MacBook Air wasn't intended to be expanded or upgraded, but it turns out that with a little effort you can replace the SSD yourself. This will significantly increase the laptop's storage size and often its performance. Another common reason that requires installing a new SSD is that it has broken down. In any case, replacing the SSD on a MacBook Air is easy and the procedure remains the same.
Preparation
To install a new SSD you will need a few things:
- a new, replaceable solid-state drive compatible with your existing laptop model;
- special screwdrivers (Torch 5T and Pentalobe);
- 2-3 small containers for temporary storage of screws.
The process of replacing the SSD on a MacBook Air is fairly simple, although it does involve disassembling and reassembling the Mac. It should be kept in mind that this method applicable only to laptops, period warranty service which have already ended. Replacement hardware may void the warranty, so if it is still valid, you need to contact support or an Apple store, where everything necessary will be done by professionals.
Step 1: Check compatibility
First of all, you should make sure that the SSD is compatible with specific model MacBook Air. This usually depends on the year of manufacture of the device, so it is important to know it. This information You can get it from the About This Mac menu. Something like “MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2012)” or a similar message will appear on the screen.
Once you have determined the exact model name and year of manufacture, you can find a compatible solid state drive on online retail sites such as Amazon.
Step 2: SSD selection
Selection of brands and types solid state drives large and the user can follow his preferences. An example is Transcend's 240GB upgrade kit. Users love it for several reasons: good price, fast performance, excellent reviews, good warranty, and a complete upgrade kit that includes a case for the old SSD and the screwdrivers needed to finish the job. Other brands also offer similar package solutions.
Of course, you are absolutely free to buy another compatible SSD that is not part of the kit. You just need to get the appropriate screwdrivers and ensure that the drive and Mac are compatible.
Other drives can be connected using an SSD adapter. The MacBook Air must be released no later than 2012, since since then Apple has introduced encryption of data flows between solid state drive And motherboard.
Step 3: Backup
Before replacing the SSD on your Macbook Air, you need to create a copy of the drive. Experts recommend at least setting up backup Time Machine, and some more sophisticated users combine this measure with direct disk cloning tools SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. The only exception is when the disk has completely failed or is missing - obviously there is nothing to copy here.
Having connected an external drive, you need to go to the system settings menu, select the Time Machine option and specify the recording location backup copy.
This step should not be skipped. If a backup is not created, there will be nothing to restore, and new disk will not contain the required data. This is not something you would want to experience yourself. Using Time Machine also has the benefit of being able to perform a clean install of the operating system on the new SSD and then restore your Mac from the backup.
Step 4: Replace the drive
Now comes the fun part - opening the case and replacing the MacBook Air SSD with a new one. For this you will need boxes for screws, since you will have to deal with fasteners different sizes and types. It is better to sort fasteners by size and installation location.
This part of the process requires some skill. Users with an electronics background will likely be at ease, but others will want to read the manual for details on how to proceed. Instead of reinventing the wheel, experts recommend familiarizing yourself with detailed instructions on the iFixIt website as they are well explained, detailed and comprehensive.
The main thing to do is to disconnect the laptop from the power source, unscrew the bottom panel and remove it, disconnect the internal battery, and then change the SSD. According to iFixIt, the difficulty of replacing a 13" MacBook Air SSD is rated as moderate, but according to experts, anyone with patience and the ability to follow instructions can easily complete the job, even if they are a beginner.
Instructions for replacing SSD
To replace the SSD you must:
- Remove the screws on the bottom of the MacBook Air 13 and place them in separate boxes according to their size, type, and installation location.
- Remove the bottom panel. Discharge static electricity before touching internal components.
- Disconnect the internal battery. To do this, take the plastic holder attached to the battery connectors and pull it towards the front edge of the laptop. Don't forget about this, as well as the fact that it will need to be connected again after installation is complete.
- Remove the SSD by first unscrewing the screw that holds it in place. The device is located in the center, directly above the battery.
- Install the new SSD, secure it with a screw, and then connect the internal battery.
- Place the bottom cover and secure it.
Once everything is back in place, you can begin installing the software.
Step 5: X and Data Recovery
The procedure described here is slightly different from the sequence of steps indicated in some other technical manuals. In this case, an empty solid-state drive is installed, which then requires OS installation and data recovery. Others advise copying the contents of the drive before replacing the SSD in your MacBook Air. Cloning ahead of time is often the best approach, but if the drive fails, this is not possible as it becomes completely inoperable, as evidenced by the question mark on boot and the Apple hardware test.
