The MacBook Air mid 2012 is still a very capable notebook for everyday use. When my wife ordered one in 2012, we thought that a 120GB SSD would suffice, but times have changed and so has the size of IE. digital photo’s. Time to upgrade the SSD!
I got my hands on a brand new WD Blue M.2 SSD 250GB, so I decided to use that one. Now you can’t fit a M.2 SSD in a mid 2012 MacBook Air, but there is a company called Sintech that is creating all kinds of SSD adapters. I ordered a MBA 2012 to M.2 SSD adapter from Amazon and a week or so later it fell on my doormat.
Installing the Western Digital Blue M.2 SSD on te adapter was a bit of a fiddle with what screw to use, but I got it mounted just fine. Luckily iFixit has a full tutorial on how to swap the SSD (not that it is hard), so I followed their procedure and installed the SSD in the MacBook Air.
Obviously I had to reinstall MacOs, but that was easy because created a MacOS installer USB Drive before I started and had a good Time Machine backup at hand which I made on a fast G-Drive EV.
After installing and restoring 155GB of free space again 😀
Free space! At last!
The MacBook Air 2012 isn’t capable to make full use of the speed of the WD M.2 SSD (it should reach speeds of up to 545MB/sec), but it gave me a much better write speed. Reading was a little bit slower than on the original SSD but personally I think that’s fine.
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- WD Blue M.2 SSD in Macbook Air 2012
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- Original MacBook Air 2012 SSD
6 Comments
Andres · 1 March, 2017 at 20:10
Hello Björns, thanks for your blog!
I have a question: What macOS do you use? Captain? Did you activate TRIM on macOS?
I installed a WD Blue PC SSD 250GB on my Macbook Pro in mid-2012 yesterday, and I feel a rise in temperature. On the other hand, the reboot is very slow now.
Thanks for you answer!
Björn · 3 March, 2017 at 09:35
Hi Andres,
I’m using the latest MacOS (Sierra). Didn’t activate any trim setting. I haven’t noticed any increase in temperature actually, and no significant change in boot time.
Regards,
Björn
Alex · 10 May, 2018 at 23:57
Hi
Did you have any issues closing the lid of the MacBook Air?
I also got this adapter and now the SSD is sitting above the battery and touching the back case when trying to close it.
TT · 13 June, 2018 at 07:31
I’m observing the same thing. It leaves a mark on the black plastic on the rear lid, so the SSD is rubbing on it. Did you find a fix?
Jay · 30 June, 2018 at 20:01
Can i use this process for Macbook Air Early 2015??
Liu · 24 November, 2018 at 15:37
No. For air early 2015， only the NVME M.2 SSD can be used， not the SATA SSD