Transcend JetDrive offers up to 960G SSD upgrade for Macbooks

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by Tim FokMay 24^th, 2014

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Transcend has released an SSD upgrade kit for a selection of Apple MacBooks, providing up 960G of storage and offering maximum speeds of up to 530MB/s read and 440MB/s write.

The Transcend JetDrive presents a very similar package to the current OWC upgrades; a larger, faster SSD with a sleek mac-like caddy for installation and extended use of the previous SSD.

Transcend has put together a simple tutorial video on putting their product to use:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gBEf1DDTuAE

You simply mount the JetDrive into the supplied caddy, start your MacBook in Boot Recovery mode and clone your current SSD to the new JetDrive. Then remove the SSD from your Mac, insert the JetDrive and you’re good to go. What you’re left with is the caddy and old SSD, which you can combine to make an external USB 3.0 hard drive.

The advantage of this over the current OWC products is the additional storage. The Transcend JetDrives are capable of storage up to 960G; considerably more than the maximum 480G drives by OWC.

Transcend has also released JetDriveToolbox monitoring software, which is designed to analyze the health of your hard drive, and “Additionally enable TRIM support for your JetDrive in OS X®, maintaining optimum write speeds and maximizing the lifetime of your SSD.”

There is currently only support for the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro Retina 13″ and some previous MacBook models, a full compatibility list found here, and you can identify your Mac model here. Hopefully we’ll see support for the 15″ retina soon also.

Prices are dependant on MacBook model and hard drive size, starting from $189 for 240G drives, and up to $599 for 960G drives.