Upgrade your Mac
Add a fast boot drive to give your Mac a whole new lease of life
Once upon a time, upgrading your Mac’s memory or hard drive was a relatively easy way to extend its usable lifespan by months, if not years. However, in recent years, newer models have become increasingly more difficult to upgrade, to the point where memory and internal drives are no longer userreplaceable. But don’t worry – if your Mac runs on a painfully slow hard drive or Fusion Drive, the good news is you can enjoy the benefits of a much-improved performance by switching to an external solid-state drive (SSD). Yes, thanks to the fast (5Gbps or better) transfer speeds found on USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt ports, your new external SSD will noticeably outpace your sluggish internal drive. Below you’ll find a list of five of our recommended SSD drives to suit every budget and interface.
Go to > About This Mac > System Report and select ‘Thunderbolt/USB 4’ and ‘USB’ sections to see what speeds you can expect – older USB-A ports typically max out at 5Gbps, which translates to around 500MB/s, close to the top speeds of older SATA-based SSDs.