OWC’s Aura SSDs are a good way to add storage to newer MacBooks, with caveats [Updated]

Update: A few weeks after we ran this review, OWC released a utility that enabled Boot Camp support for these drives. Aside from that change, everything in the review below still applies.

MacBooks (and iBooks and PowerBooks before them) have never been renowned for their repairability, but post-2010 MacBook Air models have been particularly bad. RAM is soldered to the motherboard. Drives use proprietary connections. The Retina MacBook has no user-serviceable parts on the motherboard, which is so tightly integrated that it’s more like an iPad motherboard than a Mac.

There’s not much you can do about parts that are soldered to the motherboard, but when it comes to proprietary connectors, the folks at Other World Computing are pretty good about offering aftermarket upgrades. OWC’s Aura SSDs, launched last month, finally give owners of post-2013 MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pros a way to increase their internal storage, in some cases well beyond the capacities that Apple itself offered.

We got a 1TB drive in for testing and came away mostly impressed. The drive isn’t perfect, but it's a decent way to lengthen the life of your Mac and give yourself more storage space if you regret buying one with a 128GB or 256GB SSD.

Installation

The machine we’ll be working on in this review is a 2013 MacBook Air, Apple’s first hardware to switch to PCI Express SSDs. The installation process is essentially the same for MacBook Pros, but consult resources like iFixit’s handy repair guides for photos and more precise instructions.

OWC offers bare drives, but our review drive included the company’s “add-in kit.” It adds an extra $50 or so to the purchase price, but it’s worth it. You get the precise pentalobe screwdrivers you’ll need to get inside the laptop and a USB 3.0 enclosure that lets you use your old SSD as external storage, which is helpful when transferring files. The aluminum of the enclosure matches the finish of your MacBook.

The drive itself is slightly larger than a stick of gum, and its entire topside is covered by a large thermal pad. There’s a piece of plastic protecting the thermal pad that you’ll want to peel off before you install the drive, so remember to do that just before you put the drive in the laptop.

Start by flipping your computer over and removing the 10 pentalobe screws on the bottom. Eight of them are identical, but the two in the center near the hinge will be slightly longer, so remember that when you’re taking them out. The metal bottom of the laptop should lift off easily once the screws have been removed, and you might want to take a minute to blast the thing out with a little canned air if you have some on hand. My experience with Macs has been that they don’t get as dusty on the inside as some computers, but after a couple years of use, you’ll inevitably still have a little grit inside the thing.

Next, gently pull the tab that connects the battery to the rest of the laptop. This is technically an optional step, but you really ought to do it to reduce the risk of shock damage (to yourself and to the computer). The SSD should be immediately identifiable since it’s roughly the same size as the one OWC sent you. Use the second screwdriver to remove the screw that secures the SSD to the motherboard. Slightly lift the drive (there will be a little resistance, so be gentle but firm) and pull it out. Repeat the same steps backward to install the new OWC drive and you should be good to go.

I initially had some trouble getting our MacBook to recognize the OWC drive, but pulling it out and re-inserting it fixed the problem. Just make sure that the drive is firmly inserted in the SSD slot.

Your next task is to restore a working copy of OS X to the drive, which you can do in one of several ways. Hitting Command plus R to launch Internet Recovery is probably the least complicated, since anyone with an Internet connection can use it to restore a working copy of OS X to their Mac. The downside is that it will try to install whatever version of OS X your Mac originally shipped with, which can mean installing something as old as Mountain Lion and then upgrading to El Capitan; this is a tiresome process.

With some foresight, you can create a USB installer to install El Capitan directly, which is the fastest way to handle things if you don’t want to mess with Internet Recovery. Or, once you’re booted into Internet Recovery or from the USB stick, you can pop your old SSD in the OWC drive enclosure and copy your existing OS X installation over with Disk Utility (my success rate doing this is higher with the older 10.10-and-previous Disk Utility than it is with the pretty-but-sorta-busted 10.11-era Disk Utility).