rodrigoelp

Great, I will do a bit more research and post my findings here.

Yup, they do that at times (not very often). One of my mates got Sierra on a flash drive for his Macbook Pro Retina. The flash drive as a drive was rubbish because it was readonly. But it did what he needed.

No, I don't have an m.2 slot as Apple has created a custom port for its drives, although there are adapters for it. I do not understand... but the macbook air won't house a 2.5" unit in it... there is physically no space (if I am understanding correctly) Just as a reference: this is the unit I am replacing

Even if the motherboard is dead, I am pretty sure you should be able to salvage a few things out of that computer. I've found a few computers like that one on the street, repair it and more often than not, donate it to an organisation in need. I found a MacPro 3.1 dual Xeon in a rubbish bin close to my house and now is a build server in my office. Nothing wrong with it other than a bit old, I replaced the mechanical drive to ssd, cleaned up everything and installed MacOS High Sierra from an unsupported source (because Apple does not support that computer any more) and works great for what I have it set up. In a few months, I will try to set it up to process large photo libraries that I've accumulated over years. Good computers are always useful long after their original owners dimmed it worthless.

The specific unit I am looking at is pretty much the same price: Kingston UV500 480GB SATA priced at a$120 (https://www.newegg.com/global/au-en/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0ZX7BB2210&Description=Kingston 480gb&cm_re=Kingston_480gb-_-20-242-469-_-Product) Corsair Force MP300 480GB PCI-e x2 at a$126 (https://www.newegg.com/global/au-en/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236395) Any of these two fall nicely within our budget, the corsair offers higher speeds... so, that is the reason I am asking (and to learn about this)

She is running Mojave, in which case she already has this support as part of the included drivers. I think the question is: would I be able to use a nvme stick by just getting the adapter and connecting it?

To be honest, I am not sure I need/want nvme. Browsing online I've found a few videos of people upgrading their own computers and they mention the usage of nvme... up to yesterday I thought nvme is the name given to any drive with the m.2 form factor. Reading a lot more today, I've been getting to understand a bit more about the differences between the different drives.

Hello, My wife's Macbook Air mid 2013 storage has been playing out a bit and its internal capacity is a complete joke. Browsing online for m.2 I've cornered myself with a set of new terms I'm unfamiliar with and I might need a bit of help. Browsing newegg, I found a few drives appealing such as the corsair force MP300 (Corsair Force MP300 M.2 2280 480GB PCI-Express 3.0 x2, NVME 1.3 3D) or the Samsung 970 evo (SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 500GB PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 V-NAND 3-bit MLC) which can be fitted to the macbook air via an adapter... Incidentally, this adapter indicates it does not support pci-express x2 or x4 transfer mode and it only supports NGFF (or SATA) (https://www.newegg.com/global/au-en/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6V86JM5118&Description=m.2 adapter apple&cm_re=m.2_adapter_apple-_-9SIA6V86JM5118-_-Product)... At this point, I was a bit confused and dug out a bit more trying to understand what the actual difference between nvme and ngff... ended up more confused. Could anybody elaborate a bit more? I was trying to find a linus tech video explaining all the different nvme/ngff variations and which one could be mixed with what... but no luck. I understand nvme is a different spec capable of extremely high speeds in comparison to sata iii, and I imagine the bus on the macbook air is set to be sata iii as opposed to nvme in full... Do they use the same m.2 port to indicate these two are compatible (rendering the nvme drive slower maxing out at the same speed as the sata iii drive)? or will it be completely incompatible? Just in case, the reason why I liked the corsair drive is: 1. the spec indicates it is meant to run cooler. 2. its average power consumption is lower than the samsung 970 500gb I was looking and to be honest, this will just extend the operating usage of her computer as she does not want a new computer (and doesn't want any of the new macbook air)