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Upgrade My MacBook Air's Hard Drive

thiagos

thiagos

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 20, 2007
371
0
NYC (Manhattan)
Hey guys,

I was wondering if you could help me out. I have the 80GB version Macbook Air and I am running out of space. I don't want to carry an external hard drive nor a flash drive.

I have upgraded MacBook Pros before and I don't think it would be any different. I read that the MacBook Air uses a PATA drive.

I have found a Samsung 120GB 1.8" PATA Drive but when I look close in the specs, it says that it is an ATA drive.

The model number is HS122JB, would someone be able to confirm the model and if it is compatible?

Are 5400 RPM Drives available for the MacBook Air as of yet?

Thanks
 
thiagos said:
Hey guys,

I was wondering if you could help me out. I have the 80GB version Macbook Air and I am running out of space. I don't want to carry an external hard drive nor a flash drive.

I have upgraded MacBook Pros before and I don't think it would be any different. I read that the MacBook Air uses a PATA drive.

I have found a Samsung 120GB 1.8" PATA Drive but when I look close in the specs, it says that it is an ATA drive.

The model number is HS122JB, would someone be able to confirm the model and if it is compatible?

Are 5400 RPM Drives available for the MacBook Air as of yet?

Thanks
Click to expand...

It's the thickness that's the problem. Have you checked that out?
 
The product specs list this drive as .3 in
.3 in = 7.62 mm.

The drives in the Air are 5mm, so the HS122JB drive is too thick.
 
Clean reinstall

I think you can just do a clean OS X reinstall. You will still have about 70GB left after OS. I cannot imagine people need more than 70GB of storage unless they load a lot of music and video on it.:rolleyes:
 
geez, i don't know why people need more than 640k of ram...........


gooddeal said:
I think you can just do a clean OS X reinstall. You will still have about 70GB left after OS. I cannot imagine people need more than 70GB of storage unless they load a lot of music and video on it.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
 
gooddeal said:
I think you can just do a clean OS X reinstall. You will still have about 70GB left after OS. I cannot imagine people need more than 70GB of storage unless they load a lot of music and video on it.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Worst.Comment.08
 
Karpfish said:
Worst.Comment.08
Click to expand...

That's the problem between need vs want. I have a friend who like to carry an additional 320GB external HD all the time b/c he ONLY has 320GB of storage w/ his Dell XPS laptop.:confused:

However, I also have many other friends who don't need more than 50GB of HD on laptops to store the stuffs they need, all the software and a couple GB of musics and videos.

BTW, I still have about 55GB left on my 80GB Air after I installed Office, BlueJ, Skypes and a bunch of other software + about 10GB of musics and videos.
 
gooddeal said:
That's the problem between need vs want. I have a friend who like to carry an additional 320GB external HD all the time b/c he ONLY has 320GB of storage w/ his Dell XPS laptop.:confused:

However, I also have many other friends who don't need more than 50GB of HD on laptops to store the stuffs they need, all the software and a couple GB of musics and videos.

BTW, I still have about 55GB left on my 80GB Air after I installed Office, BlueJ, Skypes and a bunch of other software + about 10GB of musics and videos.
Click to expand...

How is that possible? My 80 GB air arrived with 53 GB free. How did yours after installing programs and 10 GB of music still has remaining 55 GB free? Did you use any programs to to free hard drive space?
 
Heavenkittykat said:
How is that possible? My 80 GB air arrived with 53 GB free. How did yours after installing programs and 10 GB of music still has remaining 55 GB free? Did you use any programs to to free hard drive space?
Click to expand...

53GB is a bit low but I'm not sure how much free space I had before I re-installed. I did a clean re-install with this instruction http://guides.macrumors.com/Complete_Steps_to_Perform_a_Clean_OS_X_Reinstall_on_Your_MacBook_Air

I think I had about 65GB after the clean re-install. When I installed Office, I also took out some of the extra features that I don't need. To be exact, I have about 63.5 GB of free space (after Office, Skypes...etc.) before my 9.2GB of musics and videos.
 
