Introduction: SD Card Hack for Macbook Pro Retina 13 Inch
If you are a proud purchaser of latest Macbook pro 13 inch with retina display, you might have already started to wonder or might already be wondering about the extending storage options for this beauty.
The challenge is the storage upgrade cost. The 128 GB SSD model is the cheapest one and 256 GB comes at a reasonable upgrade cost while the 512 GB SSD model seems too expensive.
![Put Put](https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2016/11/applesdcardslowfeat.jpg)
The upgrade options are very limited with custom designed flash cards, adapters for micro SD cards and what not.
Another options can be an external hard drive but you might not want to lug around the external HDD for the extra music that you like or may be some episodes of your favourite TV series.
If you have an SD or micro SD card you want to reformat with your Mac it’s a pretty easy process. Read on to learn how. Before you start, you need to mount the SD or micro SD card on your Mac. Hi, I've just got a macbook pro (2015) and wanted to put the memory card from my camera directly into the SD slot. I have a Sandisk Extreme 32 gb. However, it doesn't seem to want to slide easily into the slot. It seems to get stuck after a little way and i don't want to force it. Is it compatible.
How to take a picture with your macbook pro. What I have found out is that 64 GB is a sweet spot when it comes to price to value proposition as the cost of 128 GB SD cards is more than double, in fact 3 times the cost of 64 GB SD card cost.
In this Instructable we would see how we can use an off the shelf SD card to over come the storage limitation of our Macbook Pro 13 inch retina model.
MacBook Pro USB Adapter, CHOETECH 7-in-1 MacBook Pro Adapters with 4K HDMI, 2 USB 3.0, 100W USB C Power Delivery, Micro SD/SD Card Reader for MacBook Pro 2020/2019/2018/2017, MacBook Air 2020/2019. 4.3 out of 5 stars 596. 7% coupon applied at checkout Save 7% with coupon. Short answer: Yes, but it will not be ideal. Long answer: Yes, it is possible to install macOS onto a SD card, but SD card have low read/write speed (unless you get one of the SDXC II card which can get 280MB/s which is still pretty slow for daily use, and they are expensive, cheap ones won't do anything in speed) my SSD can get around 465MB a second, and that is not the best SSD.
*Note* This method may not work with all SD cards. But will work with most, specially the recent high capacity ones.
Step 1: What We Need?
What we need
1. A full size SD card, preferably 64 GB one. The one I used for this experiment was Strontium Nitro class 10 due to its price / value proposition. These are very easily available in India.
2. A paper cutter with sharp edges.
3. A pencil to mark the card for cutting.
4. A pair of tweezers to pull out the card while testing. (Optional but comes in real handy)
5. A ruler or a straight surface.
6. Of course a Macbook Pro 13 with retina display. This might also work for other Macbook models with slight difference in step 2.
Step 2: Marking Our SD Card
Free music studio software. The reason I went for this approach is because, the micro SD cards have become smaller and I saw in some videos on youtube that most of the plastic in full size SD cards was to maintain the form factor for cameras etc. I tore open some micro SD cards adapters as well to see the insides.
Also it doesn't make sense for manufacturers to have different die sizes to make internals of the SD cards as it all plastic that is needed to maintain the form factor.
First thing we need to do is insert the SD card in the SD card slot on the right side edge of our Macbook pro or any other macbook.
Take the pencil and mark the sides so that we have a clear line to mark our cutting line on the plastic.
This mark will be at different distance for each Macbook model, if we mark the line right it should be good enough.
Step 3:
Now keep the card on a hard surface, place a ruler or another straight object on the line.
Hold it tight, and start making cuts along the line that we made, we would need to make multiple cuts as we would not want to break the circuits inside (just in case we are unlucky and or card the electronics all the way till the end.
One easier way to check that would be to use the knife point to pry open the card from the bottom edge to do that, or if the card is not black you can use a really powerful light source to look at the insides to detect the circuit boundary.
Once we have made multiple cut marks we start by prying open the plastic case from the bottom and try and break along the lines by folding it slowly and steadily increasing the folding pressure.
