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For Transcend JetDrive Lite 330, 583 customer reviews collected from 2 e-commerce sites, and the average score is 4.5.

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4.4.2015

As far as the product is concerned, it's excellent and it's quite quick (at least read speeds). Expect write speeds to be just into the double-digits of MBs per second but In everyday use, you won't notice any speed issues whatsoever. If you're buying one of these, you are probably doing so to basically turn your SD-card-slot into a solid-state expansion bay, hence using it to install your programs, etc. on it. It essentially turned my 256 GB of Macbook Pro storage to a total 384GB - just enough to allow me use my Macbook Pro as my desktop-replacement. Physically, it sits flush, thanks to Transcend multitude of models of the same card with tailored dimensions (make sure you order the correct one for your model and model year).If you're purchasing this product,I will assume you are trying to do the same - maximizing your built-in laptop storage for as little outlay as possible.Caveats:You need to be aware of some limitations. Initially the JetDrive card is formatted as MS-DOS/FAT so copying, etc. is very slow. So the first thing that needs to be done is to format the card as Mac Journalled via Disk Utility - allowing it to reach it's full speed potential.Also, the JetDrive card will need to be inserted perfectly into the Mac's SD slot. Even the *slightest* of smallest gaps will plague you with constant Mac "Disk Not Ejected Properly" messages every once in a while, even though you didn't do anything to jar it. Pushing it in with your thumb won't fix the error from reoccurring either. Removing the card completely (which is a test of patience and nails as it's hard to remove - use a lot of gentle rocking) and reinserting it properly is the only way to get rid of these messages for good. For this reason, I recommend you *never* remove the card once you have it inserted well. If you need to access another SD card from time-to-time - buy a cheapo USB card reader - maybe one that doubles as a keychain fob.Bear in mind that the Mac sees the JetDrive simply as an inserted SD card, which means it will not be seen as a *drive*. Had it been seen as a drive, it would have been possible to RAID array it with your existing drive (using Disk Utility) to turn into one large lump of storage. That's not a fault with the JetDirect, just an OS-limitation. Still this doesn't negate the use or the need of this JetDrive card by any means.As a lot of Mac software *insist* on installing on to the boot disc or disc in general, this won't allow most programs to be *natively* installed on the SD card. However, there are ways around this. You can install the software on your boot drive (as usual) and then move it's application and/or data manually to the JetDrive. Once moved to the JetDrive, then create an *alias* (right click and select 'create alias') and place that alias where the data/application was on the boot drive. This way, you free space on your precious boot drive for other junk and it launches as expected.Another useful tip is that iLife applications (such as iTunes, iPhoto, etc. and other programs that use data like Photoshop, etc.) allow you to specify where the data is kept, thus enabling you to make use of your JetDrive. Using this method, I was able to move my entire music and photo library to the JetDrive as well.Also, if you use Parallels or other Windows-virtualization software, you can set or move the virtual disk image onto the JetDrive instead allowing for more of your primary storage to be freed.In short, I wholeheartly recommend the JetDrive. It's faster and cheaper than it's microSD competitors (when comparing to the 128GB capacity) and does exactly what is needed - free up your storage. Especially if your Mac is a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina where your cost-effective upgrade options are budget-limited.
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24.5.2015

Bought this for my rMBP Early 2015 as I wanted to save a bit of cash, so I went with the 128GB model thinking this would save me about £120. Does exactly that, instead of spending obscene amounts extra via Apple for little difference I got this and have been extremely happy.No installations, Mac picks it up straight away as an external drive that you can save things to (although I've not yet attempted to save any applications nor do I know if you can- potentially if you install it first on the built in hard drive, copy it to the JetDrive and then create a shortcut for it on the dock?) and does not seem to have any issues when going to sleep/waking up. I did encounter the Storage Card 'not being ejected properly'once when I had closed the lid on my laptop that resulted in the card not being recognised however that hasn't been repeated since. All I did was pull the card out and push it back in again to get the laptop to recognise it again.Read and write speeds have been very good, not as fast as my USB 3.0 storage cards or hard drives but when there are no cables lying around and getting in my way and the save is happening on the laptop itself I was not in any way bothered about it taking the slightest bit longer. To get the best speeds out of this device I did have to reformat the card to the Mac Journaled partition as many reviewers have already suggested you do when you first get this. Simple process through Disk Utility and Google!In terms of form factor, it fits flush to the rMBP with only the smallest of protrusions. To be entirely honest, without this tiny protrusion you simply would not be able to pull the card out at all, which as I've mentioned above can be a helpful fix.All in all, does what it says on the tin, and has been extremely helpful for that little bump in memory. I would highly recommend!
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29.7.2015

