MacBook Air Storage Upgrade from 128GB to 1TB NVMe SSD (Early 2015, Without losing data) 

Guys, if you are wondering the procedure is exactly the same on macOS Monterey.

Thanks for the clear and concise instructions :) I just got my first Macbook Air after decades of being a Windows user and your guide helped out immensely !

Wow, thank you Charlie! Everything you need to know and nothing you don't. I'm very appreciative of the efficient, and informative video.

Followed this guide to upgrade the ssd in my 2015 Macbook Air. Worked flawlessly. Great instruction. Thank you.

Very Helpful Step-by-Step guidance with professional advices and critical notes for the success of the transition. Thank you Charli.

Best guide I ever found on RU-vid so far. Kudos to you mate!

this is such a thorough and well thought-out tutorial~ you're very well-spoken, Charlie! just did the same thing for my 2015 MacBook Pro and despite it being a different model from yours, it still works no problem. thanks for the help!

Great video, thanks for explaining the entire workflow in one video. I just upgraded the ssd of my mbp to 512 gb, and it’s installing MacOS now. I can’t wait to be actually able to edit photos without it beging a painful experience. Thanks!

This is a BRILLIANT detailed video !! I’ve watched many but this is the easiest to follow !! 👏👏

Hello Charlie, This very instructive & clear tutorial worked perfectly for me (MBA 2015, 128 GB). I installed it with Monterey today & no pblm at all. Thank you very much !!

This is the most detailed step-by-step I've found! Thank you!!

Thanks for the video. I've done this in the past with other macbooks, but it was nice to have a step by step walkthrough for the added confidence. All steps were clear and matched up making this extremely handy. With the price of ssds now, it's very convenient to upgrade to 1TB. Thanks!

just did this to mine for more storage thank you! and also did some fan cleaning and thermal paste replacement to keep it going! I've had mine for 5 years now (2017) version and use it for school so the memory upgrade was much needed !

I went into this with some skepticism because tutorials are often misleading or out-of-date, or something. But, I went ahead and ordered the nvme SSD and adapter from Amazon. I thought for certain something along the way in this video was going to be off, or wrong, or mixed up, or out-of-date, or mismatched. BUT, I have to say this worked to an f'n T. This tutorial is so clear, easy to follow and with perfect pace. I wish all tutorials could be this accurate. I had absolutely no issues whatsoever from back up on Time Machine, installing the OS to a usb drive, install of the SSD, reinstalling the OS and all of my files. Thank you so much and keep up the great work.

Awesome! My mac upgraded so easily without any glitches. Thanks

i needed this! lots of ppl show the ssd switch , but not the formatting tricks :)

Charlie that was the best video I have seen doing this. You are very thorough. Little things like which boxes to X out. Great job! For someone like myself who knows nothing about the program side I did this with ease. Thank you!

Really liked the fact that you waited a week to upload to see if it works fine, nice one

Awesome job Charlie!! Very detailed and everything needed in the process. Thank you!!

Very educative video. Realy wanna upgrade mine now. Thanks Charlie.

Best and complete tutorial on RU-vid! Thank you Bro!!!

WoW.............Thanks so much for your help !! I wish all tutorials were explained like this!!!

Excellent instructional video - step by step guide was spot on & I managed to complete the installation which worked perfectly - Thanks so much for this information Charlie 👍👍🙏

Just installed macOS Monterey and is working perfectly. Thank you very much for the detailed video.

Thanks. I’m not good on Macs but this how to made it very easy. I have successfully installed a larger Samsung EVO NVME drive into the Mac and restored all my files.

Thank you very much. This is so helpful for me. I just follow your video step by step on my MacBook

Thank Charlie. I installed the parts as instructed and followed your instructions. AWESOME JOB man!! Thanks.

Thanks you so much for this tutorial, I made everything step by step and my MacBook Air it’s working like never before 👍👍👍…

thank you so much! I was having troubles installing the SSD and your way worked flawless.

Video is great. Worked as described. no issues after upgrade, thank you!

Excellent for me : you taught me exactly what I was looking for. And your spicy accent is "the cherry on the cake" as we say in french ! thanks a lot.

I know this video is a couple years old, but thank you. Ive watched so many videos on installing a new ssd in my old macbook air and yours was the one that I could follow the best and actually worked. Thanks man, huge appreciation 👍

Great video, thank you for the thorough explanation, I will be doing this in the next few days!

Wow, thanks for the tutorial! You make it very clear and easy to follow. Nothing was skip on anything. I wanna follow this tutorial. My Mbp is mid 2015 with 15" retina display and i thought its very similar process since i 've done matched your tutorial with another tutorial on youtube that specifically for mbp 15" (but so much step that skipped and i got confused). And your tutorial make everything full circle.

What a brilliant teacher. This is exactly what I wanted. Thank you so much.

