Apple shipped most MacBook Airs and all Retina MacBook Pros with solid state storage(SSD), upgrading these machines for extra capacity and speed is generally as simple as picking a new drive. Today’s post looks at the SSD upgrade of all: the MacBook Air.

There's one situation that your MacBook Air is old enough to be out of warranty, you may need a new SSD which will make the old device much faster and durable. There are many ways that you can use to upgrade your old SSD. It's typically easy in older Macs, which you often can replace yourself. Let’s look at how to find out if you can upgrade the SSD in MacBook Air in year 2019.

Common Situations You Need to Upgrade MacBook Air SSD

Summarily, the two common situations in which you’d better upgrade MacBook Air SSD including:

MacBook Air SSD is full or running into low disk space.
MacBook Air SSD is corrupted or damaged, and unrepairable.
With time goes by, there are more files on the MacBook Air SSD. Less space will influence the performance of your MacBook.

Releasing space for new data doesn't help lot in improving things. Many users reported that their MacBook Air SSDs became full soon again as new data occupied the drive space quickly.

The proper way for MacBook Air expand storage is to upgrade MacBook Air SSD to a larger one. That is, you can replace MacBook Air SSD with a new and larger one especially when you want to save more data on your MacBook Air and experience the smooth running speed.

Why Need to Upgrade MacBook Air SSD

Some of you may choose to ask Apple Support for help to replace MacBook Air SSD. But, there is something you need to know: you need to send the device to the support center and it will take days to complete MacBook Air SSD replacement.

Besides, there should be some privacy information on the SSD. Once you send it to a stranger, you will be in the risk of privacy leakage.

Additionally, if you are using a mid-2012 model or even earlier, the machine is on “Vintage” list of Apple, which means the company has disconnected the support for the device.

Actually, it is not a difficult job to replace MacBook Air SSD by yourself. If you have a proper SSD for MacBook Air and enough tools to disassemble and assemble the laptop, you will be able to perform a MacBook Air SSD replacement in a few minutes.

In the following contents, we will show you the exact things you should do to upgrade MacBook Air SSD. You’d better follow every step strictly.

Step 1: Select SSD and Tools

Not all kinds of SSDs can be used to replace your original MacBook Air SSD. You need to select a proper one from the formal purchase channel, like Amazon, Newegg, eBay, and more.

For MacBook Air expand storage use, you need to choose an SSD that has larger capacity compared with the original MacBook Air SSD.

Usually, the alternative SSD comes with installation tools. However, if there are no such kinds of tools, you also need to purchase them together.

If the SSD of the MacBook Air is corrupted and you want to recover data from it, you need to buy a suitable MacBook Air SSD enclosure together. After MacBook Air SSD replacement, you can install the previous SSD into the enclosure, connect it to your computer, and then use a data recovery software to get your files back. In the last step, we will tell you how to rescue your data from the damaged SSD.

Step 2: Back up Data on the MacBook SSD

After buying a MacBook Air SSD from the internet, you can make full use of time to do something meaningful, such as backing up your data on the MacBook Air’s original SSD. A well-known method to back up Mac data is to use Time Machine, which is a built-in backup feature of Mac.

Time Machine can automatically back up all of your files on MacBook Air, such as apps, music files, photos, email, documents, system files, and more. Once a backup is created, you can restore your files from the backup if the original files are deleted from the machine, or the SSD of your MacBook Air is erased, replaced, or corrupted.

Before using Time Machine to back up your files, you need to prepare an external drive that is large enough to save the backup file.

Step 3: Replace MacBook Air SSD

After receiving your needed MacBook Air SSD, you can go to remove the old SSD and then install the new one in the device.

Here is a detailed guide:

1. Close the MacBook Air and unplug the power.

2. Lay it down on a soft cloth and flip the device over.

3. Remove the screws from the bottom of the case and put them into a place where you can find them easily.

4. Lift the case bottom off. In this step, you can also clean the dust and debris in the device to reduce power consumption,solve the laptop overheating issue, or fix other kinds of issues.

5. Pop off the battery connector to disconnect the battery.

6. Remove the screws that are used to secure the SSD and then gently pull the drive out of the slot.

7. Install the new SSD to the slot.

8. Tighten the screws to secure the SSD.

9. Re-connect the battery to your MacBook Air.

10. Reassemble the laptop bottom case.

See! It is so easy to replace MacBook Air SSD with a new one. Every ordinary user can operate it smoothly. Next, it’s time to make the new SSD bootable.

Step 4: Make MacBook Air Boot from the New SSD

Usually, some MacBook Air SSDs are advertised to have macOS pre-installed. In this situation, you can boot the device directly.

If there is nothing in the new SSD, you will have to do something to make the MacBook Air bootable.

Remember that you have used Time Machine to back up your original files and system in step 2. Now, you can directly restore both macOS and your files to the new SSD with Time Machine.

In case there is no available backup file, you will need to perform a clean install of the operating system on the MacBook Air. To use Windows or macOS, or both, you can have your own choice. Now, you can search for a guide on the internet on your own.

Step 5: Rescue Data from the Damaged/Corrupted MacBook Air SSD

After the above four steps, you can use the MacBook Air as normal again. In this step, we will talk about how to rescue data from your previous SSD if it is damaged.

No matter you are running Windows or Mac, you always have the chance to rescue data from a damaged SSD with a third-party file recovery tool.

Take out the MacBook Air SSD enclosure you have bought and then install the original MacBook Air SSD into it. After that, connect the enclosure to your computer

If You Are Running macOS:

MiniTool Mac Data Recovery is specially designed to restore your digital files on Mac computer. Its Demo Edition allows you to recover 1MB files. You need to enter the MiniTool download center to get this free Mac data recovery software.

Here is a guide on how to recover data from a corrupted SSD using MiniTool Mac Data Recovery.

1. Open the software to enter its main interface.

2. Select theDamaged Partition Recovery.

3. The software will show the drives it can detect. Then, you need to select the one you want to recover data from and press the Full Scan.

4. When the scanning process finishes, you will see the scan results including deleted and existing items. Then, you can go to find the files you want to restore one by one. The Type and Find features of this software can help you locate the needed files easily.

5. If you want to use this software to recover more than 1MB data, you can update it to a full edition and then check your needed items and press the Save button to choose a proper location to store them.

While if you're running a Windows OS, you can check out the post - Rescue Data from the Damaged/Corrupt…on Windows for reference.

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