I love my new Macbook Air, it's efficient and beautiful. The storage space, however, leaves something to be desired, that is unless you opt for a more expensive model...which I didn't. Tired of lugging my external HDD around, I had turned to a USB 3.0 flash drive. However, the danger of bumping the stick and totalling a USB port (there is only 2 anyway!) worried me into searching for an alternative.Pros:Instant 128GB upgrade to my macbook air - doubled my storage in 10 seconds!Simple, sleek and effective - you plug the tiny drive into the SD card slot of your Macbook, format it, and thats it.Read performance is good - upto 95MBps (1080p files played pretty much flawlessly)Write performance is decent - upto 60MBps (Moving data is not exactly instant but certainly quick.That being said, you probably won't want to render footage to it or boot an OS from it!)Cons:I have found it somewhat difficult to remove at times - albeit you'd probably only want to remove it occasionally!Read and Write performance can vary. Greatly. It's not a deal breaker, this drive isn't a performance drive. It is merely a convenient and unobtrusive supplemental storage solution - infinitely more practical than an external HDD.It is not exactly aesthetically pleasing - there are prettier alternatives out there, you can even buy your own micro SD card and adapter! Although this often ends up being pricier especially as there are only a few micro SD cards which theoretically match the Jetdrive in terms of performance. It must be noted though, the adapter and micro SD card combo has the significant advantage of being able to swap out the micro SD card.Verdict:It is pretty much an SD Card which has been cut in half. That being said, it is easily the most essential accessory, after a case that is.
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21.7.2014

After I'd just received my new JetDrive Lite 130, I was happy to see 128GB available on the empty card. However, I copied 16GB of files to it and the Finder told me only 89.3GB was available.That's 39GB less space for 16GB of usage! The folder itself showed 16m bytes and 25GB on disk, whereas on my ssd, it showed 16m bytes and 16GB on disk.The SD Association (of which Transcend are a member) cite performance impacts as a reason against using standard drive formatters.However, they have a formatter available for download at https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4.On Mavericks, I reformatted my drive using this utility and recopied my files.The results were as follows:A single file 14.57GB took 4 minutes to copy.This is the exactly as advertised 60MB/s write speed.80k files (16GB), however took 92 minutes to copy. which reflects about 5MB/s.In both cases, however, the info window was as expected showing a reasonable amount of memory usage and memory remaining. So, this solved my original problem.As a comparison, I decided to reformat as a Journaled and found the following:14.57GB file took 10 minutes to copy, which is only about 50% of the advertised max speed.80k files (16GB) more importantly took only 10.5 minutes.For me, sticking with a Journaled format is a no brainer, particularly if writing lots of small files, which I will be. It also may allow me include this on a Fusion drive, although I haven't investigated this yet.TL;DR - It is probably best to reformat to a Journaled partition as it provides a more consistent write speed of about 30MB/s, no matter the file sizes. ExFAT ranged between 5 to 60 MB/s speeds, depending on the number of files being written (lower number is faster).
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23.11.2016

