Transcend240GB JetDrive 850 Nvme PCIe Gen3 X4 SSD Solid State Drive TS240GJDM850

I decided to switch to this brand of SSD after having the same PANIC NVMe issues with the OWC Aura Pro as others have mentioned in their reviews. I would like to add that it's nice the two screwdrivers needed to remove the MacBook Pro cover and T5 screw on the motherboard are included with the drive. I'll do a follow up review in a few weeks after observing performance and general use.I would like to comment on how others have mentioned they can't use this SSD out of the box or do a Time Machine restore and they only method to get this SSD functional is to clone the original volume. While cloning one volume to the other is ONE effective solution. I would like to offer another solution that DOESN'T require cloning and will allow you to restore your macOS Time Machine Backup. First off, it's important to note fresh drives from the manufacturer are not formatted and do not have any sort of partition scheme. Hence, why you can't just place this SSD in your MacBook and boot it up and expect it to work. The macOS recovery partition would need to be installed in order to get any boot options and since this drive out of the box is bare, I will walk you through the steps I took to get it to a functional state and a successful Time Machine restore.Step 1) You'll need to create a flash boot drive with the applicable macOS install files. There are two methods for doing so: A) Download the "Diskmaker X" Application, which is a GUI interface for creating a bootable USB flash drive with the macOS install files.B) If you comfortable using the terminal command line, there's a simple one line command you can copy and paste from the following Apple Support article: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372** It's important to note, you must download the "installer file" from the App Store onto your machine in order for this to work. And once a previous macOS version is no longer supported, you will have a hard time finding it on the App Store since Apple will remove it.Once you have your macOS Bootable USB Flash drive created, you are ready to proceed with the next step.Step 2) Provided you have installed the new SSD in your MacBook, you can now boot up your MacBook with the bootable USB drive also inserted into a USB port. Power on your MacBook and once you hear the Apple boot chime, press and hold the "option" key which will bring up a prompt to allow you to boot from the USB flash drive. You should see an icon with the application macOS version (i.e. Install macOS Mojave). It will take a few moments to load the applicable installation files and then launch the macOS utilities menu. Important!: You will first need to prep your drive with Disk Utility.Step 3) Open Disk Utility app. By default, Disk Utility only lists Volumes. You will want to see all devices by selecting View on the upper menu bar and select "Show all Devices". This will now display the hardware ID for the SSD "TS480GJDM850 Media" in the left column. Highlight this hardware by selecting it and then click the "Erase" button. You will then be prompted to give the SSD a name (i.e. Mac SSD), select the macOS partition type (Mac OS Extended Journaled) and change the Scheme from Boot Record to GUID Partition Map. Click Erase. After a few minutes this should prep the SSD for installation of the macOS. When complete, exit Disk Utility.Step 4) You are now ready to install the macOS Operating System. Select "install macOS", review the licensing agreements and proceed. You should be able to select your newly formatted and prepared SSD drive.After a while, the base operating system files will be installed on the SSD and you will have an option at that point to restore your files from time machine. There is an option to restore from Time Machine from the Utilities Menu at the completion of Step 3 above, but I elected to install fresh new operating system files first. Simply technique.Step 5) Your Time Machine files will be restored from backup after several hours and you should be good to go at that point!Hope this new information helps others.

There are better options out there.This one works as advertised, but it's better to buy the one that comes with the external case even if you already have one.The 850 doesn't come with the external case (Even though that isn't entirely clear from the publication)

I bought this for my Macbook pro mid 2014 (Mac OS Mojave). How ever in the macOS Recovery mode, this SSD could not be recognized. So Time machine backup isn't of much help.To make it work, do not install the 850 SSD just yet. First you make a bootable backup (clone) your original SSD to an external hard drive by using Carbon Clone Copy (their backup is bootable). Then you can replace the 850 SSD for your Macbook. After the new 850 SSD installed, boot the Macbook with your external hard drive (the clone is bootable), use Disk Utility app to format the 850 SSD to APFS, then restore backup(clone) to your new 850 SSD. Once it's finished, shut down your Macbook, disconnect the external hard drive, turn on the Macbook, if you see the apple logo and your login screen, voila!PS, An external SSD will make the whole progress faster! If the time machine restore could work, it could be easier.

I bought this to replace another brand's SSD drive for my Macbook Air -that one failed twice, each time after a year or so.Unfortunately, despite lots of email support from Transcend, I wasn't able to make it work.Apparently you need to have a "clone" backup on an external drive, rather than simply a "Time Machine" backup in order to make this brand work. So I had to send it back.That wasn't a problem with the previous brand.

