Upgrade from ATA Disk to SSD possible?

The 1,1 macbook air uses a pata ribbon connector. It would be difficult to find an ssd nowadays that supports pata. Most support sata I or II.

glor

Glor is spot on, finding a PATA interface SSD can be a little tricky. In regards to the Intel X25 SSD, all indications on their product website point to a SATA connection interface (only):

http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/extreme/index.htm

There are 3rd party PATA SSD drives out there, I remember New Egg selling 32GB versions for about $560 when the MacBook Air first came out.

I saw some on Ebay awhile back.... they were like $600 however....

The bigger question is "why" you would ever consider doing it.

I'd hazard a guess that might want this non-Apple upgrade (if it were possible) because of the performance of the X25-E Extreme. That written, though, you'd only see that improved performance with applications that perform a lot of read/write to the SSD, though I guess if avid photoshop user on MB Air they might see a performance improvement, but if they just use their MB Air for activities such as web browsing or streaming iTunes radio I'd be surprised if the performance was improved more than incrementally. If I were to make a suggestion to OP, if improved performance is what they are looking for, a good first step might be to consider the 2nd generation MB Air with SSD option, certainly a lot easier than user performed upgrade they are contemplating.

he's probably looking at the fact he can pick up a 1st gen 1.6 GHZ for $999 refurbished on the applestore.


Glor

Well, SSD doesn't contain the head you find in conventional HDD so, of course, it won't fail at all from that. However, they can fail for other reasons, so I find myself keeping backup of my MB Air, hence I couldn't write improved reliability as a deciding factor in my drive choice, I think I'd be keeping a backup with either as they both have the potential to fail for one reason or another. My reasons for SSD in generation 2 MB Air was, in fact, improved performance in some applications i run, but, i guess, also the slightly geeky aspect of having the more technologically storage system in ultra-portable Mac laptop. There are some smaller advantages, for example it is quieter than conventional HDD, though in much of my environment there is always background noise, e.g. in my office I notice their is always the hum of the air-conditioning system, so that sort of thing not a real benefit either.