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OWC Envoy Pro installed in a MacBook Pro (retina)
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May 30, 2025
In which Dave Taylor -- of http://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ -- replaces the SSD drive in his 2013 MacBook Pro (retina) with one twice the size from Other World Computing, the OWC Envoy Pro. Will it work? Will he succeed? Watch and find out!
View Video Transcript
0:03
hi Dave Taylor here and I have a problem
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with my macbook pro now hold on it's a
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great computer has the Retina screen it
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has as much memory as I could put it in
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and has as much hard drive well
0:16
solid-state drive as I could get when I
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bought it but that's only 256 Meg and
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that's not a lot of space when you do
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video work so I've been stuck so trying
0:27
to figure it out I finally realized that
0:29
other world computing now has
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solid-state drive upgrades that work
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with the MacBook Pro so I contacted them
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and got the envoy pro this is initially
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it's a USB 3 system but it's actually a
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480 gigabyte drive and it's expensive
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it's 579 bucks so it's not something
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that you can just go and get on a whim
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but on the other hand when you need more
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space boy it's really worth it so the
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thing is it's kind of tricky to get this
1:01
to work the first step as I'll show you
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real in this sort of speeded up video
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the first step is to take the little
1:08
solid-state drive open up the little
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drive holder that comes with this
1:13
package put the solid-state drive it
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looks like a circuit board put that in
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zip the whole thing closed and then I
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used carbon copy cloner and you can just
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use the 30-day trial to make a perfect
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copy of everything that's on my existing
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Drive oh you're back good so what I did
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was I then made a copy of every single
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file every application every preference
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of resetting all my system preferences
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everything copied on to this little
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drive right in here as you now know is
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the new circuit board now
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the way to test this before you
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disassemble your computer because of
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course you don't want to do that just to
1:57
find it didn't work is you can actually
1:59
boot your computer off of the external
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drive one nice thing about Mavericks
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which is what I'm running so you do that
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by when you're booting up hold down the
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option key gives you lots of choices
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choose the newly named
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new external drive worked for me my
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computer's up it's running which now
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means I'm ready to shut it down
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disassemble the computer disassembled
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the drive carrier unit swap them and
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then reassemble everything and hopefully
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what will happen is my computer will now
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have the larger drive as its main drive
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and then the external drive will be what
2:40
is now my existing drive follow all that
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so it's going to involve a lot of
2:46
screwing and unscrewing and luckily part
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of the package they send includes these
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Torx screw drivers they're kind of
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tricky so if you'll excuse me I got a
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little bit of disassembly to do as you
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can imagine the first step is to take
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the back plate off to do this we need
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one of these handy Torx screw drivers
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so the Torx is a it's a different sort
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of head it's designed actually so people
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won't do what we're doing but as you
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take your screws out very carefully put
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them aside you don't want to lose any of
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them in this process so that's - and
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I'll speed up this video so you don't
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have to actually be bored watching us
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okay now we're done let's see if the
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back comes off hopefully it does without
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too much hassle there we go
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let's take this apart nice and quick so
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this one's easy it's only two screws and
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we using the long screwdriver let's try
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again one
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- so we want to find something that
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looks like that and that is right here
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so what we need to do is we need to
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slide it out and there's a single screw
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holding it in let me zoom in for a
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second so you can see what I'm talking
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about okay so now you can see right here
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that's what we want to replace with the
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new unit so what we need to do is take
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our existing screwdriver and there's the
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single screw that doesn't work let's try
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this one and there we go so we take that
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screw out and the drive pops out that's
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pretty handy we'll put that aside and
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there's only one way these things can
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fit because of the way the slots work so
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now we'll put the new one in gentle a
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little pressure and we'll take that
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screw we just took out and put it back
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in
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that's all we got to do now we just need
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to reassemble the computer so I'm not
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going to bother to show you that part
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that's pretty easy actually put the
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cover on it put all the screws back in
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alright so i reassemble Devery thing and
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I plugged the drive in as an external
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just to see and as you can see the old
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drive shows up and it has just like 38
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gigabytes of space available really not
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very much but here's what's cool is it
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actually booted now I admit I had a
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little bit of anxiety where and I pushed
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the button and I'm like wow hope this
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works and it did and it boots up and now
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as you can see I have a ton of free
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space so really nice performance and
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everything it's gonna be the same it's a
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solid-state drive so with really
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probably realistically 15 or 20 minutes
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worth of work and a little bit of detail
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work it's it's pretty tricky stuff
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working with these tiny screws so there
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you have it the o WC envoy pro 480
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gigabytes about 579 bucks is it worth
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the upgrade to double my disk space oh
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yeah it's absolutely worth it and I am
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looking forward to a new lease on life
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with my macbook pro so check it out
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check out other world computing see what
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they have for you they also have a lot
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of RAM too so if you're looking at
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upgrading the RAM on your computer your
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MacBook maybe one of you have maybe you
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have one of those cool Mac pros in any
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case whatever you got they got a lot of
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options so check it out this is dave
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taylor saying see you in my next video
#Computer Drives & Storage
#Consumer Electronics