How to change the hard drive on a MacBook Pro: detailed instructions? Replacing the HDD with a fast SSD in the Apple MacBook Pro What needs to be done to replace the ssd on a mac.

If you have already changed the HDD, that is regular hard disk, your MacBook on SSD, that is, on a solid-state drive (and you did it), then it would be superfluous to tell 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, as opposed to Windows, for newly installed solid state drives does not automatically enable the TRIM command. 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 a special command that is sent by drivers when deleting any file 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 specific features flash memory. And in this way, data is rewritten to SSD memory blocks at approximately the same speed as on HDDs, in which data rewriting is performed 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 scroll to the right side 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. About the features of component replacement and repair Apple technology, in particular Macbooks, iPads and iPhones of any model and year of manufacture, more details here - http://wefixit.com.ua/remont-iphone.

This page provides step-by-step instructions that detail how to replace your old HDD MacBook Pro on new.

First you need to prepare the necessary tools: a small Phillips screwdriver and a size 6 star screwdriver. When choosing a hard drive in a showroom, check that it has a sata interface and a 2.5 form factor.

Step-by-step instructions “Replacing the hard drive in a MacBook Pro”

Preparatory stage

The first step is to turn off the laptop, unplug MagSafe and remove the battery. The battery needs to be removed not only because you need to turn off the power to the laptop, but also because you need to remove the screws in the battery compartment.

At stage 1, you need to unscrew the 3 screws that hold the compartment cover with the strips using a Phillips screwdriver random access memory MacBook. The bar is easy to remove - set it aside.

At stage 3, the most entertaining procedure awaits - unscrewing the screws in the outer part of the case. There are 18 of them in total: 4 - on the bottom, 4 - at the end on the right, 4 - at the end on the left and 2 - near the display hinge.

Now things have reached the most difficult stage. After you have unscrewed all the screws and screws, the keyboard cover can be detached. But problems may arise. On the opposite side of the display, the cover is held in place by several latches. Try moving the cover, if it doesn’t work, pry it off with a thin flat-head screwdriver.

Be extremely careful at this stage, as there is a high risk of breaking the latches, bending the aluminum bottom or warping the plastic of the lid.

As soon as the cover comes off, do not rush to remove it from the almost disassembled MacBook. The fact is that the lid with motherboard connects a thin ribbon wire that needs to be disconnected. This is very simple to do: you need to lift the keyboard cover up as far as the cable length allows. You will immediately see it and understand how to disconnect the wire.

At stage 6 you will need to disconnect the old hard drive. It is located at the bottom left. First, carefully unscrew and remove the thin bar securing the hard drive, pressing the screw by the silicone “ears” against the computer case. After the bar is removed, you can remove the screw by disconnecting from the sata on top. The silicone “ears” need to be unscrewed from the old disk and screwed to the new one. The screw seems to hang on them, and during a fall or impact, the rubber suspension softens the mechanical force.

Finally you need to install new disk, doing everything in reverse order.

As you can see, the replacement procedure hard drive MacBook Pro can be done at home! If you can’t do it or don’t have the skills and time, contact our service center; you can see the price list.

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 directly with suppliers, 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 We value your time, which is why we offer 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 to Macbook repair 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.

Online store of spare parts and tools for Apple.
Today we will tell you how to save money by upgrading the SSD drive of all Mac computers after 2013. As you know, OWC has released new disks with a capacity of up to 1 TB with PCIe interface and a proprietary Apple connector. Disk speeds for this protocol are not great: up to 763 MB/sec read and 446 MB/sec write, but PCIe 2.0 allows you to achieve much high speeds. And the price for 480GB is almost 30,000 rubles with delivery from the USA, and in Moscow from 44,000 rubles.

Recently Kingston company released PCIe 2.0 SSD drives with M.2 connector. Food is the same as Mac computers, but the connector is different. The task was set, the drawings were drawn, months of waiting and required adapter already in our office. All that remains is to install the disk through the adapter and carry out testing.

