Hard drive installation help?

Hey all,
I just received my hard drive and WiFi card today, and am ready to ditch my 17" MacBook Pro for non-work stuff.

I really need some help with how to connect the ZIF/LIF cable into the hard drive. It's the right size - 40 pin - but I can't seem to make it stick into the connector.

Any hints?

The hard drive is a 120GB Toshiba MK1214GAH and the WiFi card is (drum roll) a Dell 1390.

 

Follow-up:
1) Is the black bar on the HD connector supposed to be in the up or down position?
2) Where would I find a replacement cable?

 

From what I've read, you only to sand down the connector a bit to make it fit in the drive.

 

The blue tab on the ribbon cable (HDD end) makes the cable too fat to fit in the HDD connector. What I (and others) have done is to gently sand down the blue plastic tab with some very fine sand paper. It shouldn't need too much elbow grease.

Can you clarify what you mean by the black bar on the HD connector?

 

It's the locking clip. I think it's meant to be down
rory

 

Thanks for all your replies!

In my infinite wisdom, I pulled off the plastic stiffener instead of sanding it down. Big mistake.

Cable is ruined, lot of 10 new ones ordered from eBay.

If anybody else needs replacement ZIF cables I will have some next week...

 

I have received a couple of PMs asking me about my upgrade project, so I am posting this here for all to see.

(I know this thread really belongs in the hardware section - sorry. I normally read this area of the site as I am going to use my Aspire One for OS X and posted here by mistake.)

It would be great if anybody could confirm that the ZIF cables I ordered will indeed work. Link below.

Oh, and my offer about ZIF cables still stands! I don't need 10 of them. Just PM me your address and I will send one free of charge anywhere in the world. First come, first served!

========================================================

I am based in Oslo, Norway and yes, I bought an 8GB SSD version.

I decided to upgrade to a 120GB internal 1.8 inch Toshiba hard drive since I want to run Mac OS X on it exclusively. The SSD is, as you have probably read on the forum, both too small and too slow for it to run a fully-featured OS.

The model name is MK1214GAH, and i paid 760 Norwegian kroner (including tax and shipping )for it - approximately US$140.

Since I ruined my ZIF cable whilst trying to make it fit into the hard drive connector, I have ordered a batch of 10 ZIF cables from an eBay vendor.

I have not received the cables yet, so my Aspire One is still completely taken apart. I hope the cables work!

Here is the link to the eBay item:
http://cgi.ebay.com/10pcs-FPC-ribbon-ca ... 18Q2el1247

 

They look OK, except maybe for the lengh. Isn't 5cm a bit short?

Having no experience either with this type of cable, I nearly ruined mine as well. I kept sanding and sanding and sanding until I got almost to the contacts. Then I said to myself something was wrong, and finally used my brain (better late than never ).

There were two things I was doing wrong. First, I had not realised that there was a small black lever on the drive's connector, that you're supposed to lift up in order to slide the cable in, and then lower back on when the cable is inserted. Second, the cable actually doesn't go all the way in the connector. It only slightly gets in, and no matter how hard you push it won't get in any further (well, ZIF=Zero Insertion Force, I can't believe how stupid I am sometimes... ). So basically you'll only see maybe 1 or 2mm of the cable get in, and then you lower the black lever to hold it there.

If you sand the cable too much, like I did, you'll end up with a cable that doesn't hold in place. What I did is put two little pieces of transparent tape on it, in order to thicken it a little bit and it worked.

Well, if you can check that the legth is OK, I might get one from you, just in case...

EDIT: Actually, make that 2 or 3. You never know what can happen

 

Yeah, but I hope and believe I'll manage. (Of course I could splice 5 of them, hehe...)

 

Well, I'm not sure 5cm will be enough with the way my 1.8" drive is installed (tnkgrl's way : http://qik.com/video/183950 )... :?

As to splicing them, well... gives me a headache just to think about it

 

Well, I received the cables (and sent them off to the ones who requested them), but my hard drive still doesn't work.

The cable is a perfect fit and stays firmly in both clips when the retainers are down. It has the exact same markings as the original cable - manufacturer, model type and all.

I have the same problem with my old SSD (I thickened one of the end of a new cable with household tape so that it would stay attached to the SSD end that it requires).

So - I am beginning to suspect I may have fried my motherboard during my earlier attempts.

The disk does come up during Mac OS X installation, but reports I/O problems when trying to partition it.

Any ideas?

Honestly, I am thinking about getting an MSI Wind with a 6-cell battery and the pre-installed hard drive. I have a Dell 1390 WiFi and that micro Bluetooth dongle ready to go.

But it's a shame about those two power supplies and that sleeve I just received.

I guess I could solder on a SATA header and try a hard drive that way in order to save my Aspire One...

EDIT: Just for clarity, the drive powers on, the BOIS doesn't recognise it, the system boots up fine into Mac OS X from an external USB drive. The boot log reports a lot of IDE issues before it goes into graphical mode and then the issue with Disk Utility as described above.

 

Update:
I had the opportunity to test my hard drive on another SSD model. The drive itself is broken, which has been returned and refunded. Also, my motherboard is not broken - my SSD worked just fine with an original cable!

Phew!

In other news: I bought another Aspire One - the brown A150 model w/160GB HD and XP. Have swapped out the hard drive for a 320GB one and the machine is running OS X just dandy.

I have also received SATA connectors from Farnell and will solder one into my SSD machine.

Very happy!

(Could somebody please move this thread to the Hardware hacks forum?)