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I have a Rev A MBA with a broken HDD. What are my options?

A

awaizy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 13, 2010
12
0
I have an A1237 sitting here and the hard drive is non functional (I get a ? on a folder flashing on boot up, took it to the Apple store and they also determined it was the HDD). Anyway, replacing the HDD seems a little expensive...I can't find any affordable 1.8HDD's with the ZIF connector. Is it possible to boot from a USB stick? What are my options with regards to finding a replacement HDD?


Thanks in advance.
 
justperry said:
Yes, you can boot from USB but it will be slower.
As for the HD, you might check Ebay now and then, you might get lucky.
Click to expand...

If I have no access to the OS whatsoever, how do I get it to boot from USB? Wouldn't mind running Ubuntu on this thing..
 
awaizy said:
I have an A1237 sitting here and the hard drive is non functional (I get a ? on a folder flashing on boot up, took it to the Apple store and they also determined it was the HDD). Anyway, replacing the HDD seems a little expensive...I can't find any affordable 1.8HDD's with the ZIF connector. Is it possible to boot from a USB stick? What are my options with regards to finding a replacement HDD?
Click to expand...

USB stick is quite possible, but most are quite slow. On the other hand, with a 64 GB MicroSD card for less than £50 your Mac is as portable as before. Portable USB drive costs about £40, and that should be reasonably fast. It does make your Mac less portable because you have to carry the USB drive with you. So you trade size + speed vs. portability, but for less than £50 your Mac would be working again.
 
Yeah man, u gotta decide whether a 2008 machine is worth spending money on. Battery probly needs replacing soon too if ur still on the original, assuming ur keeping it portable.
 
gnasher729 said:
USB stick is quite possible, but most are quite slow. On the other hand, with a 64 GB MicroSD card for less than £50 your Mac is as portable as before. Portable USB drive costs about £40, and that should be reasonably fast. It does make your Mac less portable because you have to carry the USB drive with you. So you trade size + speed vs. portability, but for less than £50 your Mac would be working again.
Click to expand...

Ehm, in most cases a Mac from 2008/2009 will not support a 64GB SD card cause he lacks the SDXC support so technically he will be stuck with 16GB and yet again the most cheap SD cards have even suckier speeds than USB sticks, so if everyone is telling that booting from USB is slow, booting from SD will be one of the seven rings of hell and does a Air even boot from SD?
 
awaizy said:
<snip>I can't find any affordable 1.8HDD's with the ZIF connector. Is it possible to boot from a USB stick? What are my options with regards to finding a replacement HDD?


Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Toshiba makes a 120GB ZIF PATA 5mm replacement hdd that I used in my Rev A- which is still hanging on wonderfully- for about $70 on ebay. It works perfectly. And for a mere $70 investment, the Rev A still works fine for so many tasks. That 120GB drive is a life-extender.

Hey- if you can drop the $1,300 for a new laptop- or you need much more speed- then do it, but you can bring your 'old' laptop back to life for almost nothing, and a little time.

Good luck.
 
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