Brief instructions for SSD installation Kingston M.2 MacBook Retina 13" 2015.

Step 1
- unscrew 10 Pentalobe screws *1.2 with a screwdriver
- please note that the screws differ in shape and length, during the assembly process, return everything to its place

Step 2
- remove the plastic cover from the battery connector

Step 3
- disconnect the battery cable from the motherboard with a spatula

Step 4
- now that motherboard de-energized, unscrew the T5 screw that secures the standard SSD drive


Step 5
- carefully remove the SSD at a slight angle

Step 6
- prepare a new larger SSD with an adapter and insert it into the connector, it fits perfectly

Step 7
- install our disk with the adapter and assemble the laptop in reverse order


Step 8

- install clean OS X from a flash drive and test the new disk

After installing the operating system, we pass the BlackMagic Disk Speed ​​Test. Windows results in the screenshot. The write speed at some points reached 561Mb/sec, and the read speed over 1Gb/sec. What did all this give us? A new 256Gb SSD disk for Mac PCIe devices of the latest generations costs from 25,000 rubles, and it will be a disk without any warranty, since Apple does not sell such disks, it will be a disassembled or used disk. We, using a magic adapter, installed a Kingston SHPM2280P2/240G 240GB drive (price on Yandex Market at the date of publication from 11,730 rubles). Total savings of over 10,000 rubles, taking into account the cost of the adapter, as well as a 3-year manufacturer’s warranty on the SSD drive.

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Apple has always been expensive when it comes to pricing storage in its devices. In both the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, every step to increase the storage capacity costs a pretty penny. And gigabytes from Apple are significantly more expensive than the market average. There is no doubt about it, these are usually very fast gigabytes, and you don’t have to particularly regret overpaying. And yet sometimes the toad strangles. And you buy the option with a smaller drive. You hope to squeeze in and somehow get by. But you always, absolutely always face a lack of volume.

In the case of iPhone and iPad problem partly, and on relatively old MacBooks (before 2016) you can change the SSD. But in case of using original components This is a very expensive pleasure. For example, a 256 GB drive will cost 30 thousand rubles if you buy a new one, and 18-20 thousand for a used one. It bites, you know. Meanwhile, “just an SSD” of this size is sold for 9-10 thousand. For 16-18 thousand you can get a 512 gigabyte model. The proprietary nature of the Apple connector is overcome with the help of an adapter, which costs about 1000 rubles on Aliexpress, and 2-3 thousand in Russian shops.

The autopsy showed...

I'll tell you about mine own experience with a MacBook Pro 13, model Early 2015. I got it with a 128 gigabyte SSD, which, in general, was enough, but still somehow itched - what if I need to edit some kind of incendiary video, but there’s not enough space? For some reason I didn’t want to spend 30 thousand. But with non-native SSDs, everything is not so simple. The fact is that Apple has its own problems, because of which disks from other manufacturers appear operating system only after dancing with a tambourine, turning on TRIM also requires shamanism, and there are also problems with hibernation, which has to be turned off.

In particular, such overlays occur with the Samsung 960 EVO, which is often purchased to upgrade MacBooks. I didn't want to deal with something like this.


It's even funny that Samsung SSD they are trying to glitch the MacBook because, as you can easily see, the original SSD (pictured below) was made by no one knows.

Deep googling showed that one of the least problematic SSDs for the MacBook Pro Early 2015 is the Kingston KC1000. The 240 GB model (I certainly don’t need more) costs an average of 8,500 rubles. For this we get a drive with a stated read speed of 2700 MB/s and write speed of 900 MB/s. For comparison, the original Apple SSD produces 1200/700 read and write speeds, respectively. It’s worth mentioning here that Kingston’s recording is relatively slow only on the younger model, and already from 480 GB it grows to 1600 MB/s. But, I repeat, I don’t need such a volume, and overpaying would not make any sense.

Considering that I had never upgraded a MacBook before, I asked the guys from the Fixed.One service to help me with this matter. Looking ahead a little, I will say that if you have special screwdrivers (five- and hexagonal stars), the operation can be done at home.

