16 Easy Steps to Get More Space on Your Mac

A step-by-step guide on how to increase its storage

Photo by Federica Giusti on Unsplash

I recently expanded the storage from a 256 Gb original SSD to 1 Tb Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 on a MacBook Pro 2015 15.6" running macOS Catalina 10.15.2 following this guide + and a specific guide for the SSD model I used.

I did it because I got tired of uninstalling large apps that I didn’t use often enough just to reinstall them when needed, constant notifications of low disk space, and scratch disks getting full when using the Adobe Creative Cloud apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, and AfterEffects).

This is not about getting more space on the SSD that is already inside your MacBook Pro (cleaning up the clutter). It is about replacing the drive altogether.

I’m documenting the process to help others that want or need to do the same.

Note that you are doing this at your own risk.

Let’s begin

I used the following hardware for the switch:

• an 1 Tb Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD
• this Sintech adapter
• 3 USB Flash Drives (1 x 256 Gb for backing everything up, 1 x 128 Gb for creating the macOS Catalina Bootable USB, 1 x 4 Gb for Etching the SSD firmware ISO onto the drive)
• a pair of T5 & P5 screwdrivers

The Flash Drives for the backup and the creation of the bootable USB are the best regarding speed I could find. For the SSD firmware upgrade, any stick will do.

Considering that I could use only half of the original drive because macOS was taking the other half, the storage increase was greater.

The process

The steps I followed were the following:

1. thoroughly documented what I had to do
2. ordered all hardware (the SSD, the USB sticks, and the adapter + screwdrivers)
3. created the backup of all my files on the 256 Gb stick
4. downloaded the SSD firmware (an ISO) and etched it on the 4 Gb stick
5. downloaded macOS Catalina and created the…