[MacTUG] New 15" ( and likely 13" with touch bar ) has SSD drive soldered to the logic board

[Glenn Anderson]

Hi,

The new MacBook Pro 15” ( and likely 13” ) with touch bar now comes with the SSD storage chips soldered to the logic board, rather than being a removable/replaceable SSD drive.

As a result of this change, it is impossible to upgrade the SSD drive to a large size down the road, so it is important to make sure when buying one of these MacBooks to make sure the drive size is large enough to last the buyer the life of the MacBook.

Also, if something goes wrong with the logic board/computer that means that the person will lose their data as well as it is no longer possible to remove the SSD and recover the data on it. So making sure that there is a current update backup becomes more critical with these MacBooks.

Having the SSD storage soldered to the motherboard also means that if the drive fails then one is likely looking at buying a new MacBook given the cost to replace the main logic board ( and thus the SSD storage ).

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Note the 13” MacBook Pro without the touch bar still has the standard removable SSD drive.

Glenn Anderson
IST 
anderson at uwaterloo.ca
519-888-4567 x43327
EC2 - 2019