Let's go. First we unscrew back cover and admire how beautifully everything is arranged inside. The SSD is secured with one screw. A slight movement and the slot is free.

Above is a Kingston SSD with an adapter already installed

The adapter came from China, it looks modest, but, on the other hand, it doesn’t need to work miracles. There are no electronics on it - everything is limited to redirecting contacts from the Apple connector to a regular M.2 connector. Something similar happened with proprietary Sony cards: it quickly became clear that regular microSD can be inserted into a portable PSP console just fine through a cheap adapter.

The installation procedure is as follows: first insert the adapter into the connector, then insert the new SSD into it. If we are talking about a capacious model (for example, a terabyte), it makes sense to wrap the contact area with thermal tape for secure fastening and additional heat removal. But in our case this would be clearly unnecessary, because this model Kingston heats up very moderately, and in conjunction with the existing adapter it sticks out above the board slightly higher than the original and is in excellent contact with the thermal interface on the cover. The length matches completely, so the KC1000 was fixed with a screw from its predecessor.

When turned on, the MacBook expectedly complained that there was no boot disk, but after inserting the flash drive with the distribution kit High Sierra, immediately saw the new SSD and offered to install the OS on it. A very important point: install without updating to High Sierra third party drive It’s impossible, and you need to upgrade the operating system BEFORE replacing the drive.

The installation went without the slightest hiccups. It’s real - there’s not even anything to tell. Once completed, I restored all the data from the Time Machine copy on the flash drive. This turned out to be significantly faster than over the air, but still slow relative to the capabilities of the flash drive. It can transfer up to 300 megabytes per second, and recovery proceeded at an average speed of 20 megabytes, only sometimes increasing to 40-50 megabytes.

Immediately after the recovery, I ran a benchmark and, frankly, was pretty discouraged: according to its data, the read and write speed was below 400 MB/s. At the same time, the speed of work was the same. Launching applications, switching between them - that's it. I have a suspicion that the problem is in the background tasks with which the system loads the disk, and in particular with the Spotlight indexing service. The latter works furiously in the first days after installing a new drive, re-learning files, letters, contacts, etc., which leads not only to slower operation, but also to increased energy consumption. You can disable indexing by entering the command in Terminal sudo mdutil -a -i off. But it’s probably better to just wait until the system realizes itself again and calms down.

Actually, the very next day the benchmark showed completely different, more encouraging numbers. This is not at the peak of SSD capabilities, but noticeably higher than on the original drive, released, let me remind you, three years ago.

What pitfalls may arise? Firstly, with a non-native SSD, the MacBook Pro tends to wake up incorrectly from hibernation - it crashes and goes into reboot. I had this happen a couple of times, but only on the first day, when FileVault data encryption was going on in the background. After it ended (pah-pah-pah) everything became normal. If your problem persists, you need to type the command in the terminal sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25. But the best thing, as experts say, is to reset the laptop and set it up from scratch, rather than restore it from Time Machine. Then there will be no problems getting out of sleep. I haven’t checked it myself yet, but I trust the experts.

Secondly, the drive may not operate at full capacity. This is also stated in the honest descriptions of the adapters: they do not pump more than 2 GB/s. Plus, not all lines can earn PCI Express, for example only two instead of the maximum four. My diagnostic utility shows either x2 or x4. This does not affect performance. And by the way, I don’t even know - maybe the original SSD had the same behavior.

But in general, especially after the release of High Sierra 10.13.3, third-party SSDs work decently, and if you're lucky with the adapter, you'll save a very significant amount. To be lucky, it is better to buy it in Russia and from companies that conduct preliminary testing of this kind of hardware.

Many thanks to Fixed.One for help with the upgrade. The Kingston KC1000 has shown full suitability for use in a MacBook, and given that they have a maximum capacity of 960 GB, this will allow someone to increase the storage capacity to a very impressive size at a very reasonable cost.

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