First we had to disconnect all the cables around the drive, as well as remove the little black strip to the left of the notebook and the ports in the upper left.
It appears to be the MacBook Air's speaker
There are four screws that hold the hard drive in, three of which are visible. The fourth is underneath a removable piece of black plastic stuck to the screw:
With all of the screws out you can actually lift the bracket that holds the hard drive and pop the hard drive out:
The MacBook Air hard drive is a 1.8", 5mm thick PATA drive from Samsung. It features a 8MB buffer and spins at 4200RPM. There is no accessible SATA interface on the motherboard, clearly for space constraints. Instead of a standard PATA connector Apple uses a 40-pin ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) connector, which Samsung offers as an option on its drives.
From left to right: 1.8" MacBook Air drive, 2.5" standard notebook drive, 3.5" desktop drive
The drive itself is a Spinpoint N2 and carries the model number HS082HB. It looks like replacing it with a 1.8", 5mm thick SSD should be possible as long as you opt for the 40-pin ZIF connector. It looks like Samsung also makes the SSD for the MacBook Air so the swap shouldn't be that hard to do. If you wanted to save some money you could opt for a 32GB SSD, which will be considerably cheaper. Another alternative is to wait for 64GB SSD prices to drop and simply upgrade later.
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pnorman - Thursday, March 26, 2009 - link
Has anyone successfully replaced the HDD in the first generation MacBook Air 1.6GHz model with an SSD?If so, could you let us know the manufacturer and model ssd used, please? And where you purchased it?
Thanks very much!
MBAir - Wednesday, February 6, 2008 - link
There are benchmarks on both hard drive version running in OS X and Vista here:http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/MacBook-...">http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/MacBook-...
The point here is that the Macbook Air is faster than ANY competitor out there.
crystal clear - Wednesday, February 6, 2008 - link
Here is repost of my comment on Daily tech (2/3/08)-RE: The focus is on specific segemnt of the market
By crystal clear on 2/3/08, Rating: 2
By crystal clear on 2/3/2008 7:30:23 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
I did not have the opportunity to open up the Mac air-
But somebody else did just that-read on
See the pictures of each part with comments about it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/Mac/MacBook">http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/Mac/MacBook...
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/Mac/MacBook...">http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/Mac/MacBook...
Compare this with Anand's version.
blueeyesm - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - link
Nice tear down!Hmm,.. no memory upgrade capability...
OccamsAftershave - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - link
Note: the review meant to say "...half of the 2GB is on the back...", not 1GB.Looks like Apple's counting on the same dupes who stood in line for their $600 iPhone, only to see Apple drop its price by 1/3rd in a few weeks.
dcalfine - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - link
Articles like this are why AnandTech is better than, say, Tom's Hardware.I love raw benchmarking as much as the next guy, but if I see one more BEST GRAPHICS CARDS FOR TEH MONAY I'm going to pop. The fact that AnandTech takes the time to explore all areas of computer hardware puts a grin on my face.
YAY!
heulenwolf - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - link
I agree that this is a far better start than provided by other review sites. Appleinsider, for example, started with a good idea of asking its readers what they wanted answered (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/02/what...">http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08...whats_wr... in their review and then completely ignored any of the feedback in the actual "in-depth review," (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/04/macb...">http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08...air_hdd_.... I hope Anand can address some of those unanswered questions in his review.Dainas - Monday, February 4, 2008 - link
Hmm, looks like the innards of what should be a shoestring to make, apple certainly turning a tidy profit off of these(at least 100%).Messudieh - Monday, February 4, 2008 - link
I love it! I was really impressed at how small the motherboard was in there. In true Anandtech fashion you guys go after what we really care about. Everyone and their brother will have performance reviews of this thing. You guys took yours apart before even turning it on.KeypoX - Monday, February 4, 2008 - link
not to rain on your parade of anandtech butt kissing. But apple also showed the inside of this thing.