Chosen Solution
Hello ifixit. The SSD in my MacBook Air 2013 is dead. Now I want to replace it with the SSD of a MacBook Pro Retina 2015. Will it work? If yes can I damage my MacBook Air because the new SSD has a higher speed? Thank You!
First, Are you aware of this replacement SSD for your system? OWC - SSD Upgrades for MacBook Air 11" & 13" Mid 2013, 2014, and 2015 As to using a Retina SSD in your Air system: The SSD blade drive from the Retina system has a PCIe x4 interface which a newer than the PCIe x2 interface in your Air’s. While both are PCIe they are proprietary to Apple, we just don’t know how interoperable they are. Their have been reports of people swapping out their older PCIe x2 SSD’s within the MacBook Pro series with a newer PCIe x4. They reported an increase in performance! I don’t know if these are interoperable in your case. If the PCIe interface within the Air is a full Implementation then you should see better performance! I don’t think you’ll burn the SSD out by trying as you can see the connector in this image: SSDs from MacBook Air models from top to bottom: 2012-11", 2013-11", and 2013-13" yours being the middle one and this image from the Early 2015 MacBook Pro 13" PCIe x4 looks the same. So unless you have one kicking around and was large enough for what you need I wouldn’t waste the money getting the Apple SSD instead I would go with the OWC as its cheaper for the given size than the Apple unit.
@sever79 the ssd connector on both those devices is PCI e and appears to be same(from photos since I don’t own either of those machines). So it should work. And no you don’t have a chance of damaging your logic board or ssd due to different speeds since PCI e is universal. The only options are that either the ssd will work or it wont at all(like due to some incompatibility). So I think its worth a try :)
