Most external hard drives are already formatted to work out of the box with macOS although some require formatting first depending on whether you want to use them on Apple only products or transfer files between macOS and Windows. The good news is almost all external hard drives work with Macs but there are a few important things to be aware of to avoid disappointment. Do All External Hard Drives Work With Mac? Whichever hard drive you choose, you can be sure that all the hard drives featured here are compatible with the latest versions of macOS including Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina and the forthcoming macOS Ventura.
However, the external hard drive landscape and connection port technologies is constantly changing and it can be difficult to know where to start when buying one.
Now you can get 5 Terabytes (TB) of portable storage (that’s a whopping 5000 GB) for just over $100 such as in the WD My Passport For Mac Portable Hard Drive which we ranked as the best external hard drive for Mac users of 2022.
Less than a decade ago, you would have paid several hundred dollars for a chunky hard drive with just a few Gigabytes (GB) of storage space on. The great thing for Mac users is that all of these external storage solutions have never been cheaper and storage sizes have never been bigger.
How To Choose An External Hard Drive For Macs.Best External Hard Drives For Mac Compared.OWC ThunderBay 4 Raid (Best For Capacity) WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo (Best RAID Drive) WD My Book Duo Desktop RAID (Best For Security) Samsung X5 Portable SSD (Best Thunderbolt Drive) Transcend StoreJet M3 (Best For Photographers)
Parts that work with MacBook Pro 13' Unibody Late 2011: MacBook and MacBook Pro (Non-Retina) SSD Upgrade Bundle. When you decide to go SSD.Here are the step by step on how to do a data transfer.įirst - make sure you have a usb external enclosure or a usb data cable. Upgrade the storage and improve boot time and read/write speed in your MacBook and MacBook Pro (Non-Retina) with this SSD upgrade bundle. Second - download carbon copy - free to download.Īssuming you've installed and downloaded carbon copy and have a usb external enclosure.
Install your ssd in your external enclosure. Cable Matters Premium Aluminum 10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5' SSD/HDD with USB-C and USB-A Cables - Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 Port Compatible with MacBook Pro, MacBook Air. Samsung EVO 860 SATA 2.5' SSD my opinion is the best.
Open disk utility - format/erase your ssd to mac os extended journaledĬlose disk utility and open carbon copy and proceed to clone your drive. I would recommend changing the ram on your mac before looking into getting an SSD. Source drive (your old hard drive) destination drive (your new ssd drive)Ĭlick on clone - you might get a pop up message saying that a recovery partition wasn't created - create one using carbon copy and proceed with the clone. Once the clone is done - install your ssd in your macbook - turn it on and your back in business. Is a Samsung 850 Pro (1TB) a good investment and is compatible with my early 2011 MacBook Pro I was thinking of just installing this SSD into my new laptop when the time comes, so I thought it might be a good investment to opt for one of the best SSD with a larger capacity and longer life/warranty. If you find that your boot time in your new ssd is too slow - go to system preferences - startup disk and select your ssd as your startup drive. 1-16 of 385 results for 'macbook pro ssd 2011' 480GB 2.5' SSD Solid State Drive for Apple MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011) (17-inch, Early 2011) (13-inch, Early 2011) Laptops 4. restart your macbook and you should have a startup time of 14 sec. Install your old hard drive in your usb enclosure and use it as a back up drive.