Without including:
1.mp3s/movies/TV shows
2.uncompressed video/photos

Can anyone propose a reasonable set of programs that would use up 60+ GiB of HDD space?

I think for the Air's intended market, 80GB is more than enough.
 
.product said:
Without including:
1.mp3s/movies/TV shows
2.uncompressed video/photos

Can anyone propose a reasonable set of programs that would use up 60+ GiB of HDD space?

I think for the Air's intended market, 80GB is more than enough.
Click to expand...

Xcode, VMWare Fusion, Photoshop... I don't even have 10 GB of music/videos and maybe 5 GB of photos but my Air is pretty full :( I have a Windows XP guest VM session and I really want RedHat and Vista as well but don't have enough room :(
 
Xcode ~ 2.5GiB
PS ~ 0.3GiB (I'm using CS2)

I use Parallels instead of VMWare Fusion, but the actual virtual HDD is what's important. My virtual HDD weighs in at only 1.5GB. I used nLite to significantly slim my XP Pro installation.

I don't see how that's close to even 40GB. Maybe you should use the freeware app GrandPerspective to find where your space is being used.
 
None of these comments help with the actual question.

I believe, but may be wrong, the HD needs to be 5mm thick. 7.62 is too much. I have not tried it but there are numerous other threads which detail this (search for HD replace or SSD upgrade etc).
 
so anybody think that Apple will alow people to take there Macbook Air's to the Genius Bar and get the HD upgraded once larger capacities are released?
 
darngooddesign said:
Your best bet for a faster drive would be if a compatible SSD comes out. Its the PATA interface that's the bottleneck.
Click to expand...

It definitely is NOT the PATA interface that is the bottleneck!

Get this; I've installed an Intel 80 GB SATA SSD to the PATA interface of my MBP as my system drive with the help of this: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/index.html. This gadget allows you to replace your SuperDrive with a second hard drive. Your Super Drive is on PATA. So the gadget allows you to install a SATA HDD in place of your PATA Super Drive. Communication between the HDD and the Mac takes place over the PATA interface. Guess what; my OS is loaded but flies becuase of the SSD even if it is on PATA. It boots in under 30 seconds. Faster than a stock Mac Pro.

You see the bandwidth that is provided by PATA is 100 MB/s. Only recently are consumers seeing HDD's that hit that mark and/or pass it. Your regular 500GB 7200 desktop drive doesn't even get close to that.

The problem with the PATA non-SSD drive is the drive itself and not the interface. If you take a 4200 rpm conventional HDD and put it into the fastest interface (today that would be SAS), you are going to be dying of slowness! Becuase the drive is the bottleneck. So don't think the SATA 4200 rpm drive in the 2nd generation MB Air is going to kill the PATA version. It will most probably be just the same. If there is say a 1% improvement in the perfomance, that's going to be because of an improved HDD and not the switch over to SATA instead of PATA.
 
makahahawaii said:
Is there a verdict to the hard drive upgrade:
  1. the Toshiba 240gb model
  2. anything faster than the stock 4k RPM model

Thank you, much appreciated.
Sean
http://www.top10spot.net
Click to expand...
Wondering this myself, looking at the specs on this Toshiba Drive it should work
Model Number MK1214GAH
http://www.sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=StorageSolutions/1.8-inchHardDiskDrives/MK1214GAH

Size looks good, but guessing that it might have the no standard zif problem since apple decided to switch things up to make replacing the HDD even harder than it should be:rolleyes:
 
demonx said:
Wondering this myself, looking at the specs on this Toshiba Drive it should work
Model Number MK1214GAH
http://www.sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=StorageSolutions/1.8-inchHardDiskDrives/MK1214GAH

Size looks good, but guessing that it might have the no standard zif problem since apple decided to switch things up to make replacing the HDD even harder than it should be:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

don't think so: the MK1214GAH is 8mm thick but there is only room for a 5mm thick drive in the Air. it seems single platter drives are 5mm and dual platters are 8mm+.
 
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