1. No installation instructions in, or on the box, but it's just inserted carefully like any SD card.2. I was expecting the visible edge to be silver to match the MacBook, but it is black. I must have confused it with other products.3. It comes formatted as FAT but needs to be re-formatted in the Disk Utility (Erase) to the Mac journaled option, otherwise it will be slower and Time Machine will not process it.I knock off a star for these minor points. Otherwise it performs very well. Getting about 55 MB/s write and 80 MB/s read speeds. Which is about 5 to 6 times slower then the MacBook SSD.This is not a SD card inside, it is specifically designed for its purpose and, for the price,it does it very well. Don't be tempted by the MicroSD cards and adapters that are available. I reckoned I would only get up to 1MB/s Write speeds on a good quality Class 10 Ultra SDXC, which is still hundreds of times slower then the SSD.I decided on the 128GB (larger version will be cheaper by the time it gets full) then moved all the data files to the JetDrive. I program for living, so there are lots of files, graphics and libraries. The JetDrive has not slowed me down much at all because once a file is loaded (usually it's text), the incremental saves are very small. All the heavy lifting is done by the development systems and simulators. They and their support resources are on the SSD.It survives the MacBook going to sleep and waking up just fine. You can change the desktop icon as with any drive, so it looks less like a SD card and more like another disk volume. Psychologically, this makes it much more aethestically acceptable to my eyes.All in all, it's a no-brainer upgrade.
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21.6.2014

These expansion cards are fantastic for anyone with a Retina MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, where upgrade options are virtually non-existent.The JetDrive Lite cards are specific to not only to the model of laptop, but also screen size and year of production. So make sure you are buying the right card for your machine as they all have different SD card slot depths.This card is for the latest (at the time of writing) 15" rMBP (the Late 2013 model). It's a perfect fit for this machine with a 1-2mm bit that sticks out to allow removal. It does not sit flush like other expansion cards (like the Nifty MiniDrive), however, it doesn't appear prone to falling out or being knocked.It looks very neat and I'm confident there will be no problems in terms of its design.Once installed, you are ready to go. I did not need to format the card and started copying my data to it. Write speeds aren't amazing, certainly not as fast as USB3, but decent enough. Read speeds seem to be fine. I ran a 1080p HD video from the card without any issues.When rebooting or waking from sleep, the card is already mounted so it's exactly like having a second drive installed on your laptop.There are many ways you could use this card, as a Time Machine for example, however I've decided to store my DropBox/OneDrive/Copy folders on it so everything is automatically backed up to the cloud. If you have the cash, then the 128GB card is definitely worth getting.A really good item to have, but as I said before, double-check you are getting the right card for your machine.
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21.6.2014

Had a Nifty minidrive before, but they have had so many problems with the 2012/2013 15" Macbook Pro Retinas. Just wasn't reliable and kept unmounting itself and tried various things like bits of tape etc to get it to stay in place, with no joy. Nifty no longer sell for the 15" retina so must be having issues with the design.Saw this and liked the fact it states the Transcend JetDrive Lite 350 model is for the 2012 and 2013 15" Retina Macbooks. Slide in to the SD card nicely and mounted straight away. It's nearly flush in my Mid 2012 Retina. Sticks out about 2mm's.The nifty has a nice little cut away and removal key for easy removal from the slot. This doesn't have anything like that.Wondering if it's a patent issue with Nifty as it really should and removing this thing isn't going to be fun without some decent nails or tweezers to get a grip. So hence 4 stars over 5.*Update* Dropped to 3 stars as found speed of access having moved my iTunes media library to this card made the whole iTunes program run extremely slowly and unresponsively. Moved library back to the built in SSD and will have to re-think what to use this extra 128GB of storage for now...**Update 2** Increased back to 4 stars as after formatting to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) the performance greatly increased and it's very usable. So much so I have now upgraded to the 256GB Version. Great drive. Only slight gripe is it's awkward to remove if you have short fingernails like me.
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24.9.2014