Luckily, having a Time Machine backup allows you to perform installation and recovery differently. If you prefer the cloning method, Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper are applications that will do the job perfectly.
Data recovery procedure
The first option involves two steps: performing a clean installation of the operating system using a bootable flash drive, and then restoring the Time Machine backup during installation. It works great. Please remember that you can begin restoring a MacBook Air SSD backup immediately after a clean installation of Mac OS X.
To do this, connect the disk with the backup data and turn on the laptop while holding the Command+R buttons. On the utilities screen, you must select “Restore Backup” and click “Continue.” Having specified the disk with the copy, you need to select its date and time. Once the copying process is complete, the laptop will reboot.
You can also try using Time Machine directly. But this means that you have to manually create the recovery partition again, and you may encounter errors EFI partition. These problems can be avoided by first performing a clean Mac installation OS X
Once the operating system and data have been restored, the laptop is ready to use. regular work with a new SSD.
One of the most worrying problems for computer and laptop users is the malfunction hard drive. All data on it may be lost if the necessary measures are not taken in time.
When should you replace your Macbook hard drive?
It is not difficult to independently determine the malfunction of the HDD or SSD of your Macbook if you know the main signs of problems. If you notice any of the following, try to copy important data to another media or cloud storage and contact Macsouls - we will quickly replace the SSD or HDD on your Macbook Pro and supply a new SSD for your MacBook Air.
- Most often, the laptop freezes when working with files located on the disk. If your Macbook freezes when you try to record new file or save the changes to the old one, then most likely HDD has become unusable and must be replaced.
- Critical hard drive problems disk will cause your laptop to display a folder icon with a question mark when turned on and refuse to boot the system.
- If your Macbook has an HDD installed, it may begin to make uncharacteristic sounds - squeaking, grinding, clicking. All these symptoms are a reason to contact a service center.
Replacing HDD with SSD at Macsouls service center
Today the most common hard disks HDD and SSD format. Older Macbooks have HDDs, but they can be replaced with safer, more reliable and modern solid-state hard drives (SSDs). They are not afraid of shaking and do not suffer from mechanical wear, since they do not have mechanical parts.
At Macsouls service center you can replace your old HDD with SSD for Mac. New SSD For MacBook Pro You'll immediately love its quiet operation and less tendency to overheat compared to its older counterpart.
How is MacBook Pro ssd replaced in Macsouls?
If you contact us because of problems related to the operation of your laptop, the first thing the technician will do is conduct a free diagnostic to determine the cause of the problem. The engineer will then use special plastic tools to remove the case of your Macbook, disconnect the old drive, and connect the new one. Usually this operation takes no more than half an hour.
Benefits of MacSouls
- Our service center always has hard drives from different manufacturers in stock.
- We make replacements hard drives HDD/SSD on MacBook Air/Pro/Pro Retina of all modifications.
- We guarantee proper work hard disk, since we work only with original spare parts.
- All of our employees are qualified and experienced Apple equipment repair specialists.
The new hard drive will operate silently and will not heat up.
In the basic configuration McaBook Pro Apple sets hard drives to 5400 rpm. And their performance with modern operating systems Mac OS X (10.6-10.8) leaves much to be desired. And it’s not for nothing that Apple is gradually but confidently moving to installing SSD drives in all laptops.
We think it's time to make your favorite MacBook even better. You just need to install it SSD drive. And so that you are not confused by the limited capacity of the ssd, you can install a second hard drive in place of the DVD drive.
What laptop models is this solution suitable for? — Yes, to almost all MacBooks and MacBook Pros except MacBook Pro Retina
| SSD 120Gb | SSD 240Gb | SSD 500Gb | SSD 1Tb | SSD 2Tb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9,000 rub. | 12,000 rub. | 20,000 rub. | 55,000 rub. | RUB 94,600 |
In laptops, a combination of read/write speeds from/to the hard drive at a disk spindle speed of 5400 rpm. does not even reach 50 Mb/sec. A 7200 rpm disk will revive your MacBook almost twice: the read/write speed can fluctuate between 80...105 MB/sec.
It is worth noting that there are also hybrid rigid drives from Seagate, which are designed with a 7200 rpm hard drive with a 16 MB data cache and an 8 GB SSD drive. With such a “combined” drive, the read/write speed can increase by another 5-7% compared to a conventional 7200 rpm drive.
The read/write performance of SSD drives varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and from model to model. In addition, prices for SSD drives have not yet reached a level comparable to conventional hard drives. The price is gradually falling, and even top-end ssds with a capacity of 500 and 960GB are approaching $1 per 1GB of storage.
