MacBook Air 13" without hard drive?

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Hello everyone,

I'm in desperate need of a laptop as my old Dell has given up the ghost.

I've narrowed the choice down to a MacBook Air 13". However the deal-breaker is no backlit keyboard and the fact that the Lion operating system is coming out in summer.

So I was thinking of buying one now, and then selling it if the 2011 edition comes with a backlit keyboard.

However, I'd have to sell if without the hard drive. Can anyone tell me how easy it is to remove and how much I should be able to get for a 2010 MacBook 13" without a hard drive?

Thanks,

Alex

(PS, it would not be enough or me to reformat the hard drive as the security is too important for that.)
 
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13in rMBP 2014 Yosemite
After reading your ?, my first thought was that will be hard as heck and it will almost definitely void apple care.

I found this link,
Cracking Open the MacBook Air | TechRepublic

Seems difficult but doable for the average user.

As for what you would get for a 2010 MBA 13" w/o a Flash Drive (the hard drive is flash). THe only input regarding that is my experience in helping my sis shop for an MBA. I straight up would not buy one that had the HD taken out because there wouldn't be any warranty, no option to buy apple care, no where to install the OS, and I would be pretty surprised if there were Flash Drives manufactured to replace other than the one you took out.

There are people who know a lot more than I do on this forum, but i have a feeling that they will say it is difficult to do and resale is nearly out of the question in that type of situation.
 
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iFixit has a repair guide to remove and change the SSD card. It doesn't look that hard for someone with the hands on knowledge to do it, but the average person isn't going to want to do it.

Also, what are you going to do with the drive after you remove it? There isn't much you can connect it to, so it's pretty much useless.
 
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Why wouldn't you just move your data over to the new MBA then do a clean install on the old one? Seems like a lot of work to pull out the drive, and it certainly would reduce the resale value of the machine! ;)
 
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chas_m

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Are you seriously suggesting to us that the built-in Disk Utility's option of 35-pass zeroing out of the drive (which will, incidentally, take days) is not good enough? That the U.S. military and the CIA are being played for chumps? Seriously?
 
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Also, what are you going to do with the drive after you remove it? There isn't much you can connect it to, so it's pretty much useless.

I'll destroy it for security

Are you seriously suggesting to us that the built-in Disk Utility's option of 35-pass zeroing out of the drive (which will, incidentally, take days) is not good enough? That the U.S. military and the CIA are being played for chumps? Seriously?

Yes that's what I'm saying.

I've seen youtube videos where data recovery specialists have gotten useable date from hard drives which have been subjected lying in a pool of burning fuel.
 

chscag

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Just what is it that you have on your hard drive? Or is that Top Secret?
 
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chas_m

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Well come on guys ... he's not going to tell US! Duh! :)

Look, alexrpeters, I can't imagine data that you're that nervous/paranoid about, but hey that's just my failure of imagination. You sincerely feel you have to go that far, then you do, I guess.

Since you're going to physically remove the hard drive (ie open the machine up) anyway, you may as well place a new one of the same or better spec in while you're in there. Not many people are going to buy a MBA with no HD in it unless it's fire-sale priced, and they're going to wonder about it (and you) the way we did.

So my advice is to put in a somewhat larger-than-original new drive in, so it has extra appeal to buyers who won't question what happened to the old one, sell it for as much as you can get for it and move on. Your actions will void the warranty and that will hurt the price some, so be sure to let buyers know that you replaced the drive.
 

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