The OWC drive is much faster than any external drive, even if it is an SSD or a large capacity flash memory stick. Of course that drive did only cost us $100, but it is slow. It is a little annoying to keep up with another drive. We’ve been carrying around a slow 500GB WD external USB drive. Others have 128GB or 256GB of storage, but even that 256GB can get cramped quickly.Īnother reason to perform this upgrade is to avoid carrying around an external drive. Many MacBook Airs only came with 64GB of storage. The first reason is as we said above – space. One might wonder why anyone would bother to open their computer and upgrade. We upgraded a 13.3″ MacBook Air that came with a 256GB SSD to 480GB thanks to the OWC 480GB Mercury Aura Pro Express Solid State Drive. We tested and will demonstrate the upgrade to the 480GB model. The Mercury Extreme Pro SSDs come in capacities of either 240GB or 480GB. This likely will void your warranty with Apple, but they also likely won’t notice if you have to return it and put back the stock SSD. For a pretty penny you can crack open the MacBook Air and upgrade that SSD to one of a higher capacity thanks to OWC and their new SSD upgrades. The drives also limit your storage capacity because solid state storage is much more expensive per gigabyte than traditional optical spinning hard drives. That is what gives you your system’s speed. These computers come with fast SSDs instead of hard drives. They have released an upgrade path for both the 11.6″ and 13.3″ 2010 MacBook Air ultraportables. If it is and you're afraid to go it alone, check out ifixit for more guides.If your 64GB 11.6″ MacBook Air is filling up with your content and software, OWC has a solution. NOTE: your computer may be slightly different. And that's it! Everything unscrewed and removed! Now let's put it back together again. Remove the four posts on the side of the hard drive with the T6 screwdriver. Remove those and you'll be able to lift up the hard drive and unplug it. It's being held in place by 4 more screws. With the panel removed you can see the hard drive. Be sure to place them somewhere safe so they don't roll away into oblivion. Use the #00 screwdriver to remove all the screws on the back. So shut down your laptop and flip it over. But since you've already gotten this far you're probably both inclined to get it done AND have a machine past warranty anyway. Opening up your MacBook Pro opens you to the possibility of messing something up and voiding your warranty so if that bothers you you can just sit tight with what you have.

Replacement ssd drive for macbook air