How much capacity? For full-system backups of a computer with a 1 to 2TB internal SSD, a 1TB external storage drive should be adequate because imaging software such as Acronis uses a lot of compression.The 20 and 40 Gbps speeds are nicer, but not worth it unless you are a creative professional. If you are getting an external SSD and your PC has at least one 10 Gbps port, we recommend spending a little extra to upgrade to 10 Gbps. What USB connection? You can get a drive with a USB or Thunderbolt interface that operates at up to 5 Gbps (USB 3.x), 10 Gbps (USB 3.1 / 3.2 Gen 2), 20 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2x2) or 40 Gbps (Thunderbolt or USB 4) but you'll pay more for the privilege.But if you need cavernous amounts of external storage, a hard drive is a better option for most, as multi-terabyte external SSDs sell for several hundred dollars, but 4TB portable hard drives can sell for under $100 (£90). A portable SSD will also be much faster at reading and writing lots of data. If you don’t need terabytes of storage and you often travel with your drive, a portable SSD is worth paying extra for. But they’re also much slower and more fragile than solid-state drives. Portable Hard Drive or SSD? Drives that have spinning storage platters inside are very affordable, with 1TB models often selling for under $50 (£40).Done! And everything works like a charm.Restored a Time Machine backup on the SSD.Used Disk Utility to format the SSD in APFS.Booted on an external drive with High Sierra.Created a partition table for Mac with Gparted.Booted on a Gparted Live CD (Linux on a bootable USB key would work too).

Installed the SSD + adapter in the Macbook Air.

I have a Macbook Air early 2015, I bought a Samsung SSD Evo 970 1Tb + a Sintech adapter, and this is what I did : Everything is working like a charm, and it’s cheaper than OWC (and probably faster). Then, I booted on an external hard drive with High Sierra and used Disk Utility to change the partition table to GUID and format the SSD to APFS.įinally, I restored my Air from a Time Machine Backup. I booted on a Gparted Live CD (a bootable UDB drive would work too) to create a mac partition table and format the SSD to hfs+, so that it would be detected by the Air. I bought a Samsung EVO 970 1Tb + a Sintech adapter, and installed it in my Macbook Air 2015.

Best ssd for macbook