Replacing the hard drive in the Asus Eee PC 1001p
February 2, 2010 – 10:05 pm by Eldon MartinI recently had the privilege of working on an ASUS Eee PC 1001P
Below is the long list of steps to replacing the hard drive in one of these animals. The locations described in this guide assume that the hinged edge of the netbook is away from you. This information is without any warranty, and following these steps likely voids the warranty on the unit itself (see step number 10).
- Disconnect power and other connections from the laptop.
- Close the lid and turn the unit upside down.
- Remove the battery.
- Remove the screws from the four corners of the base.
- Loosen the screw on the cover of the RAM compartment, and then remove the cover.
- Remove the screw located at the bottom right corner of the RAM compartment (notice that this screw is slightly longer than the others, so keep it separate).
- Turn the laptop over and open the lid
- Loosen the keyboard using a small straight screwdriver to depress the four latches just above the top row of keys.
- On the end of the keyboard ribbon cable where it connects to the main unit, gently push the latch on either side of the cable away from you; then detach the cable and remove the keyboard.
- You will find approximately six screws where the keyboard previously rested. Remove all of these. In my case, one of the screws was hidden by a “warranty void if removed” sticker. Bye, bye warranty!
- Locate the touch-pad ribbon cable and detach it from the motherboard. In this case, the latch can be lifted up toward you using your fingernail or the edge of a paper clip.
- The entire cover of the laptop can now be removed. Carefully pry up one of the bottom corners of the cover and slowly move around the edge until the cover comes loose. It does take a bit of prying to get it to “snap” out. If you encounter resistance once the edges are loose, you probably forgot to remove a screw in the middle somewhere.
- Remove the ribbon cable that is blocking access to the hard drive. The latches operate the same as the touch pad cable - just lift up the latch and the cable freely slides out.
- Remove the screw to the bottom right of the hard drive.
- Pull up gently on the flexible plastic handle on the left of the hard drive until the left end of the drive is clear of the motherboard, then slide the hard drive to the left to disconnect the SATA connectors.
- Remove the hard drive from the metal bracket using the four screws, and mount the replacement drive in the bracket.
- Replace all of the components in reverse order.
Good luck, and enjoy your netbook!