Once the top part breaks we can do the same thing with the remaining half.
I guess my cuts were not that deep so the edge slightly chipped of.
Check the card by plugging in. It works. Now the tweezers come in handy to pull out the card, if u don't have long nails.
We may file the cut egde a little to remove sharp corners and edges as around half a millimetre keep out of the slot.
The card can be made real flush with the surface but in that case the tweezers are a must to pull it out.
Plug in the card and enjoy the free space to store your music, TV series, movies or whatever you want.
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There is a cool alternative way you can easily add up to 128GB of storage to your MacBook Air or Pro — without cracking the case and installing a new SSD flash drive, without buying a bulky external hard drive, and without jamming a USB thumb drive into the side of your MacBook. The alternative method?
A Transcend JetDrive Lite Storage Expansion Card.
Designed to fit into the SDXC card slot, which is usually used for loading photos into your Mac from a camera, the tiny little drive is specially made to fit flush inside the SDXC slot, giving you extra storage space in a form factor that works perfectly with your 13-inch MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with Retina display (the 11-inch MacBook Air does not have an SDXC slot).
The Transcend JetDrive Lite lets you add a flush-fitting drive to your MacBook Air or Pro’s SD card slot.
A 128GB card, for example, can hold 62,000 high resolution photos, 32,000 mp3 songs, or 32 hours of Full HD quality video.
If your 128GB MacBook Air or MacBook Pro is running out of space, a Transcend JetDrive Lite Storage Expansion Card is flat out the easiest, fastest, and most cost-effective solution I’ve seen yet.
Macbook Pro Sd Card Adapter
The maximum read speed is 95MB/s, which will be slower than the flash drive that’s in your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with Retina display, but typically faster than most traditional hard drives. The maximum read speed is 60MB/s. What does this really mean? If you’re actively working with a large file — like editing a movie — you might want to make sure that your movie files are on your MacBook’s main drive for best performance.
Offload Large Files to the JetDrive Lite
That said, this new light drive option will let you add storage to offload all sorts of photos, video, and documents, freeing up your primary drive. The Transcend JetDrive Lite Storage Expansion Card will show up on your desktop like an external drive. If, for instance, your iTunes library is full of movies, TV shows, and songs, you can move it to the expansion card, which is what I would do first to free up a large mount of space. Why? In addition to gaining a big win over your storage problem, nearly all of you iTunes media is likely purchased from Apple, which means if there is ever any problem with the drive, you can easily download your purchased movies, video, and songs again from Apple at no charge.
In addition to moving large files to the drive, you can use it as a complete backup to your internal 128GB drive, but since you’re reading this, you probably need the free space more than a skinny on-board backup solution. Note: Just use a good external drive or thumb drive for your backups and store it somewhere safe.
Once you have the JetDrive Lite, you’ll want to use Disk Utility on your Mac to reformat the drive to Mac OS Extended. One last tip: Because the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina display models have slightly different SDXC card slot depths, you’ll need to choose the correct JetDrive Lite to fit your particular MacBook.
How To Put Sd Card On Macbook Pro 2020
And one last hint: If you think you might rather just install an internal SSD drive to increase storage capacity, here’s some help on how to get that done for MacBook Air and for MacBook Pro with Retina displays.
Get the Transcend JetDrive Lite:
- JetDrive Lite 130 for 13-inch MacBook Air, 64GB or 128GB
(Late 2010 – Early 2014 models) - JetDrive Lite 330 for 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, 64GB or 128GB
(Late 2012 – Mid 2014 models) - JetDrive Lite 350 for 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, 64GB or 128GB
(Mid 2012 – Early 2013 models) - JetDrive Lite 360 for 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, 64GB or 128GB
(Late 2013 – Mid 2014 models)
Macbook Air Sd Card Adapter
Note: There are some alternate options for this class of SD card slot drive for MacBooks: The PNY StorEDGE, which sits nearly flush (but not flush), or the Nifty MiniDrive, which sits flush but requires a separate purchase of a microSD card to get the storage you need.