Instead, the PCIe Aura SSD uses a Marvell 9230 SATA RAID controller and a pair of Silicon Motion SM2256 SATA SSD controllers.
In order to keep costs under control, OWC has opted to not use a native PCIe SSD controller.
#Can i upgrade 2012 macbook pro to 1tb ssd license
Marvell has shipped several AHCI-compatible PCIe SSD controllers, but their typical business model is to sell just the controller and leave it up to the customer to write their own firmware or license from a third party, either of which is a substantial up-front expense. While Apple is a big enough customer to convince Samsung to make the SM951 in a custom form factor, OWC is not. The requirement to use AHCI instead of NVMe limited OWC's choices for SSD controller. Like the Apple originals, the OWC Aura PCIe SSD uses the AHCI protocol Apple so far only supports and uses NVMe on the Retina MacBook that doesn't have a removable SSD.
OWC has finally devised a compatible replacement and released it as part of their Aura SSD product line. Transcend has generally used Silicon Motion controllers while OWC has used SandForce controllers, but until now their offerings have been limited to SATA-based SSDs.Īpple migrated their notebook SSDs to PCIe-based interfaces in 2013 and has been using drives supplied by Toshiba, SanDisk, and Samsung. Only a few companies have produced SSDs in Apple-specific form factors, most notably Other World Computing (OWC) and Transcend.
This has contributed to keeping the market for third-party upgrades very small. Rather than adopt the mSATA or later M.2 form factor, Apple's SSDs have used custom form factors and pinouts. Apple's Retina MacBook Pro and all but the earliest MacBook Air models have relied solely on SSDs for internal storage, as Apple slimmed down the designs to the point that even a 1.8" hard drive was too bulky.
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