MBA A1237 SSD Upgrade, some ideas?

[Thalison Araujo]

Hi guys, i have to change the HDD of my A1237, it's a samsung HS082HB/A. I'm trying to find some cheap SSD, or some adaptor to use a sata or m2 ssd.

The question is, can i use this adaptor to use a m.2 to replace the old samsung HS082HB/A ?

Can you give some ideas about some cheap ssd or some adaptor that i can use ?

 

[Needleroozer]

I’ve also been trying to upgrade an A1237 to use an SSD for the last couple weeks and am skeptical that the adapter in that picture will work. If you zoom in on the image, you can see that it’s a JM20330 chip, which only works with SATA I (1.5Gbps) drives, according to its datasheet.

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/temp/JM20330_Spec_Rev.-2.3.pdf

I have been working with an mSATA-to-ZIF adapter that uses the same chipset and have had no luck, even after buying a Samsung 830 mSATA SSD, which claims to be backwards-compatible with SATA I speeds.
I went through the datasheet in quite thorough detail and it looks like my adapter board has been wired correctly, but the SSD is not recognized by installers for Mac OS X (10.5.4 Leopard) or Ubuntu Linux (18.04 Server).

I think that some people have been able to use these adapters with iPod Classics, which use the same ZIF interface as the A1237, so I am not sure what is different with the A1237 or its ICH8 chipset.

So far, the best alternative options that I have found have been using a CF-to-ZIF adapter or wiring up a USB 2.0 drive internally.

 

[Thalison Araujo]

But are you using the CF-to-ZIF adapter?

 

[Needleroozer]

But are you using the CF-to-ZIF adapter?

I am not using a CF-to-ZIF adapter at the moment because I don’t have any CF cards and they’re kind of expensive compared to mSATA drives.
Apparently CF cards are IDE-compatible out of the box, which mean that they should work with the Air. The adapters I can see online appear to be purely passive, which means they’re just mapping the CF pins directly to the ZIF ones.

I will be trying to steal the USB 2.0 connection from my A1237’s webcam and have it talk to a flash drive or an mSATA-to-USB adapter.