A little while ago I looked at a device called the Nifty MiniDrive a neat little MicroSD card carrier that fits completely snuggly into the SD slot on MacBooks adding disk space for photos/documents and other temporary files. They are relatively cheap and can be used with whatever size of MicroSD card you have available. The downside is that the disk space provided is a separate volume to the internal drive and as such you have to manage which files and folders go where. It is certainly a neater solution than plugging a USB drive into your MacBook but if the internal drive is struggling for space it doesn’t immediately solve that issue.

Then last night I came across a product called TarDisk Pear which uses the same idea of plugging extra storage into the SD card slot in a completely flush carrier but extends it to the next level. With the TarDisk Pear instead of the extra disk space being presented as an external removable volume the additional storage is magically used to extend the space available to the internal drive ! The web site doesn’t give many details on exactly how it does this but there are a few hints on the FAQ’s page where it talks about the risk of data corruption and loss if you remove the drive after it has been setup. Clearly the magic comes at a price.

Despite looking I couldn’t find any information about the impact on the performance of the built in drive either. I would hope that it manages the data in a way that optimises the performance of the internal drive but this isn’t clear from what I have seen.

Pricing starts at $149 for 128GB rising to £399 for 256GB.