Worst Laptop Hard Drive swap ever!!

[Majestic]

So I have this Dell Vostro 3450 laptop. Nice laptop, backlit keyboard, 128 gb SSD, i5 Processor, 8GB Ram etc.. so it runs really well only the laptop has ran out of room on the SSD. So I was asked to swap it with a 500 GB SSD. No big deal right? Just open the back, a few screws, take the drives out and clone then put back (or just clone it from it's source OS...)

Well wow... What a frickin NIGHTMARE!! When you open the back of the laptop there's this cage which blocks your path to the SSD/hard drive. And no you can't simply take the back off.

In the process of unscrewing all the back housing screws I seem to have stripped one that was super-tight for some reason. The more I tried to get it of the more it stripped. I guess that's why sometimes the little precision screwdrivers not having enough torx is not a good thing. In any case I was stuck on this until after watching youtube videos on how to remove stuck screws for a long time I finally got the courage to do this by take my drill and using the reverse pressure on it with a very small drill bit until it finally went through and unwound the screw (good trick by the way never knew about it until now..)

Anyway.. So I had to remove the keyboard, the palm rest, the screen, the cooling fan, ALL THE SCREWS (I mean every single frickin one of them!!) and then had to completely remove the motherboard to flip it around and have to remove 5 more screws to get to the SSD and remove it.

I mean really Dell this is ridiculous!

Anyway all this to say by far the worst hard drive swap I've ever had. Great laptop but the design has a LOT to be desired!!

Here was a step to step guide I was lucky to even find never mind to believe it was true!!

http://www.laptopultra.com/guide/dell-vostro-3450-disassembly/

Majestic

 

[pctutor]

Dell seems to like this type of design. I always kind of dread when I see one of the N5xxx series laptops because to get at the hard drive you have to disassemble all the way to the motherboard, and actually pull the mobo out as well since the hdd is UNDER it. Ridiculous.

 

[Majestic]

Dell seems to like this type of design. I always kind of dread when I see one of the N5xxx series laptops because to get at the hard drive you have to disassemble all the way to the motherboard, and actually pull the mobo out as well since the hdd is UNDER it. Ridiculous.

I'm just stunned by the stupidity. I could understand if this machine was one of those lenovo Yogas (and those are EASIER by the way) but this isn't even a netbook and it has a dvd writer in it! Absolutely no need to "design" it like this. Also the 3400 and 3500 models have a regular accessible hard drive slot. This must be their very "special" model... ugh!!

Majestic

 

[Markverhyden]

The unfortunate reality is the manufacturers are designing to minimize manufacturing costs. They could care less about repairs.

 

[gikstar]

A topic I would like to see is one that lists the worst laptops to work on and the reason why. Love to have a printout of something like that handy to check when someone asked for a price on, as in this case, replacing the hard drive. If it's going to take a great length to remove/replace the hard drive itself, we need to charge accordingly.
Thank you Majestic for posting this 'opportunity'.

 

[Larry Sabo]

@gikstar, I believe there is such a thread on TN. I'd have to search for it as the thread title doesn't come to mind.

Maybe this was it.

 

[HCHTech]

Dell has done this before - This thread is an example, even though my solution was frowned on.