Replace SSD with Compact Flash card on Acer Aspire One ZG5

Earlier this year (2013) my SSD on AOA110 died. I had to choose what to do next - sell the netbook or fix it. As both things are fairly easy to be done and I love this netbook (in fact I'm currently writing this article on it), I chose to fix it, test it for some time and write on my blog about the results. So here we go.

What you'll need:

1. Aser Aspire One ZG5 with SSD. Model of the SSD doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that it should be PATA SSD with ZIF connector.
2. CF/ZIF Convertor Circuit Board with ZIF Cables
3. A compact flash card of your choice.
4. Double-sided tape.
5. Knowledge of how to tear down your AOA. You can find a video here.
6. An hour or two, depending on your skills.

End result:

There are two tricky parts here:

1. The cable you need to use is NOT supplied with this adapter. It's called flipped cable. As far as I know, it's not supplied with any adapter. You have to make it yourself. There are two cables coming with this adapter, so you have 1 mistake margin. I've read a couple of ways to make this cable, but I had another idea. The end result is to flip the pins of the cable so from one of the sides they should face down and the other up. Unfortunately, I didn't took a picture of my cable because it's hard to fit the flipped cable inside the adapter and when I succeeded I didn't wanted to tear it down again. Here is how I did it, though - see that both ends of the cable are a bit thick? That's made because the cable there should make good contact with the board. Since we want to flip the cable there, it'll have double thickness in the end, so we should remove this thick peace of plastic. If you don't (as I did in my first try), you will probably brake some of the buses and you won't be able to plug the cable into the adapter. So remove it and flip the cable exactly where the pins end, so they should not be visible on one of the sides of the cable.
2. Compact flash card should be marked as fixed drive, not as removable drive, if you want to install Windows XP (for 7/8 I think it's not a problem, but I never tested it). For Linux it doesn't matter. If your CF card is marked as a removable drive, you won't be able to see it in the BIOS of your AOA - that should not worry you - it's still visible and bootable from the boot menu (F12). I bought 16GB 400X Transcend, as I read on the Internet that 90% of the Transcends are marked as fixed drives, but mine was not :( For Sandisks there is an utility for flipping this bit and making fixed disk from removable disk and vice versa. It's called ATCFWCHG and can be downloaded from here. For other brands I don't have any information.

After you make your flip cable and get your CF card, the rest is simple:

1. Tear down the netbook.
2. Make space for the adapter (you can look how I did it at the picture below).
3. Glue the adapter there with the double-sided tape.
4. Put the netbook back together and test it. Don't forget the ferrite ring on the cable (get the old one from the SSD).

Here is how I fit my adapter inside the AOA.

CF life expectations

I used my Transcend for 3 months (everyday use) and I can feel it slowing down as I did with the original SSD. That's really bad news for me. But the good news is that this is MLC flash card. Sandisk are offering SLC flash cards - they are pricey, but their life should be more than twice the length. Also the larger the capacity of your CF card is, the longer it's lifetime will be. So with 32GB SLC you should start feeling the slowdown not in 3 months, but in at least an year if not more. And that's if you use you netbook as I used mine - 2 to 6 hours each day (more in the weekends). It's up to you ;)