Since Mac OS X is a very compact operating system, and comes with most necessary programs The total volume on the disk usually does not exceed 30-50GB. You can safely look at an ssd with a capacity of 120GB or more.
Although, in our opinion, it is already worth considering an ssd with a capacity of 180GB or more.
Precisely because the volume of an ssd, combined with its price, limits most users to choosing to use an ssd, we suggest you consider the option high speed ssd and good capacity hdd installed in place of the DVD drive.
For upgrade Apple Mac Book Pro 2011-2012 model year, we will need 3 screwdrivers: torx 6, torx 8 and a Philips 00 or 000 Phillips screwdriver.
Remember! Before disassembling any device, you should remove any residual static electricity from yourself.
On the bottom cover, unscrew 10 screws, 3 of which are longer.
This is what the MacBook Pro 13 looks like from the inside
Before changing anything in the laptop configuration, you MUST disconnect the battery from the motherboard. We don’t want to start a repair with you and replace the system board after a short circuit, do we?
We install an SSD drive in place of the standard “slow” hard drive, and we can put the old drive in Optibay in place of the DVD drive. In our case, we installed a new disk with a capacity of 750GB at 7200 rpm in Optibay, in order to increase the speed when accessing user data, which we plan to store on the hdd.
Unscrew the two screws on the plate that holds the hard drive.
We transfer 4 screws (torx 8) around the perimeter of the “old” hard drive to the SSD drive.
We install the ssd in place of the system disk and secure it with a bracket and two screws.
We install the hard drive into the Optibay and be sure to screw it on the back side with two screws.
Remove the optical drive.
We need to disconnect 5 cables.
We do this very carefully.
Disable
- hard drive cable
- optical drive cable
- WiFi cable
- camera cable
- speaker cable
Unscrew the speaker and disconnect the antennas from Wi-Fi module and put the speaker aside.
DVD superdrive. Unscrew the three screws and pull it out.
We rearrange the data cable and mounting bracket from the DVD drive to optibay, observing the installation direction of the bracket.
Install optibay with hard drive in place of the DVD drive.
We reinstall the plastic speaker bar and connect the antennas to the Wi-Fi module.
We connect the cables and cables in reverse order to system board. And connect the battery.
Close and screw the bottom cover.
We install the system from an external boot drive or through the system Mac recovery OS X via the Internet (using the Cmd+R combination when booting the computer).
Now, the owner has at his disposal a very fast Apple MacBook Pro from 2011: the system itself and all programs launch several times faster than with a standard hdd. The system responds instantly. With a significant amount open applications There is no freezing or freezing of the “spinning colored candy”. Programs that use caching of working data work with large files without any delay. And when processing very large amounts of information, the execution time was reduced (according to the laptop owner) by 2-3 times.
It is worth noting once again that the hard drive is limited by the physical ability to read/write to spinning metal plates. Therefore his " throughput» does not exceed 115 Megabytes/sec. (best case scenario). There are no mechanical elements in the ssd, so the read/write speed on the ssd can reach 550 megabytes/sec. There is an option to theoretically increase this value to 1.2 Gigabytes/sec., but for this you need to use an external hardware RAID array that is NOT system disk, connected at best via a Thunderbolt bus of 10 Gigabit/s (or 1.25 Gigabytes/s) and exchanging data with another similar RAID array via the same Thunderbolt bus.
If you are an Apple owner Mac Pro— you can install four or more SSD drives, make a large RAID array (but keep in mind that it will not be hardware, but software, if you do not use a special RAID controller). And even in this case, you can achieve theoretical data transfer rates of up to 750 Megabytes/sec (which corresponds to a data transfer speed of 6 Gigabit/sec on the sata bus).
In the next article we will tell you how to make Fusion Drive yourself on an Apple laptop with two or more hard drives installed. And how, in our practical opinion, does Fusion Drive differ from the operation of a conventional SSD+HDD combination.
The article was prepared based on the results of repair work at the MacFix Service Center.
The cost of installing an SSD on a MacBook in our service center
| SSD 120Gb | SSD 240Gb | SSD 500Gb | SSD 1Tb | SSD 2Tb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9,000 rub. | 12,000 rub. | 20,000 rub. | 55,000 rub. | RUB 94,600 |
If you have already changed the HDD, that is, a regular hard drive, of your MacBook to an SSD, that is, a solid-state drive (and you succeeded), then it will be superfluous to tell you how much faster the laptop becomes after such an upgrade.
