Chosen Solution
I’ve had a mid-2012 Macbook Air 13" (A1466) since 2013, and it’s finally giving way. Here’s what’s happening to it: It’s slow. It’s very slow. It stops 3/4ths of the way in the loading screen, it takes 30 mins to boot up, and even after it’s booted up, applications take ages to load and the cursor lags hard. Typing takes a while too. More than half of its RAM is empty, trash is empty. Did Apple diagnostics and EFI/Drivers/TestSupport.efi can’t be loaded. So I’m guessing it’s a Hard drive failure.The battery appears as an “X” and won’t last a second without a charger plugged into it. I’d like some following advice on the questions below: From what brands should I purchase the batteries and harddrives from? I really don’t want any leaks or components that don’t last long.In terms of harddrive, I’m thinking of getting a 250 GB SSD and a SATA cable, am I on the right track? Thank you very much. Any help would be very much appreciated.
First off, see if it is actually your SSD that is slow. Install Blackmagic Disk Speed test to see how your drive is going(speed wise). If your drive ends up being very slow(compared to what it is supposed to be), try erase your drive completely(make sure to backup all the files you need). Then reinstall MacOS and try run Blackmagic Disk Speed test again, if it has become faster you are good to go. If it is still very slow in the test, then consider switching out the SSD. The MacBook Air you linked does not use a SATA SSD(as far as I know), it uses a custom Apple SSD(Not m2, there are adapters, but they can be unreliable). Consider following this guide to replace it, and if you really want a reliable drive option, purchase the drives that IFixit recommend.
