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So I bought a mid 2014 MacBook Pro apparently JUST BEFORE the early 2015 one was discreetly released. From what I've read so far the EARLY (not the new one) 2015 Mac can be upgraded easily, but mid 2014 is out of luck. Am I wrong? Is there any way I can get more than my horrible 128GB of storage? I am trying to do After Effects and other intensive tasks with 0-8 GB of available storage (it fluctuates a lot for no apparent reason). I really want more storage as it is essential for school. And yes I have external drives for storing large files, but I definitely need more room for my software to have some breathing room.

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  • Follow the instructions already provided to you. There are solutions that exist. That particular drive does not appear to support the 2014 model but I am sure they do exist
    – Ramhound
    Jun 9, 2015 at 17:10
  • Except for the fact that is not a solution... The only reason i'm here is I've already looked everywhere else.
    – Connor
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:44
  • @Connor. Ramhound's comment is actually a solution. He does actually answer your initial question. that it's not an easy upgrade. It's actually surprising you get any results/solutions considering the fact that you never actually mention basic information like your model number.
    – user431052
    Jun 9, 2015 at 21:42
  • Is there anything wrong with using an external HDD as a scratch disk or w/e After Effects calls it? using your SSD as a scratch disk will likely shorten it's lifespan significantly.
    – MonkeyZeus
    Jun 12, 2015 at 14:38

6 Answers 6

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According to this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6527754?start=0&tstart=0

MacBook Pro's haven't had a standard mSATA connection since 2013. This likely being the "easy upgrade" you mentioned. I can personally confirm this info since I've worked on several dozen (retail returned) MacBooks over the past year and a half. The recent ones don't have the "easy" mSATA upgrade.

mSATA's are incredibly universal and on par with the standard SSD pricing. Many ultrabooks use this connection and you can easily buy adapters for regular laptops.

We are talking about an Apple product though and it goes without saying that nothing is going to be standard or easy. That being said, a simple answer to your question is, no. The only way to upgrade your MacBook (or more recent ones) is to buy an uncommon PCIe x2 SSD. Which means it's going to be more expensive off the bat since it's not in "high" demand and even more so since the seller probably knows it's intended for a MacBook.

I recommend checking out Transcend's JetDrive since it's a comparable price to the ifixit link. (it's not out of stock, btw.) Except you get a couple extra goodies like an USB 3.0 enclosure for the drive you replace, tools, replacement guide, screws, rubber feet, etc... Most importantly, it looks like they offer a scan to confirm the proper upgrade for your specific model.

Here's the direct Amazon Store that Transcend forwards you to in the link above.

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    transcend is only for the 2013 and 2012
    – Connor
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:43
  • it gives me this after using their "quick finder" tool transcend-info.com/support/Compatibility/60344 so yeah none of their ssds are compatible
    – Connor
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:55
  • By compatible you mean they don't offer one's as big as you want them? Either way, You're questions been answered. My parting words; Don't buy a Mac and expect hardware, repairs, or upgrades to be inexpensive/universal. Additionally, strongly reconsider personal usage if JUST your software takes up 110+GB of data, as you claim. Going forward, if you expect to be able to use a computer for ~more complicated tasks like Video Editting, perhaps you should become more understanding of how much HDD space your going to use and need when making a $1000+ purchase.
    – user431052
    Jun 9, 2015 at 21:48
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    No, by compatible he means that they don't work. Apple used PCIe SSD's for the mid-2014 MacBooks, but they fiddled with the electrical interface so that they aren't standard. The kits from Transcend are for older MacBooks, and as far as I know they finally gave up on making a kit that works with the mid-2014 MacBooks. Nov 12, 2016 at 22:46
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There are 512GB and even 1TB SSDs for the late 2013 and mid 2014 MBP on ebay and the upgrade is easy, provided you are able to do a fresh install of OSx from USB or over the net. It´s difficult to get a good price though.

Now there are at least one chinese 3d party solution from Shenzhen Nuofang with 512GB drives for the MBP model A1502. They seem to use samsung ssd cards with some kind of custom made interface to fit the apple pcie connector. Ships with yosemite pre-installed. Speeds at least over 800 mb/s according to their screenshots. See link:

http://stores.ebay.com/Shenzhen-nuofang?_dmd=2&_nkw=ssd+a1502

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According to http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1262461 and http://blog.macsales.com/25878-owc-gets-1200mbs-from-ssd-in-2014-macbook-pro-with-retina-display, OWC was supposed to come out with SSDs for the mid-2014 Macbook in Q2 of 2015. As of today, they still haven't. Check out the comments on the Macsales page (linked above).

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Buy a "Nifty miniDrive" adapter (or analogue, there exist several) + microSD card of suitable size and speed for you.

Consider Sandisk (has 200gb card - maximum at the moment), Samsung (faster 128gb cards), Lexar (fastest 64gb cards) cards.

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It's 2018 and I think the answer to this question has changed.