However, as it turned out, even in such a not at all complicated upgrade, you can do things wrong if you don’t have the proper experience. In this regard, about one mistake that the author of this post first managed to make, and then had to fix it when he decided to change the HHD to an SSD in his work MacBook. By the way, regarding Apple repair issues in Kyiv, this link will tell you and help you.
In general, the essence of the fable is that the operating room Mac system OS, unlike Windows, does not automatically enable the TRIM command for newly installed solid-state drives. However, if your MacBook was originally equipped with an SSD, then when you replace it (for example, with a larger drive), TRIM will already be enabled by default.
What is TRIM? In short, TRIM is special team, which is sent by drivers when any file is deleted file system SSD disk controller. Having received this command, the controller “understands” which data stored on the SSD is no longer needed and background clears them, freeing memory blocks for new data. This is one of the specific features of flash memory. And in this way the data is in blocks SSD memory are rewritten at approximately the same speed as on HDDs, in which data is rewritten according to a different principle (new ones are written “on top” of old ones without preliminary cleaning).
Another thing is that not all operating systems support the TRIM command. And, as in my case, the user finds out about this after the disk replacement has begun and after an “unclear problem” has arisen.
Therefore, if you are planning a similar event, I recommend that you first check whether this same TRIM team works there.
You can do this as follows:
- Click the Apple icon (in the upper left corner of the screen) and in the menu click “ About this Mac «;
- In the next window, click the button “ System report «;
- in the left part of the window that opens, find and click “ Hardware " and then in the list - " SATA/SATA Express «;
- now let's scroll right side up to the line " TRIM support «;
- if we see nearby " Yes", it means the command is enabled if it says " No“, then TRIM must be enabled separately.
How to enable TRIM on MacBook:
First, let’s double-check that you are logged into your laptop with administrator rights. After that:
- launch Terminal (you can simply find it through Spotlight);
- recruiting a team sudo trimforce enable and click Enter ;
- enter password that account, which is on this moment used, and press Enter ;
- the system will ask you to confirm your actions, read the request, write y and press again Enter ;
- now the system will ask for permission to reboot - write again y and click Enter .
After this, all that remains is to wait until the laptop reboots, and you can consider the job done. But for the sake of order it’s better to go to “ System report" and check if TRIM is working. And then you can change the disk. Read more about the features of replacing components and repairing Apple equipment, in particular Macbooks, iPads and iPhones of any model and year of manufacture here - http://wefixit.com.ua/remont-iphone.
Fair, not overpriced and not underestimated. There should be prices on the Service website. Necessarily! without asterisks, clear and detailed, where technically possible - as accurate and concise as possible.
If spare parts are available, up to 85% of complex repairs can be completed in 1-2 days. Modular repairs require much less time. The website shows the approximate duration of any repair.
Warranty and responsibility
A guarantee must be given for any repairs. Everything is described on the website and in the documents. The guarantee is self-confidence and respect for you. A 3-6 month warranty is good and sufficient. It is needed to check quality and hidden defects that cannot be detected immediately. You see honest and realistic terms (not 3 years), you can be sure that they will help you.
Half the success in Apple repair is the quality and reliability of spare parts, so a good service works with suppliers directly, there are always several reliable channels and your own warehouse with proven spare parts for current models, so you don’t have to waste extra time.
Free diagnostics
This is very important and has already become a rule of good manners for service center. Diagnostics is the most difficult and important part of the repair, but you don't have to pay a penny for it, even if you don't repair the device based on its results.
Service repairs and delivery
Good service values your time, so he offers free shipping. And for the same reason, repairs are carried out only in the workshop of a service center: they can be done correctly and according to technology only in a prepared place.
Convenient schedule
If the Service works for you, and not for itself, then it is always open! absolutely. The schedule should be convenient to fit in before and after work. Good service works on weekends and holidays. We are waiting for you and working on your devices every day: 9:00 - 21:00
The reputation of professionals consists of several points
Company age and experience
Reliable and experienced service has been known for a long time.
If a company has been on the market for many years and has managed to establish itself as an expert, people turn to it, write about it, and recommend it. We know what we are talking about, since 98% of incoming devices in the service center are restored.
Other service centers trust us and refer complex cases to us.
How many masters in areas
If there are always several engineers waiting for you for each type of equipment, you can be sure:
1. there will be no queue (or it will be minimal) - your device will be taken care of right away.
2. you give your Macbook for repair to an expert in the field of Mac repairs. He knows all the secrets of these devices
Technical literacy
If you ask a question, a specialist should answer it as accurately as possible.
So that you can imagine what exactly you need.
They will try to solve the problem. In most cases, from the description you can understand what happened and how to fix the problem.
Loading...
