Replacing laptop harddrive

[Jimbo_uk]

Now in my time with computers I've seen plenty of stupidly designed cases, but the Sony PCG-8Q8M seems to be up there. A pretty standard 15" laptop until you want to service it yourself. Ofcourse there's no manual to tell you how to perform a harddrive upgrade as they want you to pay £XXX amount of money for them to do it for you. The 13month old laptop hardrive died just out of warrenty and I can't get the thing open to swap it. I've removed all the screws on the back and thats enough to look inside and see the drive - and what seems like a screw right in the middle still holding it together. To get to this it would appear that you have to drill through the keyboard - not such a great idea.



So has anyone ever managed to break into one of these things? Any advice would be most welcome as I could do with getting this done before I head back to uni soon.

[robpaxton]

What's the 'real' model number?

It's normally on a decal underneath the screen.

[rich912]

This is a VGN-A series.
Have a look at a link that Rob provided in a previous thread.
Click here.

[intradinkq]

I managed to change a hdd in a 5 yr old vaio (can't remember the model now). It was a tricky drawn out process, that needed to be done in a proper sequence. My suggestion is to google for a guide for your specific model (I was lucky with mine).

The difficulty was that to get to certain areas I had to dismantle the screen from the base, then partially open the base and unplug the keyboard and trackpad. Once this was done it just opened up.

So I'd suggest that you don't try this unless you know what you are doing, or have a decent guide (with pictures) from someone who does.