Thank you soo much cuz I’ve been trying with the built in diskutillites but didn’t work or even recognize my nvme ssd until i came across ur video and try with usb install ❤

Thank You Brother! Appreciate the effort of making this video and helping us.

Charlie, you’re awesome dude. I upgraded the SSD on a mid 2015 15 inch MacBook Pro and a Late 2013 27 inch iMac. Both now have 1Tb storage and work like a charm. To think I was going to toss them out and buy new ones. You literally saved me $2k-$3k.

It worked perfectly!!! Thank you my friend!! 🙏🏾

Excellent. Everything worked exactly as you taught, BUT after as I went to install MacOS after renaming the new hard drive, it said that I couldn't continue unless I had the "journal extended." So, if anyone has the same problem, what I did was I went back to disk utility and selected the new hard drive and clicked "erase" and then was prompted to rename the hard drive (which I kept the same) and where it says "GILD" you must click that drop down menu and choose "Journal Extended" and NOT Gild. Then proceed to installing it on new hard drive. Should install after that.

your video really helped me set-up my macbook. thank you is appreciated

Many thanks for this video. Gave me the courage to upgrade myself.

Thanks, this was amazing my clear video. Just upgraded my MacBook Air

Very useful. We followed all the steps and it worked perfectly

Thank you so much!!! Very clear and helpful instructions. It worked!!

Nice video . I am also planning to upgrade. One question does the ssd adapter is also available when we buy online ?

OMG. New subscriber. Took me two days of no sleep trying to figure it out. Found your video. Life saver

Excellent video tutorial. I did the same step by step from 500GB to 1TB SSD upgrade on a Macbook Pro Mid 2015 and using macOS Monterey. Everything OK!!!

Great demonstration. Helped a lot 👍🏻

I was able to update storage of my macbook air 2017 easily thanks to your instructions, thanks a lot!!!!

This is very useful video all steps explained in details, Thank you😊

Superb video man. You helped me to learn allot of things in MAC. KUDOS

Your tutorial helped me a lot. Up to now everything works fine. I had just problems with the back up, because I did not select the option GUID Partition Table in the external hard drive. But then I managed to fix it. Thank you very much. I hope in some years you develop a tutorial to expand de RAM.

Thanks a lot for the detailed video. I just updated my MacBook Air(2015) following exact the same steps, and it works like a charm, no issue at all. I replaced the SSD with 1T WD Blue SN570, with an adaptor and screw drivers bought from Amazon. I used SD card(with USB reader) instead of flash drive. It works fine except it's kind of slow. I also restored previous backup AFTER installed new MacOS(using Migration Assistant) without problem. The current OS is Monterey, and it also has no problem to follow exactly the same steps. One thing I learned is you must use the right tool to remove the tiny screws on the back....

Thanks! You just extended the life of my A1502 for few more years!!!

Thanks Charlie, this works for me on 2017 version. You saved me lots of money!

Many very grateful thanks for this perfect video. You saved my bacon today as I had messed it up big time and was about to lose all my data. Thank you so much.

I have already upgrade the mac following the steps Thanks

Commenting again to thank you! The biggest headache is removed now. I have successfully upgraded Monterey with the above instructions. I was facing issues while opening my macbook as the screwdriver suggested by Charlie was not available in the Amazon so ordered the other screwdriver. Request you to use the same items provided by Charlie to do it successfully. you are a Gem Bro. 🙌

De todos os tutoriais, esse foi o melhor !! Parabéns ; )

I did this upgrade on my 2017 13" MacBook Air, but there are some differences with what I did compared to what you did. Of course, I went through the process of creating a bootable USB thumb drive with the installer for macOS Monterey ... and I used a USB 3 thumb drive for the installer to help get the process going faster compared to a USB 2 drive. I got a Samsung EVO 970 Plus 1 TB from Amazon as an open box special, so I was able to score a good gen. 3 NVMe drive for under $90 with full manufacturer's warranty after registering it with Samsung. It also already had the most up-to-date firmware installed, so it would work without causing kernel panics under macOS. I also bought an Acasis brand USB 3 Apple SSD external drive enclosure from Amazon, which also came with an M.2 adapter that I was able to use to install the new SSD in my computer. The bundled adapter also permitted the new SSD to work at full speed, running with a link width of x4 and 5.0 GT/s link speed according to the system report. After making a Time Machine backup onto an external hard drive just in case my plan wouldn't work, I took the Apple SSD out of my MacBook Air and installed it in my Acasis SSD enclosure. Then I installed the new SSD into my MacBook Air and booted it up with the Monterey installer USB. Once the installer was running, I formatted the new SSD as an APFS volume with a GUID partition table and proceeded to install Monterey. When it got to the step involving Migration Assistant during the setup process, I migrated my user account with around 100 GB of my stuff straight from my Apple SSD. Thanks to the USB 3 enclosure I used with my original Apple SSD, the migration process went relatively quickly, faster than using my Time Machine hard drive or a USB thumb drive, even though the Apple SSD is a SATA device instead of NVMe. Of course if it didn't work, I had my Time Machine Backup to fall back on. And, once my installation and migration was completed, I secured my new SSD using FileVault encryption under Security & Privacy in System Preferences. And, also thanks to the enclosure, I repurposed my 256 GB Apple SSD as an external 256 GB SSD. I still have my Time Machine Backup, of course.

