Macbook Air 2017 SSD Upgrade Experimentation thread

After two days of ownership I decided to rip open my new MPA and see if the 2017 had the same ssd as the 2015.



Yes it does!

I ordered this adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073GVNPR2/?tag=macforums0e4-20

and this OEM SSD from Asus laptops: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VELD92U/?tag=macforums0e4-20

Theoretically I can get twice the speed with this compared to the SSD already in the MacBook Air.

Will report back Sunday to see if this works.

Welcome to our forums.

You had better hope that experiment of yours works.. considering you voided your Apple warranty in the process.

Are you nuts breaking open an expensive device like this?

Theoretically I can get twice the speed with this compared to the SSD already in the MacBook Air.

Click to expand...

And where is this assuming reliable and accurate information coming from??? That's quit a speed difference but I haven't checked on the stock MBAir's SSD speed or reviews if there ware any.




- Patrick
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pm-r said:

And where is this assuming reliable and accurate information coming from??? That's quit a speed difference but I haven't checked on the stock MBAir's SSD speed or reviews if there ware any.




- Patrick
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Technically my warranty is still valid since I did not break any warranty seals opening up the device. If this does work and my laptop has a fault with it during the one year warranty period I can simply swap the original drive in.

New Drive in a X99 based windows PC:



Old Drive:



I got my new ssd in the mail today. It is a OEM Lenovo drive.

OK, thanks for getting back to us. Obviously you knew what you were doing. I probably would not have attempted it but that's just me. Anyway you did a great job on it. However, we are not going to recommend others to try it. ;D

Interesting.

I hope you will do some real world tests on the old original SSD and then with the new one and post them after you're done.

I would be nice to see a real huge speed gain for your time and effort, and expenditures, not just some big theoretical figures that many seem to spout off.





- Patrick
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pm-r said:

Interesting.

I hope you will do some real world tests on the old original SSD and then with the new one and post them after you're done.

I would be nice to see a real huge speed gain for your time and effort, and expenditures, not just some big theoretical figures that many seem to spout off.





- Patrick
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Tomorrow I get the adapter and I have the whole day to test this.

As far as I know no one has tried this with a 2017 MBA. I don't know if there will be a hidden bottleneck with the MBA. Apple loves to make everything proprietary. If it is slower than the original apple drive or doesn't work at all I can return everything and get the MBA to 100% stock form with no signs of tampering.

As far as I know no one has tried this with a 2017 MBA.

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I'm actually quite surprised and pleased to discover that there's a company actually manufacturing a SSD Convert Card adapter that will work in Apple's proprietary world.






- Patrick
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Will report back with a drive speed test.

The write speed almost doubled but the read speed has some sort of a bottleneck.

What version of Black Magic software are yopu using?

There was a release a couple of months ago of Version 3.1 which is much more accurate for later and faster model SSDs and Flash Storage devices.


https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12

Nickco43 said:

After two days of ownership I decided to rip open my new MPA and see if the 2017 had the same ssd as the 2015.

Click to expand...

Yes...there was a very high likelyhood that they would be the same...since the 2017 MBA is just a speed-bumped 2015.

Congrats on the upgrade.

- Nick

That's cool. I thought it was all board mounted in the air. That means you can pop in a nice 2tb inside a MacBook air! awesome.

Steve Adams said:

That's cool. I thought it was all board mounted in the air. That means you can pop in a nice 2tb inside a MacBook air! awesome.

Click to expand...

Maybe the OP could upload his upgrade and details to the "upgrading" site: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com


I'm sure many others might be interested.




- Patrick
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Steve Adams said:

That's cool. I thought it was all board mounted in the air. That means you can pop in a nice 2tb inside a MacBook air! awesome.

Click to expand...

Very few SSDs meet the requirements. The largest SSD I have seen is 512GB.

Samsung XP941 (MZHPU128HCGM MZHPU256HCGL MZHPU512HCGL)
Samsung SM951 PCIE-AHCI (MZHPV128HDGM MZHPV256HDGL MZHPV512HDGL)
Kingston SHPM2280P2/ 240G/ 480G

pm-r said:

Maybe the OP could upload his upgrade and details to the "upgrading" site: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com


I'm sure many others might be interested.




- Patrick
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Click to expand...

I will send them an email.


I discovered a fault with the new SSD and Mac OS. When you close the lid and put the computer to sleep and then wake it the OS will freeze. You have to hard reboot it to get it to work again.

Ahhhh...crap. I see this happening with my sons mba. His only has 128gb. I am sure in the near future, they will have larger ones available.

Steve Adams said:

Ahhhh...crap. I see this happening with my sons mba. His only has 128gb. I am sure in the near future, they will have larger ones available.

Click to expand...

Which MBA model are we talking about? If it's an older model...upgrades may already be available.

- Nick