MacBook Air 13" Late 2010 Primary Storage Replacement

I have a Macbook Air, pretty early days. Late 2010. Got the JetDrive 500 in an attempt to increase drive space.

Coincidentally, I have no conflict of interest with the company Transcend. I'm just a customer.

Demographic / Skill level - I'm a software developer who primarily uses a windows machine.

Comes with the tools that you need. Neat, I like it! Even if you are a home repair kind of guy, you are unlikely to have a magnetically charged screwdriver that can take out tiny Apple screws.

Also, packaging is nice. No clamshells. Stacks in a box with an eye toward efficiency.

Nice quality case which you could use to store the external drive case they provide.

Terse instructions--but I've built 100's of computers over the years, so I think I'll just go for it.

Later, I will also take a photo of my finger in this most awkward "Option key" position. For the sole purpose of lighting and camera angle. Bring it on Kubrick.

Take the new storage and put it in the external enclosure.

When inserting cards like this, hold one side of the connector with two fingers supporting it and gently wiggle the card into place with the other hand. Think, micro-wiggles.

Put the monstrosity of science you just assembled into the case, connector first. Make sure it seats comfortably and that you can plug the usb cable in.

Button it up.

Only use one screw. This is the storage that we're going to put in the Macbook Air in a couple hours after we clone our internal drive to it.

Attach the Macbook Air to power and shut it down.

Plug in the new drive enclosure.

Awkward option finger photo, in full effect.

Hold the "Option" button down the entire time that the system is restarting and you will get to the boot options screen.

Being someone more familiar with windows, here is the point where I start worrying about the ramifications of low level operations but, like, whatever, right?

I chose the "Recovery" drive. With the amount of information provided, I figured it was pretty much a crap shoot. Two sentences of text would have probably made it crystal clear. I'm glad I made "The Right Choice (c) 2014."

This is what happened next. Disk Utility seemed like the most logical choice.

So, now we're going to clone this drive. We enter a weird UX. Must click to fill in the source but have to drag to add the destination.

Anyway, click the hardware old and drag the hardware new with great hope but in the interest of foreshadowing, I will let you know now that this will fail miserably.

Let's erase it. (google translate: "format")

And then, let's try and clone it. This time though, we're going to choose what I believe is called a volume, rather than a device. The device being the stick of ram we just installed and a volume as the collection of files and metadata stored on it.

Chkdsk never hurt anyone. In Mac parlance, "Verify disk" under "First Aid"

We have successfully reached the point where we can clone our volume.

It's going to take awhile. This is the perfect time to do something else for at least two hours. I decided to go to sleep. YMMV.

After the cloning process finished. I verified the disk and it reported that things were super-duper, you betcha.

There are two long screws holding the back cover. Retain in your brain which ones they are.

A long screw and three short screws with a size comparison.

A look at the internals. We are concerned with that orderly looking circuit board...held by a set screw.

Put in your monocle and make sure you are respecting the gap when you introduce the new memory module.

Replace the black set screw.

Gently re-introduce the rear plate. Add a screw to each location. It is recommended to fasten each screw a bit at a time, so that each screw can best contribute to the case's tensor integrity.

Let's put the old drive in this neat new case!

The purpose was unclear for the black rubber piece with an adhesive backing. I attached it to the top of drive case. It seems to hold the memory stick snug in the case.

I guess you could use the case to hold on to the screwdriver set. You know, for the apocalypse.

For whatever reason, making a clone seems to wipe out the index so it's going to churn on Spotlight for awhile.

At the end though, you're likely to have a bit more disk space. 383 GB, in my case.

Good luck!

Download the JetDrive Toolbox from Transcend's website.

Install it and make sure you turn TRIM on. This will make your drive harder, better, faster, stronger.