How I miss the MacBook Pro Mid-2012 line and its removable RAM modules and lot’s of upgrades, right? Don’t you?
So, I lost my hopes when I bought my MacBook Pro 13 inches in 2013, with no option to upgrade RAM and no products available in the market to upgrade the 256GB SSD. After couple years, one company, OWC Digital manufactures and sells SSD cards that uses Apple’s proprietary connector. For me, living in Brazil, where we constantly US$ 1.00 >= R$ 3,00 (that time) was impracticable.
Back in 2019, I found a new piece of technology appears on eBay/Alibaba/MercadoLivre. An M.2 adapter to proprietary storage slot on Apple Board (and no, there is no name for this connector). I saw this miracle on Youtube first and after that, started to get into the nitty-gritty about unofficial storage upgrades for MacBook Pro.
The right MacBook with the right parts
I am lucky to be a proud owner of a Mac Book Pro 13" Late-2013, the first MacBook Pro release that supports PCIe 2.0 x2 with 4 channels connections, a lot of speed. Also, supports NVMe protocol (but it requires macOS 10.10.3 or later). With this setup, we can have modern storage in a mature MacBook.
We have PCIe 2.0 with NVMe… but we still have THE connector. Ah the Apple’s connector. But thanks to the Chinese creativity, We can find things like this:
With this little guy and a up-to-date macOS install, finally we got space… a lot of free space!
I don’t have pictures or step-by-step how-to do this, you can find a step-by-step guide on Youtube or I Fix it website.
Is it worth it?
Yes it worth! It worth A LOT! Nor only for the space, but speed. Apple’s SSD stick (Manufactured by SanDisk) has 600MB/s at top speed. I bought the 1TB Intel SSD 6 model 660p, with 1,800MB/s top speed.
Am I happy!? Sure!
Final thoughts
If you have an old MacBook, check if it is upgradable. This could extend the life of your equipment with a small and reusable investment.
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