6 ms·
Interesting to note that the SSD is literally 4 chips permanently soldered on both sides of the motherboard, they don't even bother with an NVMe M2 drive. So yo
by bigtones 8y ago
Interesting to note that the SSD is literally 4 chips permanently soldered on both sides of the motherboard, they don't even bother with an NVMe M2 drive. So you can't upgrade your hard disk to a larger one ever - you have to choose when you buy it.
I guess that contributes to it being the fastest ever hard disk in a laptop:
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/13/2018-macbook-pro-fastest-laptop-ssd-ever/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/13/2018-macbook-pro-fastes...
- mmastrac 8y agoI'm going to guess copy-on-write is 90% of what makes it fast: "To be fair, Apple’s relatively new APFS file system is designed to speed up file copies using a technology Apple calls Instant Cloning. But a win is a win."
- MBCook 8y agoCopy on write should be WAY faster than that. These numbers are similar to the iMac Pro, which uses a similar setup (T2, multiple flash chips). I don’t think the benchmark was dumb enough to just be ‘cp fileOne fileTwo’, they would have taken the APFS instant copy into account.
- abootstrapper 8y agoWell shit. I assumed I could upgrade my hardrive 5 years from now. External hard drive it’ll be I guess! Good thing usb-c is fast.
- threeseed 8y agoOn a MacBook Pro they have Thunderbolt 3 ports. Which are 4x faster than USB-C.
- stephenhuey 8y agoIn case anyone else finds this tricky to remember, Thunderbolt 3 is a superset of USB-C. https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/difference-between-usb-c-and-thunderbolt-3 https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/difference-between-us...
- WaxProlix 8y agoI see this claim a lot, but the fact that it's so often incompatible with USB-C peripherals gives it the lie.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoUSB-C is often incompatible with USB-C peripherals. It's not a lie, it's just a bunch of devices that all implement different parts of the spec.
- nomel 8y agoThe Thunderbolt 3 port is still there. The USB-C is also Thubderbolt 3 on the pros.
- trynumber9 8y agoIt's possible that may contribute. But even my 1.5 year old NVMe Samsung 960 Pro has write speeds similar to that. It uses a standard form factor so I dropped it into a PCIe adapter and use with my 4 year old Z97 motherboard. Being able to do that makes me appreciate standards.
- MBCook 8y agoHaven’t the drives been soldered on board for quite a few years now? At least since the 2016 redesign, right?
- prh8 8y agoYes, but I still see people asking if there's user replaceable RAM in these things too.
- BugsJustFindMe 8y agoNot in all models. The non-touchbar 2017 13" had an upgradeable ssd.
- abrowne 8y agoIf you can find something to upgrade it with!
- BugsJustFindMe 8y agoWell, yes, there's that. I assume you'd have to get one pulled from a busted machine on eBay.
- abrowne 8y agoWhich caps your upgrade at whatever largest size Apple ever sold, which you may already have.
- samcat116 8y agoThis isn't really true. Its a very non standard form factor, and I doubt you'll be able to find a third party version for many years, if ever.
- zitterbewegung 8y agoThe T2 chip now has the SSD controller on die so its probably the consolidation of that and other features that make this happen. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208862 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208862
- nsxwolf 8y agoI was frustrated when I learned the 2013 Mac Pro didn't have upgradeable SSDs... not because they aren't removable, but because they're proprietary and Apple won't sell you one. They will replace defective units with replacements of the same capacity only.
- extra88 8y agoWhen the 2013 Mac Pro was introduced, their SSDs didn't use a standard connector so you couldn't buy a replacement drive but third parties then did make SSDs for the Mac Pro. What helped create the market for them was Apple used the same form factor in some laptop models. https://www.owcdigital.com/products/aura-ssd https://www.owcdigital.com/products/aura-ssd
- vbezhenar 8y agoWhy you can't upgrade? Good engineer should be able to replace those chips, it's not exactly rocket science. Or those chips just don't available in China or they are somehow paired with motherboard and different ones won't work? For example I know that you could replace disk on iPhone for some reasonable money (less than buying new iPhone with higher capacity) in China, at least that was the case few years ago.
- dogma1138 8y agoyou’ll need to replace the NAND and the controller so good luck with that.
- saagarjha 8y agoI believe the T2 chip is paired with the storage ones in the factory, or something like that.
- userbinator 8y agoYou can bet the Chinese are already hard at work figuring out how to defeat Apple's DRM and provide repairs and upgrades, the way they've always done. Give it some time.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoFastest non PCIE drive I suppose? PCIE SSD drives are usually around that speed. See this one from the Surface Book 2 which is from 2017: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12167/the-microsoft-surface-book-2-15-inch-review/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/12167/the-microsoft-surface-b... 2800MB/s sequential read and honestly once I went with PCIE SSD's I can't go back to regular SSD's only for secondary storage. Sad they soldered it on though. Good luck fixing that laptop when that drive fails...
- dogma1138 8y agoIt’s still PCIe just soldered on board.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoPoint being that benchmark is a little misleading claiming to be the fastest "hard drive" when it's just standard PCIE speeds.
- notadoc 8y agoPerformance looks great but being soldered in is disappointing. It's much nicer when RAM and disk is user upgradable.
- watersb 8y agoI find that benchmark result to be naive at best. Most of the performance gains, relative to other current PCIe SSDs, are likely due to the APFS file system stack, tuned with their specific hardware. As they say, a performance win is a win, but the hyper-focus on Apple hardware (and consequent lack of understanding of the software stack) is misleading.