Macbook Air 2nd gen with Sata HDD

[harshw]

Does anyone have the new MBA with the SATA HDD ? Any of the Apple stores have stock of the 2nd gen MBA ?

Am wondering if I should buy the 2nd gen with the SATA disk and upgrade to a SSD when the prices on the Intel SSD drop. From what I have read, the Intel SSD blows away every other SSD out there. And I dont want to pay the premium for a 128GB SSD that turns out to be crap later ...

[Whiternoise]

Whilst i don't have one, your best bet is to order online - though the MBA is quite a niche product line, so i assume most stores will have it in - and there are plenty of non-official stores.

To be honest, don't waste your money on SSD yet. The performance gains aren't worth the stupid price tag in my opinion. Just check that you can definitely upgrade the hard drive!

[harshw]

Just check that you can definitely upgrade the hard drive!

Damn ! Just found out that the MBA 2nd gen uses a ZIF SATA connector and Intel X18-M has a microSATA inline connector

So no Intel SATA HDD for the MBA 2.0

[hab00]

Actually several people have done it and its not impossible at all, just a little difficult. Well depends on if you can handle soldering of small things. Maybe you can even use the help of someone who can?!? And its a LOT OF CRAP to say that its not worth it. i would have paid even more that the 200Euros for this speed. Actually this brings the Air to a nice machine that it previously was not because of the 4200 rpm disk. I SAY ITS DEFINATELY WORTH EVERY EURO!!!

Heres my gen2 intel X18-M xbench scores compared to a apple supplied ssd. Given that I changed from a 4200 rpm mechanical disk id say its 4 times faster!!!

Couldnt paste any links so you will have to google: "macbook air 1.8 drive mod" and its the first link to macroumours forum.

My scores were:

Overall disk test score:
INTEL SSDSA1M080G2GN 204,93
APPLE SSD SM128 84,86



Disk Test (overall)

204.93
84.86



Sequential

126.29
69.16



Uncached Write

96.92
52.63

59.51 MB/sec [4K blocks]
32.31 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write

128.82
60.81

72.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
34.41 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read

90.00
57.44

26.34 MB/sec [4K blocks]
16.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read

403.03—>
200.90

202.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]
100.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random

543.03—>
109.79



Uncached Write

675.17—>
52.26

71.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]
5.53 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write

232.95
67.43

74.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
21.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read

1775.95—>
1837.53—>

12.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
13.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read

971.62—>
519.84—>

180.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
96.46 MB/sec [256K blocks]

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