Since the release of High Sierra there's been some support put in for NVMe drives. Read/write and boot-up work on 2013-2014 MBPs. The form factor is different but there's a Chinese company Sintech that makes various adapters to fix this issue.

I have a 2014 MacBookPro11,1 (13 inch, Mid 2014) and I bought the NGFF M.2 PCIE adapter that Sintech makes for mine. Amazon link is https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CWWAENG. I bought the Samsung 960 EVO 500GB to go with it. My total cost was about 190 USD. Contrast to OWC drives currently running for 250 USD and the Transcend one running for 300 USD.

Installation requires a little finesse, but ifixit covers the process well enough. My personal experience involved installing the new drive, having the web recovery fail, reinstalling the old drive, downloading the Mojave upgrade and following the usb bootable creation process, and then reinstalling the new drive and doing the Mojave install. I needed the longer screw provided in the adapter kit. I didn't need insulated tape for the connector. After installation, I enabled trim via trimforce.

I believe that you have to have installed High Sierra on the Mac at least once for the new hard drive to even detect. I followed through the install without any major glitches. According to other sources at MacRumors and StackExchange dated as recently as Aug 2018, there's supposedly an issue both with power management and sleep/wake with NVMe drives on 2014 MBPs. The latter supposedly requires either disabling hibernation or using a chip writer and a firmware hack (!) and I think the former is just something you have to live with.

I've not seen either of those issues. I don't know if that's because they improved things in Mojave, or if it was a "stars aligning" kind of thing. I left the computer unplugged and in sleep mode overnight for about 6 hours (which should have been time enough for 'deep sleep' or whatever that call it to kick in). Today it started up after without issue. It lost 5% battery life overnight, and appears to lose about 6% or so an hour no hard drive activity but screen left on at 2/5ths max brightness. I think that's roughly in line with my experience with the 128gb stock Apple drive.

UPDATE: Spoke too soon. I drained the battery under heavy load to see how it would act when it ran out of battery life. Came back with black screen and then eventually rebooted. The lid close sleep problem appears resolved though.

I have noticed that the installation and first 20 minutes of use of the computer were astonishingly slow. I would click on the next button in the Mac setup (post-install, so it shouldn't have been on the usb) and it would spin for a solid 30 seconds to a minute before it went to the next screen. After that my initial use at the desktop was enough to make me think there was a hard drive issue. Within the course of time it took to give it a test reboot and install Blackmagic to benchmark, it appeared to have corrected itself. I can't say whether that's a Mojave issue or a hard drive issue. Regardless, after it finished doing whatever it was doing, it seems resolved. Cold boot time is roughly 8 seconds on a virgin os install. I don't know if that's good or bad for Mojave. I installed APFS and case sensitive, but not encrypted. I also didn't enable file vault. I may do either/both of those in the future, but I don't know if they can cause issues.

Blackmagic pegs the drive at 1377.7 MB/s write and 1497.4 MB/s read. I understand that the drive can do faster, but is supposedly PCIe bound at this point, so that's about the best it can do in the laptop. It's more than good enough for me, though I didn't think to test the apple ssd for comparison's sake. An internet search has it at about half that for the 256gb version, so that's an impressive improvement.

This is all personal experience so it should only be valued as such, but since no one has really talked about this in the last two months, I figured I should share.

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Seems like the best and cheapest DIY option is the drives that Shenzhen nuofang is offering. Here is link to their eBay store (shipping from China) Shenzhen nuofang eBay store

They offer a replacement 512GB SSD option for late 2013 mid 2014 MacBook pro and Air which is for $260 and that is the cheapest option available out there, but make sure you read their instructions and follow everything carefully when replacing the drive yourselves. I haven't done it yet, but ordering one in a day or two. It sux that this is actually a little more expensive than a 1TB M.2 SSD (amazon.com) which most PC laptops use so still paying double as a MAC user, but considering all other impossibilities around these machines in recent years - it is still a good deal! Any other options (and there are almost none) like the drives MCE Tech offers are mad expensive and run for like double that. It makes me really annoyed that nowadays with all the technological possibilities out there companies like Apple try in such sneaky ways to rip clients off with having adequate storage which should be a basic thing when buying a system.

When replacing the SSD if you have a MacBook Pro just follow the instructions here: MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Mid 2014 SSD Replacement

The other option is to use the Transcend JetDrive Lite 330 which I have had since I got my MacBook a couple years ago in the 128Gb version. Transcend recently came up with a 256GB version which sells for $150 on amazon.com This way you don't have to see with hardware operations, etc. The drive has served me well and occasionally (maybe happened 2-3 times) the computer wouldn't recognize it, but a shut down fixes that. Only inconvenience is that it occupies your card reader so if you use a lot of flash memory cards you'll have to constantly swap the cards, but in most cases is a great solution.

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  • The seller you suggest, already suggested, a year ago. Since you provided links, but failed to include all the relevant information like you should within the answer itself, I fail to see how this answer adds anything the other answer doesn't already offer.
    – Ramhound
    Nov 29, 2016 at 18:38

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