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.
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!
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
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.
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?
İ have same problem, ssd is sitting above the battery and touching back case. What can i do ? Is it safe ?
Can i use this process for Macbook Air Early 2015??
No. For air early 2015， only the NVME M.2 SSD can be used， not the SATA SSD
İ have same problem, ssd is sitting above the battery and touching back case. What can i do ? Is it safe ?
Hi.
Nice article. I’m thinking of swapping my SSD as well with a 500GB model of WD Blue.
Just a little curious, how it performed over time and if it affected battery life?
Hi! I’m super interested to hear how the computer has been working since you did this operation? I’m considering doing the exact same thing and I’m just wondering if there has been any problems that you think is because of the SSD change? I’ve heard there can be problems with sleep mode? Anything you noticed about this, or other things?