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guido.coza

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 12, 2011
154
7
South Africa
Hey All
Recently my Crucial P1 NVMe M.2 1TB packed up in a MBP 15" retina 2015. Crustal's P2 does apparently not work, and the OWC are here in South Africa so expensive I can buy a new 2nd hand machine for it.
My alternative now is a 512gig SD card (simply for size and portability) as a HD extension to the original 125 gig internal ssd

MY QUESTION now
I am running OS 10.14 mojave and under no circumstances want to upgrade to anything higher than MAYBE and RELUCTANTLY 10.15 catalina.
I want to partition the SD card for some window programs, but Bootcamp want's me to update to the latest version of OS.
Is there any work around this, besides backing up the HD via CCC, installing the latest version of OS, partitioning the SD with bootcamp and then formatting/deleting the updated ssd and reinstall from CCC??
Will this actually work??
Is there any other SSD upgrade available for my MBP? (Min 512gig)
Any and every help would be greatly appreciated!
 

saudor

macrumors 68000
Jul 18, 2011
1,507
2,082
Keep in mind SD cards arent meant to run an entire OS - especially macOS which is a lot more aggressive with disk writes compared to windows. A SD card also don't have things like proper wear levelling so it will end up writing to the same areas over and over - eventually wearing it out. For mostly read-applications, you could make it work.

As for SSDs, the WD_Black SN750, SN770, and SN570 are all good with working TRIM. Do not buy the SN750 SE model either. There are some reports that then 770 kernel panics under heavy load but definitely not enough reports to draw a conclusion. Samsung/Sabrent also have broken TRIM in big sur/monterey but if you plan to stay on Mojave/Catalina forever, you're good.

Currently running a WD_black SN850 (from a price error that had it the same price as a sn770) in macOS Big sur and it's working perfect. Otherwise, the SN850 is overkill.
 
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rm5

macrumors 68020
Mar 4, 2022
2,313
2,638
United States
Can you even install an OS on an SD card? I thought you couldn’t do it because of some weird partitioning scheme that isn’t supported on SD cards.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
 

guido.coza

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 12, 2011
154
7
South Africa
Thank you Saudor for your info, very much appreciated and I will follow up what I can find on the local market.
How about the partitioning of the sd card. I "need" a windows only "photo editing" program, to feed my newest obsession (_;
 

saudor

macrumors 68000
Jul 18, 2011
1,507
2,082
Thank you Saudor for your info, very much appreciated and I will follow up what I can find on the local market.
How about the partitioning of the sd card. I "need" a windows only "photo editing" program, to feed my newest obsession (_;
where is windows going to be installed ? you also can’t install windows to the SD card without messing around either unless it’s through a virtual machine. even then it’s still not a good idea and you’re better off finding a sata ssd and putting that into a usb enclosure to run windows through that.

if you intend to run just the app from the SD card, i suppose it could work with a performance penalty but not sure how much space it will save you.
 

guido.coza

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 12, 2011
154
7
South Africa
OK I see where this is going, my sd card is not a good idea. I had a look at the above mentioned drives and only the 850 is locally still available.
It is quite pricy. I guess it is the bullet I need to bite in. The old 1TB drive was about 60% full. Waiting till I can afford a 2nd hand 2021 MBP 16" will take a while still ((-:
On the external inclosure option. I have one that came with a transcend ssd maybe that is really the best and most viable option
 
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