OWC 1.0TB Aura Pro X2 SSD Compatible with MacBook Air (Mid 2013-2017), and MacBook Pro (Retina, Late 2013 - Mid 2015), and Mac Mini (Late 2014)

If you’re looking to upgrade or just replace your Mac hard drive…buy this! It was so easy and it’s been worth every penny!I love everything about my 2015 Mac…except it came with only a tiny128GB :( This was enough while I was in school, but over time I filled it up rather quickly. I thought I was going to have to upgrade to a newer model, until I found out I could just swap out and upgrade my hard drive! I love that my Mac still has the light up apple logo, and it still works like the day I bought it, so I wasn’t looking to spend $1,000+ to upgrade. Luckily I found this and tried it, and it worked flawlessly!I was a little nervous since I know apple doesn’t play well with 3rd party anything. But the more I researched OWC, the more I saw they were basically as close to OEM as you could get and had fantastic reviews, so I gave it a shot. For 1TB for $120 it seemed too good to be true, but I’m super impressed and super happy with this!Shipping was fast and the ssd was packaged very well. The OWC helps you very easily find your model and associated help videos/guides. The install videos are very clear and super easy to follow, and made changing it out a breeze! They sell toolkits as well, but I only saw this after ordering one from Amazon, but that worked just fine as well for the proprietary screws.The swap was so much easier than I had anticipated, I’ve never done this before and expected apple to block it or be a pain, but no issues! Here’s what I did in case you are doing this upgrade as well:1) Make a Time Machine backup on an external drive2) Make sure your Mac has the newest software updates3) Shut down and swap out your drive4) Power up and hold Command + Option + R while the Apple logo shows. Keep holding until you get prompted for a Wi-if network5) Enter your Wi-if details and follow the prompts6) On the next screen, go to Disk Utility and make sure your new drive shows and is formatted the way you want (I did AFPS)7) Save and return to the previous screen. Next, choose ‘Reinstall Mac OS Monetery’ (or whatever yours shows)8) When it’s done installing the OS, boot up and choose ‘Import from Time Machine Backup’. Select everything you want to bring back9) That’s it! My new drive works perfectly and Time Machine even saved all my downloads and browsers with the windows I had open!Some people said they had to make an external USB drive? I didn’t have to do anything like that, but maybe some newer Macs require it. Mines pretty old (2015) so I’m sure a lot has changed.I also got some awesome speed increases, my write speed increased by almost 80% and my read spread by almost 30%! For $120 to get much better speeds and a normal amount of storage (1TB) which Macs should come with nowadays anyway, I’m more than happy! I wish I would’ve done this long ago, I’ve been deleting things so often just to make room for Mac OS updates due to the tiny drive hahaNext step, my super old batteries have been slowly swelling, time to see if they offer an upgrade there too! Definitely recommend OWC for any apple upgrades!

OWC products aren't the least expensive. They are the best. (Period) They work plug and play. That's what you pay for. In my opinion, If you are going to the length of cutting your computer open to upgrade it, use the best quality product that is designed for the job. Go to OWC's website for detailed installation videos for this job. (I'm not affiliated with them, I'm just a really satisfied customer. Read on...)This drive requires a PCIe slot on the mother board. These arrived in the iMac on the late 2013 model and newer. My computer was not using it. It had only a traditional HDD drive. When I opening the computer, I found the empty slot waiting to be used. In all, I maxed out the RAM, and installed two drives. This Aura Pro 1TB drive and and also replaced the old SATA HDD with an OWC Mercury Pro 6G 1TB. So now the computer has 2TB internal storage. (I needed space for video editing.) In preparation, I created a boot disc on a thumb drive. In my case, a Catalina boot disc. (I learned how on YouTube.) Once the computer was reassembled, I plugged the drive into the USB and turned on the computer. It takes some minutes to collect itself, but then automatically boots off the thumb drive and asks where you want to install the OS. I selected the Aura, and away it went. Once installed I did not see the Mercury drive. I went to disc utility in the OS and saw it there waiting to be formatted. I did that, and that was it, done! I love this new-old beast of a machine. Thank you to OWC for their premium products and resources for getting the job done. All together it was an expensive upgrade, but at 1/5 the cost of a new computer, it's a steal.PS... You will need a replacement tape kit for reassembling the computer. Buy this from OWC. With this they include all the little tools you need for the job. (If you are upgrading RAM, this can be ordered as a package.) One more note: like me, if you are not replacing a drive, you will need to come up with a screw to fasten it in place. Sorry, I don't know the size. It used a Torx6. (I stole a screw out of an old HD) But prepare for that so it doesn't hold you up.

"They" told me upgrading my Macbook Pro Mid 2015 SSD would be a breeze and it was, sort of.... First, very happy with delivery, shipping, pricing, etc. This is a good product and I'm very pleased with the vendor. Second, I now know how those blind nuns in Belgium feel. You definitely want to have the right tools when unscrewing the back plate. Those screws are tine-knee! Lost one of them in the process. Once opened detaching the battery was tricky. You don't want to just pull up on the tab. It is rubber and it can detach from the actual connection plug. Get a non-metal flat knife and gently pry it up. Replacing the SSD was not too bad. Make sure you have it oriented correctly and be firm but don't force. When replacing the back cover remember to push in the 9 and 3 o'clock positions and you hear two snaps before screwing it back in to place. When it was time to boot it up I used the Internet Recovery (command-R) method. It came up but it didn't see the drive. I thought perhaps the drive was faulty. Turns out you cannot use this method for startup. You should use an bootable USB drive. If you don't have one MAKE ONE BEFORE replacing the SSD. You need to be able to format the drive and the bootable USB has all the necessary tools. At the time of this writing it is day 3 using my disk. Seems to work well. The description of this product include my model (mid-2015). I would make sure that your model (if different) is compatible with this prouct.

Installation is very smooth. There is no any problem with disk itself. However, its frustrating that advertised disk speed is not achieved in reality. Disk speed is only half of it.