34
votes
Accepted
Do MacBooks support NVMe SSD drives via the use of a Sintech adapter?
a little update here...
macOS High Sierra beta 9 (and GM) brings us a BootRom update for ALL Macs supported by HighSierra, so that they can boot from APFS drives.
The very, very good news about this ...
- 356
31
votes
Accepted
How to know whether Mac has SSD or HDD installed
Apple Menu -> About This Mac -> System Report
Select Storage in the Hardware section
Select "Macintosh HD" on top
Alternatively you can run system_profiler SPSerialATADataType or system_profiler ...
- 103k
28
votes
Why is download speed not increased using an SSD?
Probably the bottleneck is not your disk but your network.
A SATA2 hdd disk usually supports write speeds of up to 250/300MB/s. It is unlikely that you can reach those download speeds.
- 389
27
votes
Why is a secure erase 'not necessary' for SSD's?
Not so much that it's not necessary...
I'm a couple years late to the party, but it might be worth pointing out that Apple (who has now entirely remove "Secure Erase" options from the Disk ...
- 401
19
votes
How many writes do I have on my 250GB SSD hard drive on my Macbook Pro High Sierra
You cannot in general track how many writes exactly have been performed on the drive. You would have had to keep track of that statistics yourself somehow.
Similarly you cannot in general say how ...
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18
votes
Accepted
Does the “Put hard disks to sleep when possible.” option in macOS have any affect on SSD drives?
According to Apple:
Put hard disks to sleep when possible
This setting powers down the hard drive motor when you aren't reading
or writing files from the drive. Solid-state drives (SSDs) don’...
- 64.8k
15
votes
Accepted
Using a 2TB SSD on a 2016 MacBook Pro
macOS is able to read NTFS by default, but it doesn't come with write support. There are third-party solutions for that, like NTFS-3G (there are multiple questions dealing with this product here on ...
- 3,205
14
votes
Is it possible to enable TRIM for an external SSD?
I realize this question is over 4 years old, but I'm adding a comment because this page was the first hit for a Google search on the subject and some of the comments are outdated whereas others were ...
- 141
14
votes
How can I avoid an error preparing macOS Monterey installation on a Mac with an OWC Aura Pro x2 SSD?
I may have a workaround to share that got me going...
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253296956?answerId=256166114022#256166114022
I ran into the same issue and contacted OWC to see if they had ...
13
votes
Accepted
What is spotlight indexing and should I turn it off?
Leave it on.
You use an OS that heavily depends on this, you need to allow it to index.
Yes, it keeps track of where all your documents & data are. After any major OS update it will re-index ...
- 117k
13
votes
Why is download speed not increased using an SSD?
Upgrading your HD will not help with download speed. A better internet connection will help you have more download speed.
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13
votes
Accepted
Why is download speed not increased using an SSD?
Your internet speed is a lot slower than the hard drive speed, so upgrading to a faster hard drive won't significantly increase download speed. It is your internet connection that's limiting your ...
- 246
13
votes
Accepted
WhatsApp using huge space on my Mac SSD
If you don’t already, I want to suggest in the strongest terms possible that you have a Time Machine backup of your data. A portable 1TB hard drive is not expensive and you can plug it in and Time ...
- 64.8k
13
votes
Accepted
Drivers not working on Windows 10 installed (CLI process) on external SSD running on MacBook Air 2018
The answer of how to install Windows 10 to a external drive has be answered may times here at Ask Different. Most notably Is it possible to use Boot Camp with Windows 10 from an external HDD?. Enough ...
- 41.6k
12
votes
How to control fan speed in macOS Sierra?
I am a firm believer in avoiding software "hacks" to fix hardware issues. To fix this problem, you need the sensor. Unfortunately, as you have found out, your SSD doesn't support this connection.
...
- 104k
12
votes
Accepted
Size of /Users folder is way too low, where is my data?
Finder is probably just counting the /Users/Shared folder or other public folders. You probably don't have permission to the folders containing data for the user, so even though the data is there, ...
grg♦
- 204k
12
votes
How do I make an HDD as fast as an SSD?
I'm afraid that's impossible. Your hard drive is essentially not much different from an old record turntable: it has spinning disks and a 'head' that writes or reads the magnetic stripe at a point on ...
- 37.6k
11
votes
Accepted
Is formatting external drive with "APFS Encrypted" redundant for Time Machine with "Encrypt backups" turned ON
Time Machine changes APFS to APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted)
In answer to the title question: Yes, the original encryption is replaced and hence redundant.
With encrypted APFS, the whole drive or ...
- 11.7k
10
votes
Accepted
Can the data on an MacBook Pro SSD be recovered after formatting using Disk Utility
Since I was the author of the answer linked, I'll have a go at explaining what's going on....
First off, it's important to note that the study FAST referenced from the SE Information Security ...
- 104k
10
votes
Accepted
Deleting files from mac but not from iCloud
This is now fully supported
Right click the folder you want to remove from local device. Then select "Remove Download"
- 216
10
votes
Accepted
Good application for detecting state (health) of SSD disk?
Command Line
Use built in diskutil to get the SMART status of your drive. Anything other than "Verified" and you have issues
diskutil info disk0 | grep -i SMART
Smartmontools
A good open source ...
- 104k
10
votes
Accepted
EFI Partition Change name and Logo
The icon displayed in the Mac Startup Manager can be changed by putting an icon set file named .VolumeIcon.icns in the root folder of the EFI partition used by Windows. Or, you can follow the ...
- 41.6k
10
votes
How do I make an HDD as fast as an SSD?
SSD are designed like a car. HDD are trucks.
You can’t make a truck operate like a car unless you buy a car and call it a truck.
Diesel fuels most trucks and some cars (computer “fuel” is SATA ...
- 239k
10
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to manually TRIM the unused blocks (free space) for an existing APFS volume?
On APFS, macOS automatically performs a TRIM operation on the free disk space on boot via the AFPS Space Manager (spaceman). Therefore, as long as TRIM is enabled on the system (via trimforce for 3rd-...
- 321
9
votes
How to know if Drive is SSD or HDD through Terminal?
A super fast way to do this is to use diskutil to get this info:
diskutil info disk0 | grep "Solid State"
You will receive a "Yes/No" answer similar to the following:
Solid State: Yes
...
- 104k
9
votes
Accepted
Reformat Mac SSD drive so fast - did it really work?
If the drive in question is an SSD then using the 7-pass erase option will not function the same way as on an HDD. On an HDD data is written by using a tiny, and very powerful magnet to flip the ...
- 1,599
9
votes
MacOS High Sierra: An error occurred while verifying firmware
Apple has introduced a new file system APFS in High Sierra. The easy fix is to verify your backup and then erase the volume and run the installer against a blank / erased main storage drive.
https://...
- 413
9
votes
Accepted
Test a USB-drive/SSD for bad sectors/blocks?
Open the Terminal.app in Applications/Utilities.
Cut and paste this inside to install Brew:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Install ...
- 144
9
votes
Accepted
Am I able to partition my internal SSD safely without loss of data?
I am wondering if it's safely guaranteed
No. Period.
Nothing is "safely guaranteed." Generally speaking (as at the time of this answer your question is lacking in detail), you can (re)partition ...
- 104k
9
votes
Does a Big Sur 11.x Update kill genuine Apple SSDs in MacBook Pro 13" Early 2015?
No. We have that update on several Macs identical to yours. You may have a hardware failure, but it’s not the OS that’s causing it. The OS is hobbled by it no other than needing the next write to ...
- 239k
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