I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro with 256 gb internal flash drive. I wanted to increase the capacity and the choices were Nifty and Trascend. Nifty apparently has the drive which sits flush with MacBook and you need a micro sd card with it. However nifty has not produced one for MacBooks from late 2013 so I went for this.First of all, the black base you see in the picture is the only part that does not go into the card slot. So in essence it does sit flush against my MacBook and it's nice to have this because you can take it out when you need it. Otherwise it's a snug fit. Nifty apparently goes all in but you need a special key to take it out. Plus it apparently has a red light on the pictures.This one looks sleek with the aluminium MacBook.When I plugged it in. It was ready to go. However it hung up when I started writing on it. I just reformatted it to Mac OS Journaled (hope I got that right) and after that it has worked well. I have transferred my iTunes library and my picture to this card (I didn't realise it was more than 60 gb) and plan to use it for that purpose only. So far no issues when I open my iTunes and picture library on MacBook. And let's hope it lasts.In future there will be a time when this too will fill up but that's a long way away. Then I may buy something similar to nifty because you can then choose your micro sd card capacity as you wish (you must have heard of the 800 dollar new 512 gb card..:). For now, this is ideal.
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29.6.2014

Spotted this on Macrumors news feed a few weeks ago and couldn't believe my luck.I have a 256Gb SSD in my MBA, but I filled it about 6 months ago and was already using a 64Gb card in the SD card slot for extra storage, which obviously sticks out and is prone to damage from knocks.When installed, the JetDrive sits almost perfectly flush - just about 1mm proud of the case - enough to get a fingernail under each side when you need to remove it - which is obviously a bit trickier than a normal SD card which you can grip easily. The Acme sleeve I keep my MBA in is tight fitting, but it never catches on it.I have my iTunes library (around 50Gb) on it like other reviewers here,but I also have my Windows XP disk image for VMWare Fusion (around 30Gb). Brilliant to be able to keep it separate from my main hard drive.If you use a Windows disk image with Fusion or Parallels regularly, this is a great place to keep it.Any downsides? Well, you do lose your SD card slot! So if you regularly use SD cards for photo / digital video imports, this might be an annoyance, because as mentioned above, it is a lot trickier to remove the flush JetDrive from the slot compared to a normal SD card. The easiest solution I found is if you have a later MBA with USB3 ports, just get a USB SD card adaptor - under £10 to buy, saves unplugging the JetDrive every time and transfers are nearly as fast - job done.
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23.3.2019

This is not my first of these - I previously owned the 128Gb model, but after realising that it was just too small, I upgraded to the 256Gb model, which is (obviously) twice the size.Speed on my 2015 13" macbook pro is very good considering it's essentially a cut down sd card. Blackmagic speed test rates it around 35MB/s write and an impressive 90MB/s read (see screenshot). Clearly not in SSD territory, but good enough to work well as a storage drive. I store most of my Steam library on it and games load quickly and take up no space on my internal drive.I used the software that comes with it initially to unmount the drive when sleeping and re-mount when waking, but I was having issues with battery drain,so I switched to using Jettison, which seems to drain the battery less. I do still experience a certain amount of battery drain (quite variable), but it's possible this is not due to the drive.A much much cheaper option that a) upgrading the SSD or b) buying a new macbook! Also much handier than an external ssd (been there too) - mine had a habit of getting knocked and dismounting.Only slight annoyance is that obviously you lose the sd card slot - easily remedied by buying an external USB3 card reader for a few pounds.
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28.3.2017

Brilliant little gizmo! Our little Macbook Air only has 256gb of storage on it and these days that isn't much. I remember the olden days when 256gb would be more than anybody could have ever imagined they would need, but I am rambling, sorry.The JetDrive fitted easily into the SD card socket on the Macbook Air, I formatted it using the Mac Utilities app to the correct Mac Journaled version and it just worked.Easy.I use it for a virtual machine version of Windows 10 and it works perfectly, there is no noticeable lag and all the Windows functions work without issue. Of course the specs will show it is not as fast as your SSD, but in practice that doesn't seem to matter,we haven't noticed any speed issues even running a virtual machine, so for normal file purpose it would probably be even quicker. Upgrading the disk size on a Macbook is very expensive, this Jetdrive provides 50% more disk space for a fraction of what it would have cost for a larger HDD in the Macbook Air. I don't know how easy it is to remove, I have heard it might be tricky, but there is no need to remove it once it is fitted, it is there, I can't see it because it fits so nice and flush, it has become part of the Mac and they are very happy together.
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10.9.2014