Followed your instructions, and I went from 128 gb to 2 tb. HUGE improvement, thanks

what a guide...easy and clearly explained!!

Great tutorial, nice job. Thank you very much 🙏

Bro u r just super hero.. just did as per ur instructions and just loved it Mac is running super fine.. And also saved lots of bucks

Just grabbing a coffee and watching this, as its something i need to do on my macbook air 2015, do you have to update the uefi to support the 1tb drive first though? great video mate, thank you.

Hi Charlie, thank you for this great, detailed video. I am going to upgrade my early 2015 Macbook Pro. I have a question about nvme ssd adapter card. I am reading comments at other places that some people have issues related to waking up from herbernation with some adapter cards. I wondered if you had the same experience. Please let me know your recommendation on a card that would not have this issue. I am planning to use Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB nvme ssd. Thanks!

Super detailed and well explained tutorial😍

Dear Charlie, I followed your explanation step by step with macOS Monterey just expanded to 500GB without any problem. Thank you so much.

Hi Charlie, thank you so much for the detailed explanation. I have the same Macbook Air and is so tired of the storage issue. I will try to upgrade it so thank you for this helpful video. I just want to check if I can us an external hard drive to store everything instead of the 128gb usb drive? It would work this same right? with the same steps and all. Thank you!

Nicely detailed. Thanks!

this is so well explained. Thanks for the video

Really helped a lot. Thank u soo much for the detailed information from start to end.

Dec 2022; just upgraded my MacBook Air 2015 (Monteray) from 128gb to 2TB with these steps (with a minor issue)! I did have a little hiccup where I couldn't install monteray (the system recognized that it was broken / damaged) Possibly because i used a 16gb mini SD in an adapter rather than an actual USB stick?? ... I forgot what I did exactly to fix it but in disk utility.. I ejected something ... tried to re-install.. and it worked! Anyways.. just posting to tell others like me to say it's do able and many thanks again Charlie!

Great explanation and beautiful footages

Very Thorough and great walkthrough.

I love it Its work You teach really details Really helpful

Followed this video and it was a success! Thank you so so much!!!

Awesome, this is very helpful, thanks!

Thank you so much for a wonderful video. Great job.

Hello Charlie! Thanks for the great vid! What is the biggest SSD storage size you can put into this year MacBook Air? 2TB ? 4TB??

Wow, all I can say is THANK YOU so much, your instructions are perfect and everything worked, you are Special and I truly appreciate all of the effort you put into this video. THX

Thank You so much, I bought a Kingston A2000 1TB in Hong Kong today and the price is USD $94, and I will follow your video to upgrade my Mac Air later today.

Thank you so much. I followed official steps from the disk manufacturer, but i can't see the disc in recovery mode, thinking the SSD is broken. Your tutorial help me a lot, works like a charm!

Thank you so much!! Best in depth tutorial and saved me some money!

Hey Charlie, Excellent video. Great index, great instructions and well segmented. Congratulations! You are great! Just one question: The WD SN550 specs are: write-1950 and read-2400. why your readings are not as the specified. Is it because of the adapter? or the port on the Macbook air, doesn't support such speeds?

pure genius my friend, thanks

Thanks Brother! This video was a life saver!!!!

very good explanation, you are a outstanding teacher

subscribed! That was AWESOME. THANK YOU.

First I want to tell you how crystal clear these instructions were to follow. I will be following you for now on. Great Job!! And I will be contributing to your channel shone I have looked over your other videos pertaining to Apple devices. How would you do this SSD upgrade with a 2018 MacBook Pro, which comes with four thunderbolt ports, instead of the USB ports? Also, where do I look to find out what the SSD size maximums are... for example, if my MacBook Pro or iMac 21" came with a 500GB/ 1TB SSD respectively, can they be upgraded to 1TB/ 2TB respectively?

This video has helped me immensely!

Very informative. Thanks a lot.

Clearly explained, thank you..

Thanks Charlie! You’re the best! 👌

Excellent video, very well explained ! Well done !

Thanks! Great video! Really helped

Thankyou so much!! Helped alot

Thanks. I ordered the same parts as shown in the video. Nice instructions. When I install I'll comment again. But thanks.

Thank you so much, that was very helpful