ZIF or Zero Insertion Force connector connector was used in early portable and mobile devices (including laptops) to connect micro hard drive to motherboard.
Data Recovery for 1.8" Samsung Micro-drive from MacBook Air computer
Our lab has not so long back come across of the micro-drives manufactured by Samsung for MacBook Air computers. Two models HS12UHE and HS12UHE/A are mostly used in the older slim laptops from Apple, and some of them have been sent to the Data lab for data retrieving purposes. Here is why we decided to give more attention to this particular type of computer disk, as it actually represents the new generation of micro-drives, in terms of its interface.
The thing is that these drives have absolutely different type of ZIF/LIF interface than all of the similar drives which fall into the category of micro-drives with ZIF/LIF interface. Below we have outlined three major differences between new and old connectors.
- Compared to the 40-line bus on the standard 1.8” ZIF/LIF Microdrive, the new device has a 24-pin connector
- ZIF-24 incorporates SATA data line instead of IDE-ATA interface for standard ZIF drives
- The drive has a 3.3 V power line against 5V voltage for other ZIF HDD
The data recovery projects have been successfully fulfilled for that type of hard drives by our team. The new tools and recovery techniques have been specifically designed and developed to perform the data recovery from it. So, in case your "little guy" has failed - we are standing by to help you out and pull the data off of it.
ZIF SATA connector in pictures
Probably, your MacBook Air laptop has one of those Samsung micro drives presented on the picture. Other option for the latest Air-laptops is a solid-state (SSD) drive with the same zif-24 interface.
The error message of such type can occur when a hardware-encrypted external WD hard drive, like My Book Essential or My Book for Mac series, has failed to start specially designed software that provides an access to the partition with user's data on the drive.
Compare ZIF-24 SATA connector(red) versus ZIF-40 IDE connector(white) on the picture below
NOTE: The presented image was made under the microscope - to enlarge the details for the best viewing by naked eye.