Inspired me to stick my old 128GB JetDrive Lite (I think it must be the 330 - the label doesn't say) in my MacBook Pro 16 - fits perfectly and mounts. Not sure how useful right now as I splashed out on a 2TB SSD, but nice to know that I can get some free overflow storage if I need it.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Transcend Offers JetDrive Lite 330 Expansion Cards Up to 512GB for 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I love iCloud and how it syncs etc etc etc. But I would never trust my most precious files to a cloud backup alone. Anything that makes having an extra copy of your wedding and children born pics, emails from my now deceased relatives, etc easier to duplicate all the better.
My backup philosophy:
4 copies.
3 locations.
2 media types.
1 cloud.
My backup philosophy:
4 copies.
3 locations.
2 media types.
1 cloud.
This isn't a bad solution for Time Machine. Grown tired of lugging around an external drive...so my MBP is only getting backed up when I get home and connect to my external display.
Turns out that if you design a wonderful new universal connector that's super tiny and ultra-thin, you can no longer fit a flash storage chip mostly inside the metal part of the plug - which is what those ultra-compact USB-A drives do.
This was a complaint I saw a bit for the 2013 "Trash can" Mac Pro. Since it didn't have any space for internal drives or expansion cards, you'd have to clutter your desk with external devices. With the 2019 Mac Pro, we could finally put in some PCIe cards and some drive cages.
I tried the BaseQi with a Sandisk micro sd card and the read speeds were way slower than the Transcend. Maybe mine was faulty but I just went with the transcend ones instead.
I remember those days. Upgrading from a spinning drive to an SSD made a night & day difference in speed. However, I'm not the type to replace the optical drive with an SSD/HDD. I find that several DVDs/BluRays have higher quality video and more special features/behind the scenes stuff than streaming.
The class of card would have been the culprit there. I used a minidrive years back with a Samsung Pro MicroSD that was definitely faster.
Those still stuck out a good quarter inch. These Transcend drives sit virtually flush.
agreed on passing. Doesn’t make sense off for 512 GB on an SD card at these prices when SanDisk can be undercut them by twice the mount and have the price.
No, when I say 'slow' it was like 1mb/sec. It was totally F-ed. I tried a different card and same results. I think I also tried a second BaseQi holder and it still totally sucked.
Oh ok. That wasn’t mentioned in your earlier post. Then I definitely beleive you had a faulty unit, as I stated above, my experience was not the same. My speeds exceeded the speeds advertised by transcend.
Good for you.
I did not rely on streaming service and I kept my good habits of buying CDs and importing them to music.
If a sudden war break out, in case of complete cut from internet, I have everything I need on hand. I can put on my music without internet while fighting in battlefield.
Well, MBPs never got BluRay drives anyway, while DVDs could be ripped without (additional) loss of quality - but the end of argument is that a typical hard drive could hold 100 typical DVDs even without re-compression. I still, occasionally, use an optical drive, but it spends most of its life in the cupboard and certainly doesn't need to come on trips.
The optical bay mounting kit I got came with an external USB enclosure for the optical drive. Although I'm fairy dongle-averse, carrying a USB optical drive would be a minor extra annoyance alongside carrying around the 16-DVD box set of Lord of The Rings and sitting in economy class faffing around trying to get DVDs out of the case without moving my elbows...
I would caution those thinking about Time Machine. Yes it is convenient but it doesn’t help if your laptop is lost or stolen, or gets fried through a power surge etc. Good backup practice needs to be off device.
In short - Don’t let it be your only backup.
In short - Don’t let it be your only backup.
I still have one of the 2012 versions that was just a sled for a MicroSD card. It was nice for the time, but even at 512GB it's going to be a very niche product. Most of my files are in the cloud and my backup drive would be useless if it was inside of my MacBook when it got stolen or trashed. I use an external for that.
There's many uses I can think of for a product like this, but almost all of them have better, albeit less convenient, alternatives.
There's many uses I can think of for a product like this, but almost all of them have better, albeit less convenient, alternatives.
I wouldn't suggest using it for a 'backup'. The point is to use it for more seldom used files that you'd still like to keep near and dear, but thus allowing you to free up space on the super fast internal drive.
The full backup would of course be kept somewhere else.
Yes. One that fits flush with the side so you leave it in indefinitely and it's seamless. Was there something that made you think it was something more than that?
Would actually advise against that. These things are known for low reliability. You don't want to store anything on them that you aren't okay losing. So they may be okay for backup, but I'd NEVER put my only copy of anything on them.
No reason to be so dismissive. Yes, Jetdrive has offered similar products before, but these are new cards specifically designed for the new MBPs to fit and be flush mounted. They look like a good option for carrying around extra files, particularly with the high price of Apple’s SSDs.
ICloud is not a very deep backup. If you change a file or delete it, the iCloud version is synced and the damage is propagated to the cloud. Time MAchine or other true backup solution will retain deleted file or previous versions of changed or damaged file. There are local file versions but those are not synced to iCloud, so if something happens, you don’t have those older versions.