How to double the internal storage in your Apple MacBook Pro (without breaking it open)



The TarDisk Pear slots into the SD card port on the side of your MacBook



A NIFTY new leave-in flash card from TarDisk Pear promises to increase your MacBook's storage capacity – without taking the netbook apart.

 

The TarDisk Pear is a sleek aluminium flash drive that blends into the body of your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air and merges with its on-board memory.

It slots into the SD card port on the side of your MacBook Pro and MacBook Air and can double your available storage.

Thanks to its built-in installer, the nifty leave-in SD card transforms the native SSD inside your Apple netbook into a single Fusion Drive.

 

"Just plug it into your MacBook, click install, and your hard drive instantly combines with TarDisk, seamlessly doubling or tripling storage on the spot," the US firm claims.

It's a clever trick and should ensure you never have to worry about managing two separate hard-drives on your laptop.

Instead, the Apple MacBook is simply tricked into thinking it suddenly has more capacity at its disposal.

TarDisk Pear has also a trick up its sleeve when it comes to SSD performance.

By always prioritising the built-in SSD in your MacBook, the system will only revert to using the slightly-slower TarDisk Pear when your HDD is full.

 



Starting from $149 for an additional 128GB, the TarDisk Pear is not the cheapest solution



 



Starting from $149 for an additional 128GB, the TarDisk Pear is not the cheapest solution



As the additional storage starts to fill-up, the software will then keep less frequently accessed files on the flash card, exactly like Apple's own Fusion Drives.

According to the firm's own benchmarks, MacBooks can show the same – or slight improvements – to disk performance when a TarDisk Pear installed. 

But performance does come at a cost.

Starting from $149 for an additional 128GB, some £97 converted, and going up to $399 for the 256GB variation, around £260 converted – this is not a cheap solution.

But since Apple seals down almost-all of the components housed in the new MacBooks – it is an elegant and pain-free solution to adding more memory to your device.

 

Another important note – since the TarDisk Pear merges and blend with your on-board storage, it means you cannot simply pop-out the SD card every time you want to take some photos from your DSLR.

The TarDisk could be holding essential system files which you don't want to suddenly remove. As a result, it's probably worth shelling out for an external SD card reader, too.

But despite the hefty price-tag and the inconvenience of losing your built-in SD card reader, the TarDisk Pear is an easy way to prolong the life of an existing MacBook.

TarDisk was founded in early 2015 backed initially by a Kick Starter crowd-funding campaign that garnered widespread acclaim and raised 393 per cent of its initial funding goal. 

Founder and CEO Pierce Schiller claims the TarDisk is the only product available today that expands MacBook hard drives with no tools.



 

The built-in software intelligently merges the extra 256GB with your HDD