Thought this SSD would work for my 2014 Macbook pro, but when I inserted it my machine could not read it. Brought it in to apple and they also were unable to get it working. I sent it back, and very promptly had my full purchase price refunded. I cannot say for sure where the problem is; might have been a bad SSD, might have been incompatible, or might have been some other issue in my laptop. In any case, I really appreciate the ease of the return, and the fact that there was no restocking charge. So, even though it did not solve my problem, I am still giving 5 stars.

I have a 2014 11" Macbookair. I sprung for the 8GB of ram and the faster intel chip but skimped on the hard drive. The 128gb was never enough. I constantly had to monitor my space especially since I run windows 7 side by side with Mac OS using parallels. So obviously having 400gb is an immediate change but the biggest change is overall performance and speed. It is a completely different and much improved machine. If you purchase for your macbook I would suggest using an external hard drive that you can boot off of and the use Carbon Copy to format the new hard drive.

La instalación es muy difícil y Transcend no ofrece soluciones ni información. Tengo macbookpro retina early 2015 y al instalar no reconocía la SSD jetdrive 850. Busqué soluciones, escribí a transcend y no tuve respuesta. Pensé que iba a perder el dinero, porque no recibía ayuda. Después de leer mucho en internet encontré un forma de instalar que si me funcionó.NO se inicia el computador con comando R. Se debe iniciar con option (alt) y luego conectar el disco con el Time machine. Luego de eso sí reconoce el Jetdrive 850 pero se debe borrar y darle formato Guid.Finalmente pones el backup time machine en el disco SSD ya formateado.Esto me parece absurdo porque el fabricante debe ofrecer esta información.!!Luego de instalado el computador corre bien y no he visto nada desfavorable.

Great product. I was thinking owc by saw many negative comments so I bought this one. But I would advise unless you know Mac very well otherwise try to buy 855 (850 with case). The migration (old to new add) will be much more smoother. I backup my old sdd by time machine and super duper none of them work at the end so I have to re-install.

Works well. Was a real bitch to get it to work with Apple Mac. Transcend should document the tricks needed to install. but persevered and got it to work.

Fast. Amazing upgrade for the mid-2013 Macbook Air. Gives the laptop a new lease on life in 2019.Install is straight forward if you are a versed computer person. Included instructions are missing some key steps. I needed to install Transcend's SSD utility, make a bootable clone via superduper!, install drive, boot from clone, format SSD and enable TRIM, reboot to clone, copy clone to SSD.Be aware this SSD is very power hungry. My Air still had decent battery life until I installed this drive. Approximately cut battery life by 20%. One star off for this.

Delivery was fast, product is well packed and well built (look and feel as good quality). Great to have free delivery, otherwise I will not be buying. Buyer must be aware that this is a custom product for only certain old macbook models. That means it has almost no use in other PC as it is custom built. While price is lowest among the the suppliers I searched is still almost a 50% premium over generic product. I would recommend at the price point I got it only if your macbook is in good condition and expected to last a few more years.

Extended the storage capacity of my MacBook air with ease. The tools provided made it easy to remove old hard drive and install new ssd

After much consideration, Looking at numerous websites and assessing the suitability of the various SSD options, I plumped for the Jetdrive 850. It arrived very promptly, and was very easy to physically install. However, as many of the other reviews have indicated, the problems start when you try and get the Mac to recognise the new SSD drive. the instructions that come with the drive are extremely basic, and really are no help at all. Even on the transcend website there is not much to help you load the new drive. The first thing that has to be done is that you must be running OS high Sierra for the Mac to recognise the new Drive. the Jetdrive 850 has to be formatted for the Mac. Once you have physically installed the drive, you have to restart the computer holding down the 'option' key. This will allow you to reboot from a Time Machine backup. In order to reformat the new SSD drive go into disk utilities and click on the 'view' menu and select 'show all devices'. Then select the Transcend Jetdrive. Select 'erase' and you get options of how you want it formatted. You can then select 'Mac OS extended (journaled)'. and select 'GUID' in the other option box. Then you erase the disc and it will reformat to suit the Time Machine backup or reinstalling from OS from the Internet. I did not need to use anything other than Time Machine, such as SuperDuper, or clone the system. It is just the hassle of getting the new disk formatted that is the problem.This worked for me on a 2015 MacBook Air and it seems to be working fine, giving me my MacBook Air a new lease of life. However if I had had to rely on the Transcend technical support I would still be waiting now. I contacted them on three occasions and no one ever got back to me. One tip that I did discover is that there is a telephone number for UK technical support at Transcend on (01442) 202880, so you could try that as a last resort if you're really having trouble.I would probably advise buying the Jetdrive 855 which comes with an enclosure, which allows the new disk to be formatted before removing the existing drive, and of course allows for the old drive to be used as an additional external drive once the new one is in place.