Transcend Offers JetDrive Lite 330 Expansion Cards Up to 512GB for 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro

[alchemistmuffin]

Question is…. Will this work for 2016-2020 MacBook Pros (one with Touch Bar, including one with M1 MacBook Pro) if I just plug in external USB-C to Card Slot reader? All this device does is connect to the built in SD card slot reader on the MacBook Pro, right?

(And even on 2021 MacBook Pros, I want to be able to remove the Jet Drive so I can use the SD card that I have for my voice recorde)

 

[Makosuke]

It's a funny coincidence that just two days ago I was wondering if anybody had updated one of these "flush fit" cards for the new MBPs, and a quick search didn't turn up anything. (Also, it's impressive how far storage like this has come--the old cards for long-discontinued models that came up when I was looking cost hundreds of dollars for fractions of the storage.)

Not that I actually need it, but it's nice to see the niche filled.

Although, the speed does seem a bit low, given that there are microSD cards that are faster than the rated spec on this (and only a hair more expensive), and I've seen benchmarks illustrating that the reader can go to at least 120MB/s as well. On paper, a good 512GB microSD card and a flush-fit adapter with an internal slot should outperform this (and be upgradeable) for ~$130 or so. We're talking about a $2000+ laptop here, it seems like they should have been more aggressive with the speed even if it raised the price a bit--at least max out the SD reader's capability.

 

[Digital Skunk]

The use case is for those of us who know we will pretty much never use the SD card slot. So for me, it's a perfect use of a port that would otherwise be completely neglected.

As for iClould, I don't use it, and never will. So that's not on the table for me.

Yup. Like I said. Very niche.

...in a world where you have safe, reliable, unlimited, high-speed WiFi everywhere you work.

Interestingly you only need two of those. We're talking about seldom used files here, not GBs of crucial data.

The Olympics and the war in Ukraine proves in many cases 1 will suffice.

 

[maerz001]

my 2012 self was exited for a second but nowadays I have every document saved on iCloud Drive, music and tv/movies streamed and photos in the iCloud. I am currently using 60 GB on my MBP ? even without a Time Machine backup, I wouldn't start crying, since everything is in the cloud anyway.

Icloud is convenient but compared to this 512 SD card the iCloud plan is more expensive after a year and download speeds usually even slower than this already slow SD card.

 

[ferko86]

This is perfect for Photos (dont like uploading everything to icloud).

 

[ikramerica]

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.

It’s an awful solution for time machine.

When someone steals your laptop, now what?

 

[ikramerica]

Am I the only one struggling to work out what they've actually updated here in these new(?) models that are being offered for the 14 and 16 inch MBPs, because there doesn't look to have been any change in either read/write speed or form factor from the 256Gb Jetdrive Lite 330 that I used to use in my late 2013 MBP which fits and mounts perfectly in the XD slot in my 2021 14" MBP.

Is this just a marketing push mentioning the new MBP models to remind people that JetDrive still exists?

They don’t stick out. Apple decided that in the new MBPs the inset depth should be different than their older models. Because nobody thought about how that 1mm difference was actually a big deal at Apple.

 

[torontotim]

It’s an awful solution for time machine.

When someone steals your laptop, now what?

I backup to Time Machine using my Synology NAS while at home. While on the road, I wouldn't mind using something like this as a Time Machine backup vs. having to remember to pull out my Thunderbolt drive and do a backup.

But I also keep all my files in the cloud on Google Drive. So it doesn't matter much to me if my laptop goes to the bottom of the ocean at any point in time. It's very rare that I would be working on files and not be connected to the Internet to keep the cloud copies in sync.

Still, if I was sitting in a hotel with crap wifi and my system went bonkers, I wouldn't mind the convenience of restoring from a local Time Machine backup on the SD card vs. reinstalling macOS and downloading gigabytes of data and apps.

Sure would be nice if Apple finally allowed MacBooks to backup to iCloud like all my other Apple devices.

 

[Tagbert]

I backup to Time Machine using my Synology NAS while at home. While on the road, I wouldn't mind using something like this as a Time Machine backup vs. having to remember to pull out my Thunderbolt drive and do a backup.

But I also keep all my files in the cloud on Google Drive. So it doesn't matter much to me if my laptop goes to the bottom of the ocean at any point in time. It's very rare that I would be working on files and not be connected to the Internet to keep the cloud copies in sync.

Still, if I was sitting in a hotel with crap wifi and my system went bonkers, I wouldn't mind the convenience of restoring from a local Time Machine backup on the SD card vs. reinstalling macOS and downloading gigabytes of data and apps.

Sure would be nice if Apple finally allowed MacBooks to backup to iCloud like all my other Apple devices.

I use BackBlaze for that offsite backup scenario. it's only $6/month for a single computer. Much more stable of a backup than GoogleDrive/iCloud. They are not really designed to be backup.

 

[axcess99]

This is actually not a bad idea. For most people their pictures and music take up a lot of space but really never need stellar disk performance when being accessed. Moving music and pictures to the SD disk would be pretty smart.

iPhoto and Music technically support this, but not well. It is just asking for headaches unless you literally just mean a bag of manually (un)organized folders and files

 

[Kuckuckstein]

Read and write speeds are abysmally slow. But does get you half a terabyte if you need it.

I’d pass and go for a modern SSD.

Absolutely, but they don’t dangle around and are with the device all the time.

