Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement

[willawake]

The victim, a 400 Mhz PII ultraportable with a 12gb HDD.



First remove the battery and power from the machine. Then you must remove these purple caps from the hinges. It is quite an annoying job to get them off. I used a small screwdriver. Be careful not to break them.

Once you have done that you may remove the screw from the left hinge on the front of the laptop. (marked in red)

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



Then flip the unit over and remove the screw from the other hinge and the four holding the rear of the case on. Also remove the screw holding the kbd because you may damage the keyboard if you forget this screw and try to force it out.

The little door held with one screw is to access the ram slots. forget about that.



then you may flip the unit over and proceed to remove the keyboard. The keyboard has two tabs sticking out at the part near the screen which fit into slots there. so we will unclip the keyboard at the end closest to you and lift it forward towards the screen, pivoting on these two tabs.

the keyboard is held closed closest to you with two moveable tabs.

you will take a small screwdriver and locate the two tabs shown on the diagram, just push one towards you and stick a screwdriver between the keyboard and the case. then do the same with the other one. If you are having difficulty then your screwdriver is too large, one like 1mm wide is what you want. If you screw up and pop off a key, dont worry just put it back and push it down until it clicks, no harm done. you can see also in the next photo that there is nothing to damage below the keyboard when you are moving your screwdriver about.

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



at this point you will lift the keyboard up carefully and you will bring the screen forward to a position where the keyboard can rest on it while you work. You can see that there are many flat cables so it is necessary to be very careful not to damage them.



and yes, sorry dude....you will have to remove all four of the flat cables. the top of the socket the flat cable goes in is a clip. you will get a small flathead screwdriver and ease the top of the socket until it comes up about 1 mm. Do this very carefully easing it up at points along the side you are working. If you break the clip you will have a big problem to fix. Do that for all the four flat cable sockets and check that the clip is up completely before you carefully remove the flat cables.

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



here is a close up of the flat cable sockets where you can see the clips. the top one is seen clearly in the open position.



here is a shot of the keyboard. there is nothing to do with that at the moment, just put it aside in a safe place. i just want to show you the green flat cable for the keyboard and the white for the pointing stick. also the screw point where the keyboard is held to the case

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



and then for further familiarisation i will show you the underneath of the case lid where you can see the two white flat cables. the one at the top of the picture is for the power button and the one at the bottom for the mouse buttons. It is important to familiarise yourself with these because if you have something not working when you put it back together, you will know which flat cable to check.



anyway...back to the job. remove the metal cover over the pcmcia card area. it is not attached anywhere just take it off. then you have 3 screws to remove.

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



then the case lid is attached with tabs at the part closest to you so you will just open it as shown and it will pivot on those tabs and then it will come open easy. work both sides.



bingo a half naked notebook

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



so what do we have. well we have 3 screws holding the drive in, their positions are indicated. we also have this flat cable which goes over the drive to connect the right hand side piece of motherboard.



then we have this presumably power cable to the right hand piece of motherboard. i removed this to access the screw and have the drive come out nice. it might not be necessary. be careful to not break the connector. I preferred to use my fingernail to work that one out, rather than a screwdriver which was liable to slip. recommended to do this one first.

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



so we have this flat cable accross the drive. we will remove it from the right side connector. do the same thing as before, easing up the top of the socket carefully. then once it is completely up you may remove the cable.



we want to be really careful with this cable so the best way would be to use a small screwdriver to ease it up out of the socket

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement

then you can remove the 3 screws holding the hdd in.



after that you must disconnect the ide cable from the hdd. This cable is another very delicate flat cable so you must be careful not to pull it while you are working. the best way to start it off would be to get a paper cutter knife with a large blade to start off the separating of the connector from the drive. yeh it was pretty difficult

I have indicated the position to start the separating and in the photo it is already slightly separated. actually you will probably find it to be completely flush together. one you get it going with the knife you can use a screwdriver or work it a bit with your hands but again be careful about the cable behind the drive.



here is the space where the drive used to be, you can see the ide cable that was behind the drive.

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



so what do we have? well we have the old drive on the left which still has rails attached which we must remove and on the right we have a new Seagate momentus 5400.2 40gb. The old drive is a IBM Travelstar DARA-212000 12gb 4200rpm



two screws on each side of the drive and then the two rails are removed. they are marked L and R but i placed them next to the drive and then immediately put them on the new drive.

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement



here we have a notebook to desktop ide adapter which i will use to attach the old drive to a desktop. then as the win98 install was good, it was only the hard disk that was old and sounding like it would fail, i used ghost to ghost the image of the old drive to an image file on the desktop computer. then i could use the same connector to scan the new drive with a full diagnostic scan of seatools utility and then ghost the image back.

after doing that the drive can be placed back in the notebook and following the steps in reverse to get it assembled again.



when you put the top of the case back, attach it at the part closest to you first. then after placing the side near the screen down, make sure it is all sitting nice and then push down at the front so it locks properly. make sure that the side panels are properly aligned, ie the pcmcia slot is not warped. it is important to make it attached properly rather than using the rear screws to force it together, thats not going to work.



in case in your haste you have forgotten which screw is which, here they are

make sure also that you seat the flat cables properly. take your time to do it right.

once assembled i booted up and checked that the hdd was recognised in windows properly. yes 37.1gb in total. the speed of the machine was increased quite noticeably with the newer and faster drive. I could have put a 7200 probably but i have gone off them since one client busted one in a few days by turning the machine (compaq) over to flip the rear switch to remove the cdrom while the comp was on. if they are doing that stuff then the midrange for them only.

The End......if anybody wants to say anything, yes you may say it here. did you see the made in japan on the mobo?....pity this one only takes max 128mb ram. it is very nice with a gprs card to send emails on the road. the construction is good and the screen is yet to dim even though it is quite an old machine. i have seen reports of people running linux on them also.

[enigmatic]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement

hey good guide, im wondering if maybe you could do/find one for the vaio vgnfs195vp i have the manual in pdf format which breaks everything down with schematics etc but im not too sure with the screws i hate to think i have them all wrong.

if you possibly get ahold of a guide would you pm me
thankyou

[willawake]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement

but im not too sure with the screws i hate to think i have them all wrong.

best thing to do when dissasembling something like a notebook is to place the screws on a piece of paper and write on the paper which part they are for. i also take photographs, in case i forget something.

[enigmatic]

Re: Sony Vaio PCG-C1XD Picturebook Hard Disk Replacement

how about a keyboard key dissambly guide as my shift keys and ctrl have stopped working i suspect foul play