The SATA standard has now undergone three major revisions, resulting in connectors that are identical in appearance (hurray for backwards compatibility), but with bandwidth doubling each time. The SATA standard’s been in use for many years and is still the most prevalent interface for connecting internal storage drives. SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) refers to the technology standard for connecting hard drives, solid state drive, and optical drives to the computer’s motherboard. Luckily, advances in host interfaces invariably stay ahead of the pace of drive technologies, always allowing room to push speeds a bit farther. If you are, it’s time to get up to speed!Įver faster drive technology, brought about by faster spinning disks, increased cache, advances in controller architecture, and a host of other factors keeps pushing the host interface to become the bottleneck for read and write speeds. If you’re into vintage computers and you think patience is a virtue that can only be honed by waiting for programs to respond, maybe you’re still rocking a drive with a PATA interface. 5AĮvery hard drive or solid state drive you’ve used in the past ten years is likely to have used either a SATA interface, or more recently a PCI Express interface. Generation 1: MacBook Air (Late 2010 – Mid 2011).Apple offers a MacBook Air RAM upgrade, but you need to choose it before you buy the MacBook Air. Unfortunately, however, the solid-state memory used in today’s flash drives gets pretty expensive as capacity increases.Īlthough you can upgrade the RAM on older MacBooks and MacBook Pros, there is no way to upgrade MacBook Air RAM or memory after you buy the notebook. Solid-state drives have been around for a number of years now (think iPod Shuffle). The MacBook Air offers a solid-state internal hard drive. This is removable with a Phillips #0 screwdriver. Inside the bay, there is a small L-shaped bracket running down the left and far edges. Use a coin to turn the lock slot to the unlock position. Replacing a MacBook’s Hard Drive Turn your MacBook upside-down, with battery side near you. How do you replace a hard drive on a Mac? A SSD replaces a hard drive by combining Flash memory with a standard 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch hard drive enclosure. Does the MacBook Air have a SSD or flash memory?Īnswer: The MacBook Air uses Flash memory, which is essentially a solid-state drive (SSD) in a different form factor.

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