WDB
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Post by WDB on May 4, 2021 7:28:55 GMT
Feeling a bit pleased with myself today. I bought my ‘early 2015’ MacBook Pro knowing that the 128GB SSD would eventually be a restriction. Using mainly online storage means it’s taken till now but recently it’s been increasingly hard to use because the system hasn’t had enough disk space for its own workings.
So I had a look around and found the Transcend Jetdrive 855 kit. For a little over £200 I got a 480GB SSD, a neat Thunderbolt enclosure and a pair of screwdrivers. The process is: use a utility to copy the entire SSD contents to the new SSD and make it bootable. Then open the MacBook using one of the screwdrivers, disconnect the battery (this is the fiddliest task) and remove the old SSD using the other screwdriver. Insert the new SSD from the enclosure, reconnect and close up.
Then boot and find I’ve selected the wrong partition option. But the system still detects the old SSD, now in the enclosure, so boot from that and run the utility again to format the new SSD, correctly this time. Run the copy again (takes an hour or two) unplug the enclosure, cross fingers and reboot. All good this time, and the whole thing is working appreciably faster now it has room to breathe — and a recent, higher-performance SSD too.
One thing that swayed me towards a MacBook in the first place was friends telling me theirs had gone on offering usable performance when Windows machines of similar age and spec had ground to a halt. This upgrade ought to see this one through a few more years — and I still have the old SSD in its enclosure as additional storage or an emergency boot drive. I like this kind of maintainability.
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Rob
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Post by Rob on May 4, 2021 9:18:59 GMT
Well done - going from 128GB will make a big difference. You will know you've paid extra for a 480GB NVMe SSD by going for this kit but you know it would work in your MacBook and it came with the caddy, screwdrivers, etc. You can now keep the old drive in the caddy. To store a lot of videos on my 256GB MacBook Pro, I put a shallow SD card adapter with a Micro SDcard in it. The SD card sits flush with the side of the MacBook. www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00QGLATK8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1A bit pricey but it was just for videos. My main Mac is a different machine. |
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WDB
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Post by WDB on May 4, 2021 9:36:35 GMT
That’s neat if I’m understanding it right: the adapter takes a micro-SD and connects it to the MacBook’s SD contacts but without protruding from the case as a full-size SD does. (A clunky feature that’s one of my few annoyances with the Pro.)
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Rob
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Post by Rob on May 4, 2021 9:39:55 GMT
That is exactly what it does. Because the MacBook SD card slot is not spring loaded you need to use a fingernail to get it out.
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Post by Humph on May 4, 2021 9:52:04 GMT
What do people actually do with all these "GBs" ? I don't seem to have the need of them, or indeed the patience to wonder if I do. By and large, if it doesn't need oil on it, it's of little concern to me.
😉
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WDB
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Post by WDB on May 4, 2021 11:57:16 GMT
In my case, it was less what I wanted than what the computer needed in order to do its own internal processing and let me get on with my work. Pictures and videos can take up a lot of space but they don’t need to live in the actual machine — easier and more secure to keep them in cloud storage where I can work on them from any device.
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Rob
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Post by Rob on May 4, 2021 12:37:42 GMT
Pictures and especially videos can take up a lot of room. I am currently scanning old photos for example and done maybe 1000ish and only at 300dpi (they are not the sharpest photos from a top end camera after all). Taking about 1GB for those and may more boxes to go.
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Rob
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Post by Rob on May 4, 2021 12:57:59 GMT
What do people actually do with all these "GBs" ? 😉 I also have a Windows 10 VM on my MacBook so that's taking up as much room as a full install of Windows 10. And a few apps on that VM too. Luckily my MacBook has 256GB storage but anything less important like the exercise videos are now on an SSD - wife used the videos when the gyms were closed for yoga, pilates. Thai chi, etc. |
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bpg
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Post by bpg on May 4, 2021 16:47:19 GMT
Has anyone used Ubuntu on a MacBook ?
You could partition your new space, WDB, and try Linux as a side project. Mint 20 GUI is very user friendly, not the horror show Ubuntu/Debian could be for some people many years ago.
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Rob
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Post by Rob on May 4, 2021 18:22:59 GMT
You could also install Oracle VirtualBox and install Ubuntu as a VM on that ti try it. But it won't be as nice to use as MacOS in my opinion nor run the native apps.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on May 4, 2021 20:07:32 GMT
Would an Ubuntu partition let me connect up an old SATA NAS drive I've been meaning to try to salvage some stuff from? Not sure the Mac has the hardware for it - although I have a USB SATA enclosure somewhere that the disks might fit in.
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bpg
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Post by bpg on May 4, 2021 20:21:12 GMT
I don't know anything about Mac hardware what I can say though is I have three drives in my 12 year old PC, 2 SSD and 1 mechanical drive which was originally formatted for Windows and partitioned.
Mint 19 & 20 have had no issues mounting and reading FAT32 and NTFS.
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Rob
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Post by Rob on May 4, 2021 21:17:00 GMT
A Mac can read FAT32 and NTFS without a problem. NAS enclosures however sometimes have their own filesystems - I know my Netgear one does. What NAS make/model is it?
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bpg
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Post by bpg on May 5, 2021 1:18:49 GMT
Sorry misread the NAS bit.i had an old WD NAS the network controller died, took out the disk put that in to a caddy, that worked too. Don't remember anything discussing about the formatting that's not to say all NAS are the same.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on May 5, 2021 6:25:51 GMT
The old disk is from a Buffalo NAS, bought in 2008, whose controller died in 2016. The disks inside seem sound but Buffalo’s proprietary file system makes reading them in anything else a challenge that a couple of local computer shops have failed to rise to.
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