[powerbooks]

I got an used, original, basic MacBook Air, and would like to assess the HD upgrade probability.

With the SSD price dropping, I am thinking of going solid state. While I know the MBA uses 1.8" SSD with PATA (Zif) interface, I am not sure the height (thickness) of the SSD that can be installed. The thin one (5mm) can be installed for sure, but how about the thicker 8mm HDs?

Checking Mydigitaldiscount.com, they have a SSD for HP laptop:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Pro...908-1227178988
which I think can be installed in MBA.

Another one:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Pro...909-1227179050
would double the storage, but with 8mm height.

Doea anyone know if these SSD can be used in MBA?

Also the new MBA with 120GB SSD, what is the thickness of the SSD inside? I know that MBA has foam attached to the small HD to reduce shock. How about solid drive with thinner or without foam? Can the foam compensate the 3mm difference?

Thanks!

[ajprice]

From a thread here - http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=414645

"Well, my hard drive died after i crashed on my bike last week. i tried upgrading to a 100 gb drive that is 8mm tall, and yes, the 3 mm difference makes a huge difference. The bottom casing of the Macbook Air wouldnt close with it in. Also, no one has the 5mm drives in stock so my MBA is currently driveless. It sucks."

So its just 5mm 1.8" PATA-ZIF drives.

[powerbooks]

Originally Posted by ajprice 

From a thread here - http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=414645

So its just 5mm 1.8" PATA-ZIF drives.

Thanks for the definite answer. I also found out that the new MBA use the same low profile HHD, but with "micro" SATA interface instead of PATA.

[Koralatov]

I’m glad we got an answer on that.

My main worry, however, is that they won’t make a 5mm 1.8″ PATA-ZIF drive at a capacity higher than 64GB. My girlfriend has a MBA, and I can forsee the time coming of her running out of space on it, and I’d like to install a bigger SSD in it sometime in the future. Ideally, I’d be quite happy if it topped out at 256GB for around $200 sometime in the future, but I’m not optimistic — I suspect the PATA ones won’t ever go that high, especially since the current MBA is on microSATA.