Transcend JetDrive Lite 350 - Expanding the Consciousness of the MacBook Pro 15 "Retina

Perhaps I will begin my story with complaints about the hard life of the driver. All is well, but the upgrade from Apple is very tight. If in the case of Air, much can be attributed to the dimensions, then it would seem that the MacBook Pro should be easier. But no, it was not there. For about 2.5 years, I’m the happy owner of a MacBook Pro 15 "Retina (mid 2012) and during that time I had enough of everything - processor power, RAM, graphics performance. But the storage system did not give me rest.



On the one hand, a 256 GB solid-state drive should suffice for most users, on the other hand, our hands are not for boredom, which means a second OS has been added - Windows 8, which is quite a lot, means a big Adobe package, which means I'm lazy to throw off already processed Photo and video on network storage, that is, there is very little space. I offer an external drive absolutely useless. I don’t really understand the joke of these devices, first of all, because I’m used to work on my knees, which means the drive will hang around and interfere, and not for the benefit of the classic hard constant stresses and movements in the process.

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Good for owners of powerful workouts - the situation is already familiar, when in one mobile computer there is a place for an mSATA SSD drive and two regular SATA 2.5 "devices - you can turn around with great pleasure (I would have stuck three SSDs at once). It was obvious that the SSD connector was proprietary in the MacBook Pro.Transcend JetDrive was found - but firstly, in Russia it’s impossible to buy such a thing (I like to buy, if I buy it, the equipment with a guarantee), secondly, 480 gigabyte drive, roughly like a cast iron bridge.



The second option was found on the same site: Transcend JetDrive Lite - here it is on sale , but on Yandex.Market - well, not directly the same as the link, but the meaning and price is the same. What's the catch? For not very expensive, comparable to a conventional memory card, you can get an extension of the memory of your favorite Mac 64 or 128 gigs. On a constant. The solution is certainly not indisputable, the speed is less than that of the SSD (the manufacturer claims reading / writing - 95/60 MB / s, which is at least six times slower than the main SSD MacBook Pro). The volume is also not the largest, but compact and neat, unlike the installed memory card, it does not stick out, which means it will not break itself and will not damage the card slot in the laptop itself.

Appearance and characteristics of Transcend JetDrive Lite

Let me show you how it all looks like:



1. Superdevice almost immediately after purchase.











2. Profile, documents.







3. All systems are ready.







A simple utility JetDrive ToolBox is designed to work with the drive and the ability to recover deleted data. You can download it on the official website of the manufacturer .







The minimum settings - the main thing that works).

Testing

It would be necessary to test what's what. Since I have already mentioned two systems on one laptop, I will use both the Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​Test and the Crystal Disk Mark . For purity, so to speak, an experiment.



Look what happened:

1. Mac OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite

2. Windows 8.1

According to the results of the tests: the recording speed under Windows 8.1 is for some reason much lower, but for me personally it doesn’t matter, under Windwos I just read the data from the card. Under Mac OS X, the speeds are somewhat lower than those stated by the manufacturer (by about 10-12 percent), and working with Transcend JetDrive Lite 350 is quite comfortable.



What is the usage scenario for such happiness? Yes, almost any. I put a large collection of music files and videos on the second disk, I didn’t risk transferring the Lightroom catalog, yet LR loves fast disks, besides, 15 GB for the folder !!! TEMP !!! (we all understand that such folders are usually cleaned rarely and therefore they are the most voracious in relation to the place on the hard disk). I also received a suggestion to use a second disk for backup, but I have a NAS with TimeMachine configured, so I did not consider this option.

Final thoughts:

1) Inserted a card, everything works, happy ending.

2) Extended directorial version of the findings. Of course, the market for MacBook accessories is very narrow, prices in the official store for custom models are extremely high, and the upgrade is difficult. In this light, the purchase of Transcend JetDrive Lite looks reasonable at a price. This is especially true for owners of MacBook Air, which are usually installed 64 or 128 gigabyte SSD. In general (cry of the soul) make card readers normal, so that the card is completely hidden, it will also be nice, yet getting a special device is difficult.