretty sad...
 
TranscendInfo said:
Hello runbuh,
We performed some experiments in house and came to the conclusion that in order to get a correct estimation of remaining battery life, the system needs to be on for at least 30 minutes.

If you look at the battery life after just a few minutes, the system doesn't have enough data to correctly estimate the remaining battery life.

This is true with both the stock SSD and with our JetDrive SSDs.

We went a step further and measured power consumption on a test bed and found that our JetDrive SSDs actually have slightly lower power consumption than the stock SSDs.
Click to expand...

I can vouch for this a bit, I have been using my 240GB JetDrive 520 for a few days now and the things I noticed first (next to increased average speed and a larger capacity than my stock SSD, obviously) was a decrease in temperature for the SSD and the battery time seems to have increased marginally although I can not be certain yet.

I was amazed by the difference in temperature (measured with iStat), the difference is about 10 degrees(!) maybe because my original SSD had to work harder being almost full all the time or a combination of factors but so far I am more than pleased with results!

Furthermore, the external aluminium case is a perfect match with my Apple collection. At this point I would recommend this drive to anyone considering such an upgrade. I hope in the long-term that will be the same, however, 5 years of warranty shows some confidence in this :)
 
mid-2012 mbpr 15"

With all the good things being said about these drives I'm really looking forward to the release of the (725) 960GB for the Macbook Pro retina 15." I guessing it should be any day now.
 
To TranscendInfoLA

Does Transend sell the carrier for the old internal SSD separately? That question has been asked in another thread. OWC does and they charge $49.00 for it.

Lou
 
TranscendInfo said:
Hello runbuh,
We performed some experiments in house and came to the conclusion that in order to get a correct estimation of remaining battery life, the system needs to be on for at least 30 minutes.

If you look at the battery life after just a few minutes, the system doesn't have enough data to correctly estimate the remaining battery life.

This is true with both the stock SSD and with our JetDrive SSDs.

We went a step further and measured power consumption on a test bed and found that our JetDrive SSDs actually have slightly lower power consumption than the stock SSDs.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the response!

Based on some "more scientific but not 100% foolproof testing", I do not see any signifiant battery life difference. My testing was: I set my Mac to not go to sleep, no screen saver, screen brightness at certain level, and started the following shell script:

#!/bin/bash
dd if=/Users/rnb/Documents/Parallels/XPP.pvm/XPP-0.hdd/XPP-0.hdd.0.{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41}.hds of=/dev/zero bs=4096
pmset -g ps
./rundisk.sh

This script merely dumped a 20gig (yes gig) file to nowhere (/dev/zero), used pmset to display the battery life remaining, and then called itself. I let this run for 1 hour and 15 minutes, running separate tests for both drives. Prior to each test, I had performed an SMC and PRAM reset, and let the battery fully charge (for both tests, I waited four afters after battery was at 100%). The Apple 768GB SSD test showed 1:56 remaining on the battery (that's 1 hour 56 minutes). The Transcend 960GB drive showed 2:04 remaining.

My tests weren't 100% exactly the same because I am human. For example, I noticed after the fact that the Microsoft Database Daemon and Android File Transfer Agent were running during the Apple SDD test and not during the Transcend test. I am still comfortable with the results.
 
To TranscendInfoLA

Apparently the problem with the jetdrive 720 and mid 2012 rMPB's is the space between the SSD and the speaker? The SSD is 0,5mm larger than the stock SSD. So if there is more than 0,5mm margin between the stock ssd and the speaker, the 720 will fit, right? Can you confirm this?

Thanks!
 
flowrider said:
To TranscendInfoLA

Does Transend sell the carrier for the old internal SSD separately? That question has been asked in another thread. OWC does and they charge $49.00 for it.

Lou
Click to expand...
Currently we do not sell the external enclosure separately.................but a little birdie told me we might ;)

Luniq said:
To TranscendInfoLA

Apparently the problem with the jetdrive 720 and mid 2012 rMPB's is the space between the SSD and the speaker? The SSD is 0,5mm larger than the stock SSD. So if there is more than 0,5mm margin between the stock ssd and the speaker, the 720 will fit, right? Can you confirm this?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I cannot confirm this, and I cannot suggest that you attempt modification of your system in any way to accept a JDM720, nor that it will be compatible with your rMBP. The JDM725 will be out in the coming weeks and is designed specifically for your system.:D
 
availability date for 725 version?

TranscendInfoLA said:
The JDM725 will be out in the coming weeks and is designed specifically for your system.:D
Click to expand...

to TranscendInfo: Can you be any more specific on availability date for the 725 version? -- back in May when this whole 15" compatibility issue flared up, you were targeting late June/early July... I've been hoping that it winds up closer to late June than early July!

thanks in advance if you can be any more specific than "in the coming weeks"...
 
MassMacMan said:
I just took a chance and purchased a JetDrive for my 15" mid-2012 rMBP. It installed perfectly. As always, YMMV.
Click to expand...

Did you kind of have a margin between the stock SSD and the speaker? That seems to be the deciding element whether it fits or not.
 
Exactly that. As soon as I opened the case of my rMBP, I saw that the gap between the original SSD and the speaker was about 1mm, so there was plenty of room to spare.

Now I have some performance numbers: I measured transfer rates using BlackMagic Disk Speed Test. The new internal SSD, with 5GB transfers, gives me 440 MB/s write and 490 MB/s read. Across the USB3 interface to the original SSD in the new little case, I'm getting 280 MB/s write and 390 MB/s read (having just erased the old disk). I'm re-cloning the MBP OS and important files back onto the 256GB original SSD to use as a fast back-up and emergency start-up disk. Then I'll set up a slower 1TB USB3 external mechanical drive as a Time Machine backup.
 
Interesting product. I never trusted the OWC upgrade because they insist on Sandforce, which should be fine now but it's something I would like to avoid. Thankfullly it's not only between them or rolling the dice on eBay anymore.

Silence on the controller for this but Anandtech said this:

First up is the JetDrive, which consists of four models: 420, 500, 520 and 720. All these drives are similar in terms of hardware and performance and the only difference is simply the form factor and connector. The controller is labeled as Transcend but the actual silicon is from Silicon Motion (or SMI as often called within the industry) but Transcend has designed the firmware themselves. The NAND is Micron's 128Gbit 20nm MLC, which allows capacities of up to 960GB.
​

Representatives don't have to confirm or anything and I'm as inclined as anyone else to trust Anandtech. Good stuff inside.
 
Luniq said:
The 725 models have appeared on the Transcend website.
Click to expand...

good news! but not yet for sale on the Amazon website. Maybe if someone spots them for sale on Amazon or B&H or other vendor, we can alert eachother using this thread...
 
They've been on Amazon.com since Friday (I think) as 'Out of stock' but that you can pre-order - Edit: not seeing them anymore but were definitely there earlier (I swear). No sign of them on the European stores, at least not .co.uk or .de when I checked earlier. Major want for a 480GB at the moment :)
 
Last edited:
how to know

How do we know which model it is on the amazon site? Will the new updated 480GB for the MBPr, be labeled something different from the one that apparently doesn't fit in the 15"?
 
tivoboy said:
How do we know which model it is on the amazon site? Will the new updated 480GB for the MBPr, be labeled something different from the one that apparently doesn't fit in the 15"?
Click to expand...

The updated versions are labeled 725. The old ones are 720
 
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