MacBook Air 2015: which replacement 1TB SSD?

[emendelson]

A few years ago I upgraded a 2015 MacBook Air to a 1 TB Samsung 970EVOPlus, using the long version of the Sintech adapter. I've now got another MacBook Air (also 2015), and want to upgrade its SSD to 1 TB, and I wonder if there are better alternatives out there that I should be looking at. If anyone can suggest a different model (or recommend getting the same one), I'll be grateful.

 

[EugW]

I suggest you post in the MacBook Pro thread here:

Upgrading 2013/2014 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

This thread is about upgrading MacBook Airs & Macbook Pros (2013-2015) with new high speed and/or high capacity NVMe SSDs. This thread was one of the first to talk about MacBook Pro NVMe SSD upgrades on Macrumors, and was started by user "maxthackray", which we can thank and give tribute for...

forums.macrumors.com

One popular one recently has been the SK Hynix P31 Gold.

 

[MBAir2010]

my Fledging feather is still working on the older MBair
while
OWC sells these for $160 and ships word wide-ish, they are PCIe 3.1 x4 NVMe SSD capable of performing up to 2382MB/
Western Digital is a better option for pricing and available in stores.

 

[EugW]

my Fledging feather is still working on the older MBair
while
OWC sells these for $160 and ships word wide-ish, they are PCIe 3.1 x4 NVMe SSD capable of performing up to 2382MB/
Western Digital is a better option for pricing and available in stores.

If that picture is accurate, it's a generic third party drive (with an Apple connector), running a Silicon Motion 2263XT. That's a controller for low end DRAM-less SSDs. One example of this is the Lexar NM610. Another is the Patriot P300 (some of them).

Lexar NM610 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Responsive and Efficient DRAMless Storage

Lexar’s NM610 dishes out multi-GBps performance on the low

www.tomshardware.com

When we wrote to Lexar’s NM610, it sustained a speed of about 1.7 GBps until the write cache filled. Once it did, it had written over 136GB of data. Beyond that, with very inconsistent results fluctuating from about 1 GBps down to 125 MBps, write speed averaged about 275 MBps.

If all that is needed is lots of storage, then it's fine, but if performance is a concern, there are much better options out there.

The good news with this controller is that its max power consumption is relatively low.

 

[StoneJack]

Just put another Samsung, they are quite good

 

[emendelson]

Thank you! Will do.

 

[emendelson]

Just put another Samsung, they are quite good

I think that's what I'll do. The SK hynix sounds very good, but the Samsung seems slightly better, and probably worth the extra cost. The Fledgling feather, judging by photos of it, is just a cheap stock Intel or other second-string SSD stuck in an adapter. Thanks for responding.

 

[MBAir2010]

I think that's what I'll do. The SK hynix sounds very good, but the Samsung seems slightly better, and probably worth the extra cost. The Fledgling feather, judging by photos of it, is just a cheap stock Intel or other second-string SSD stuck in an adapter. Thanks for responding.

that drive was super cheap and available quickly when 2 Aprils ago when the world shut down.
i realized this year that drive can come apart, which might be handy in a few years!
now we are back to normal, get the drive you feel is right.

 

[EugW]

I think that's what I'll do. The SK hynix sounds very good, but the Samsung seems slightly better, and probably worth the extra cost. The Fledgling feather, judging by photos of it, is just a cheap stock Intel or other second-string SSD stuck in an adapter. Thanks for responding.

The SK Hynix uses much less power than the Samsungs in general, yet maintains excellent speeds.

 

[StoneJack]

The SK Hynix uses much less power than the Samsungs in general, yet maintains excellent speeds.

View attachment 1943177

View attachment 1943178

Do you know which drives are used by Apple?

 

[EugW]

Do you know which drives are used by Apple?

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that while the OEM Apple SSDs for the 2015 MBP are made by Samsung, it's a non-standard implementation, and I'm not just talking about the connector. On of the flip side, none of the standard Samsung drives behave the same as OEM Apple SSDs in the 2015 MBP. So, going with a standard Samsung drive will not be an advantage over other drive brands in this regard. If you want it to behave as an OEM drive, you must buy an OEM drive.

Furthermore, even if you go with an OEM Apple drive, if you choose the wrong model, it still won't behave like a normal OEM Apple drive for the 2015 MBP.

 

[StoneJack]

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that while the OEM Apple SSDs for the 2015 MBP are made by Samsung, it's a non-standard implementation, and I'm not just talking about the connector. On of the flip side, none of the standard Samsung drives behave the same as OEM Apple SSDs in the 2015 MBP. So, going with a standard Samsung drive will not be an advantage over other drive brands in this regard. If you want it to behave as an OEM drive, you must buy an OEM drive.

Furthermore, even if you go with an OEM Apple drive, if you choose the wrong model, it still won't behave like a normal OEM Apple drive for the 2015 MBP.

Good suggestion. Probably a firmware is different (rather than a hardware). In theory, if one has OEM drive firmware, maybe it is possible to flush drive firmware to OEM (though I never heard of such cases). I made a number of Hackintoshes, and drives I routinely use (and most compatible) are probably Samsung and Kingston SSDs, never had any complaints (right now I am typing this on Samsung 1TB M2 SSD drive installation). I found HP and cheap Chinese SSDs to be not reliable and risky. I'd suggest Samsung drive for OEM replacement.

 

[xboxbml]

I like my ADATA setup..not the most power efficient but works well.

 

[Hillionaire]

Has anyone tried using WD green SN350 1TB on mac book air late 2015?