I use one of these with my 2017 MacAir and it serves excellent to have your music library with you (for the non streamers), photo library, local copies of my cloud drives etc.

Things that fill, don’t need super fast read/write but would be nice to have with you at all times.

 

[zapmymac]

Purchased a BaseQi micro SD card holder that fits flush into the SD slot. I've stuck a 1TB Sandisk in there. Far more economical, surely.

Same here. I've got a 256GB. Also use Jettison app to assist in sleeping/waking.

 

[bassjunky]

Anecdotal, but I've been using an external Transcend 256GB TB1 for my boot on a 2011 27" for many years, still works great.

Edit: I realize this has nothing to do with this product, but I haven't ever had a problem with their products.

 

[mrow]

It's not a replacement for a larger "proper" SSD, but there are plenty of uses for a few hundred GB of cheap, if slow, storage that can be left in place as if it were an internal drive and used to store bulky, seldom updated files.

Relocating your "Media library" (whether that's tunes and movies or finished photos, videos etc. relevant to your work) to such a card is the obvious use.

Exactly. I used one of these JetDrives in my wife’s MacBook Air like 8 or 9 years ago when SSD prices were still insane. I put her iTunes and iPhoto libraries on it so the system drive was essentially empty. That MacBook Air is long gone but I still use the JetDrive in a really small USB SD card reader as a makeshift USB thumb drive.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Love how these are back after a 5-year hiatus.



2016-2021 aka the years of Jony Ive and his MacBook Pro madness age.

Add 2015 as that model you can upgrade the SSD easily !

 

[svish]

Though it is much slower than the internal SSD, it is a cheap way to increase storage capacity. Good Pricing

 

[Jakub Kasparek]

Any solution how to buy in europe? With shipping to EU is very expensive.

 

[steve62388]

Any solution how to buy in europe? With shipping to EU is very expensive.

Amazon.

 

[planteater]

my 2012 self was exited for a second but nowadays I have every document saved on iCloud Drive, music and tv/movies streamed and photos in the iCloud. I am currently using 60 GB on my MBP ? even without a Time Machine backup, I wouldn't start crying, since everything is in the cloud anyway.

iCloud is not a substitute for a backup. Hope you don't find out one day and regret it.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

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?

How about the fact that it’s marketed as an “expansion card”?

Sure it’s flush and I can keep it in all the time but why would I want to “expand” my fast storage with slow one?

 

[Nicole1980]

How about the fact that it’s marketed as an “expansion card”?

Sure it’s flush and I can keep it in all the time but why would I want to “expand” my fast storage with slow one?

Perhaps if you had read my previous posts, you would understand my use case for such a card.

Instead you ask a question that (for own use case at least) has already been discussed and answered.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

Perhaps if you had read my previous posts, you would understand my use case for such a card.

Instead you ask a question that (for own use case at least) has already been discussed and answered.

Yes, I did not read your previous posts because I was not responding to you or your use cases, I was merely commenting on the original article.

I took your advice however and perused the thread and all I have to say is you just come across as really combative over people dismissing this solution like they're specifically calling you stupid for liking it.
If it works for you that's awesome! I'm glad you have extra storage that can sit on the SD slot permanently but my argument was never "this is useless", it was "this is very misleading from a marketing standpoint".

See the problem I think is where I'm coming from the words "expansion card" carries a lot of weight; it's implying you're installing something on your machine that expands its storage in a seamless way and with no impact to performance.
Take the expansion card on the Xbox Series S/X for example, a little module you plug in and it adds to the storage pool of the internal SSD with near identical performance.
An SD card is nice and all but it's definitely a second class citizen: not only it's much much slower but it's also a separate volume.

So in my opinion while there's nothing wrong for a company to sell a low profile SD card that can reside inside a slot without the risk of snapping in half when you toss your laptop in a bag it's still very disingenuous to market it as an "expansion card".
It's not fraud or a scam or anything like that it's just very conveniently presenting something that while it has value on its own it doesn't have as much value as what the words used imply.

 

[cubbie5150]

Would using something like this to use as a Downloads folder/destination save writes to the internal SSD?

 

[usernames need to be uniq]

Although, the speed does seem a bit low, given that there are microSD cards that are faster than the rated spec on this (and only a hair more expensive), and I've seen benchmarks illustrating that the reader can go to at least 120MB/s as well. On paper, a good 512GB microSD card and a flush-fit adapter with an internal slot should outperform this (and be upgradeable) for ~$130 or so. We're talking about a $2000+ laptop here, it seems like they should have been more aggressive with the speed even if it raised the price a bit--at least max out the SD reader's capability.

Can you point to the benchmarks for the port speed? My understanding is that it is a UHS-II slot and there are write speeds getting close to 300MB/s for the best cards that were independently tested.

 

[usernames need to be uniq]

The UHS class isn't mentioned. 2021 MBP 14" & 16" work with up to UHS-II. But I'm guessing the Transcend 330 is only UHS-I which would be disappointing and definitely not worth a front page article.

I agree... those are USH-I speeds and the slot handles UHS-II card/speeds. Very surprising that the speed isn't faster.
Since I use the slot for uploading my photos from my camera, it wouldn't be installed on a permanent basis. It would be a good travel backup instead of a separate drive like I normally take. Just take the card out and hand carry it as a backup of last resort. Speed wouldn't be as important then.