MacBook Air Hard Drives – Connectors, Enclosures and Sizes
The MacBook Air is a sleek, beautifully designed laptop except for one thing, the hard drive.
In order to achieve it’s thin proportions, the Air uses a 1.8″ hard drive (most desktops use 3.5″ and most laptops use 2.5″)
1.8″ hard drives can be found in iPods, Zunes, and other ultra portable laptops (Sony T Series.)
What makes this 1.8″ drive even more expensive/ hard to find special is that it is very short (5mm instead of the standard 8mm) and uses different ZIF/LIF connectors depending on the rev. This can make upgrading or replacing the hard drive in the Air difficult.
So what drives and external enclosures work for which MacBook Air?
Rev A MacBook Air (Original MacBook Air)
There are 2 drives that we know will fit and work in the original Air. An 80GB Samsung that we install for $245, and a 64GB Samsung SSD (pictured) that is so expensive, that we don’t offer or recommend purchasing.
These drives are PATA and use the 40 pin ZIF/LIF connector. External enclosures for these can be found here and here.
Rev B and later MacBook Air (Late 2008 to 2009)
There are two drives that we know will fit, a 120GB and a 128GB SSD (available from Apple or AASPs like ourselves.) The interface is a SATA II LIF 1.8″ 5mm and we have not been able to find a compatible external enclosure.
Right now, most 1.8″ connections are proprietary to the laptop manufacturer (Sony and Lenovo use one interface, Apple uses another.) As more and more ultra-portables come to market, we should see some more standardization in the drive height and connectors (more capacity, lower prices.)
In the meantime, we’ll announce when any new MacBook Air compatible drives become available.
Any updates on the Rev B enclosures. The Logic Board on my Macbook Air is shot and I just want to recover my data
Thanks!
@Byron Still haven’t found any that will work yet. I would recommend data recovery but the cost to repair the logic board would probably be less. Feel free to contact us to find out about repairing the logic board.
http://www.myservice.com/contact.html
Hi there . . . still no Rev B enclosures? I upgraded my Macbook Air Rev B to an SSD and would like to use the old 120GB drive as a tiny external.
@Keith We still haven’t found any yet. If you do, let us know. Thanks.
Any word on a SATA II LIF 5mm connector to usb or revision B enclosures? I have a dead revision B Air, but hard drive is fine. I just want to get the files on the old Air drive to my new Macbook.
Hi Robert,
I’ve got a rev A (first generation) MacBook Air. The original 60GB SSD. I’d like to upgrade the drive, don’t care about SSD as much as space… really need a 256GB drive. Do I have any options? Do you guys do the upgrade? If so, can you have someone contact me out of band to discuss pricing at the email attached to this comment?
Thanks,
David
@David Bressler
Unfortunately the 80GB non-SSD is the largest that we’ve been able to find for the first gen MBA. The form factor is the same as some iPods but the connections are unique to that book. When we order these drives, the only place we can get them is from Apple directly. We don’t think they’ll be coming out with larger, compatible drives just because the connections are so rare and no longer used. If that changes, we’ll update this post.