With some reservations, I just purchased one of these (128GB) for my 2012 MBP Retina. The laptop has a 250GB internal SSD drive, which I have rapidly filled with photos and music. My intention was to move my iTunes library from the internal disc to this SD card. Thus freeing up 120GB of the internal drive.On opening the device, and inserting it I was surprised to see it fits just about flush. It protudes approximately 0.5mm from the aluminium body, which is fantastic. It looks really good.The next step is to format the thing to Mac OS Extended Journalled filesystem, which takes seconds using the Disk Utility.Then I migrated the iTunes folder to it. I was expecting to see very poor performance,having read some previous comments. I'll start by saying that the 120GB was copied over in approximately 50 minutes. Which I don't think is at all bad. Using iTunes after this? Well, on album view, if you scroll REALLY FAST, it sometimes lags with displaying album art. Thats about it. Performance is perfectly adequate for holding your music.I really like this. Its a relatively inexpensive way to breath a bit of life and squeeze a few more years from the laptop (which is still the best computer I have ever used).
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8.2.2016

Apple charges more than twice for this space!Great product... has doubled the memory in my Macbook Air for less than half the cost of what Apple would've charged me for the same space.It doesn't fit perfectly flush with the rest of the body, it sticks out by about 0.5mm from the side of the Mac but that's fine for me. To take it out you have to have tough nails to be able to fit them in between the "cartridge" and the mac body but you get to learn how to do it and its quite easy.Initially every time my mac would hibernate or sleep the drive would be automatically ejected and I had to pop it out and pop it back in. It was quite a pain in the ass.I though this was Apple's way to dissuade you from chasing these after market upgrade solutions. Since my last OS X update (second El Capital update) it nows stays always connected even when the mac goes to sleep.It's very handy... I run all applications and critical files form the main onboard HDD/SSD but use the Transcend for movie and other media. I've read that battery efficiency suffers when using this vs the internal drive. I can't say I've noticed any material difference.I can't recommend this enough if you're running out of space on your mac.
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5.9.2015

More detaila on my Video Review available https://youtu.be/Zkc0xYJ9CRIThe JetDrive Lite 330 is in my opinion the most elegant storage solution for the macbook pro / Macbook Air line up, at least that i have tried so far.Its great if we need more available space for documents, photos, videos and so on, or if we want a local drive for Time machine backups or even for our Photos Library without sacrificing our internal SSD. Off course it can be used in any other way but these are the things that i see that can be more useful.About with half the size of a regular SD Card, just fits great on the Macbook pro.The way that i see that its more useful is using it as a permanent solution and if we needto use a SD card then just use a USB SD Card reader and there we go!Things i did like the most:- Most Elegant Storage solution for the Macbook Pro / Macbook Air- Great Speeds for the type of storage- Safe to use on the go without worrying to remove the SD card- Price tag is worth for what we getThings i did like the less:- I loved it!!! So there is nothing that i didn't liked about it :)Hope that you guys enjoy the video and that its useful in some wayAll the BestRJ
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21.8.2014

Transcend Customer Service emailed me today to say that the 128gb version of the JetDrive 330 SD card for the 13" retina Macbook Pro (late 2012 to 2013 models) should be available from Amazon UK from about the end of August 2014. That version is already available in the USA. At 128gb this wil be ideal as an onboard Time Machine 'solo' or 'double' back-up...I will buy from Amazon as soon as it is available here in the UK.UPDATEI now have the card and have mounted it in my 13" retina MacBook Pro. Very easy to use but remember to format the card as a normal Mac Journaled format if you only plan to use it in a Mac. Using it to add 128gb storage capacity in addition to the 256gb onboard the MacBook,making 384gb in total.I decided not to use this SD drive as a Time Machine drive as I also bought a Buffalo 1TB MiniStation Thunderbolt to act as a partitioned drive for (a) a second 500gb Time Machine drive plus (b) a 500gb Carbon Copy Cloner drive. My primary Time Machine drive is a 1TB USB 3Seagate BackUp drive.Very satisfied with this 128gb SD product and may well explore other items from the Transcend product range.
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