hard drivehardwaremacbook prossdusb
I recently upgraded the hard-drive on my Macbook Pro 13" early 2015 model. I'd like to use the old 128gb hard-drive as an external USB disk, but I'm having trouble finding the adapter to make it a USB drive. This MacBook Pro uses a proprietary storage drive connector.
So far I've bought the wrong adapter (for M.2 drives to fit the Macbook, which is the wrong direction.)
The model number of the old hard-drive is MZ-JPV1280/03 (Samsung).
I have this NGFF-to-USB3 box standing by:
No, it cannot. Actually, there is no there is no drive-bay at all (standard or optical). The traditional, 2.5'' 9.5mm internal notebook drives (whether SSD or HDD) that you're thinking of are not compatible (internally) with this model.
This is what the solid state "drive" looks like inside late 2013 models:
As you can see from the iFixit photo above, the SSD is really just a stick of flash memory, connected via the PCIe bus. It's made up of 8 identical NAND flash modules (in densities of either 32, 64, or 128 GB). The 256 GB drive is pictured here. There are 8 32GB chips in total, 4 on each side. The chip density corresponds to the listed drive capacity, so 8x64GB Modules = 512 GB, etc.
Though it is possible to replace the SSD with a larger capacity one, there's currently no aftermarket upgrade available yet:
Unfortunately, the proprietary PCIe 2.0-based SSD in the "Late 2013" models is limited to a smaller "blade" option, but upgrade options no doubt are forthcoming, nevertheless.
Consider purchasing an external storage device, or exploring 'cloud' based storage options.
I believe the issue to be that the controller is still SATA III for the optical bay, yet the connector is a SATA II type, as is the cable. So if you try and place a SATA III enabled drive in the optical bay, it will try and negotiate at SATA III speed (6G). This creates an issue as the cable is not setup for this and the crosstalk, and very low SNR at that speed causes many errors. I got my Seagate Momentus SSHD disk drive working somewhat in the optical bay by wrapping it and the short cable in tin foil, making it a good ground to the chassis, but it still had loads of errors on it. I ended up putting a SATA II disk in which works. My Macbook is a 2012 13in with an 2.9GHz i7 in it. This shows both connectors as 7 series Intel Chipset, both of them are supported for 6G, yet the optical drive is negotiated as 3G (SATA II). My Samsung SSD in the HDD bay, is negotiated as the full 6G.
Have a check in system profiler to see what supported speeds and negotiated speeds you are seeing for your controllers. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information about what model supports what, but it makes sense that the controllers are the same type on the main board for the particular chipset being used. The connectors are different though.
I was hoping there would be a hard disk that you can force SATA II on, or some way of enforcing the controller to only ever negotiate up to 3G, but thus far haven't had any luck :-(
Hope that helps demystify the core issue at stake here somewhat.
Best Answer
It is quite possible that there may not be an adaptor. I don't believe Apple used these for very long, so...
I would think returning it and getting one of the OWC drive adapters for that specific drive would do the trick. Like this
eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU3ENPRPCI
And to destroy an old SSD? Take a hammer to the individual chips on the drive's circuit board, that should do it. Try and recover data from plastic and silicon shards...