How to replace a Dell Vostro 1710 Laptop hard drive

This post will cover replacing a Dell Vostro 1710 Laptop hard drive. This laptop actually has two SATA ports for up to two hard drives. From start to finish you will need to remove 10 screws in order to get at the drive. If you live in Winnipeg and are looking for a Winnipeg Computer Repair Company

* Update * – I just added a related article how to install new memory in a Dell Vostro 1710 laptop.

I love the Dell Vostro 1710. It’s a 17 inch Laptop that has a Intel Centrino processor and by default runs Windows Vista. The Dell Vostro 1710 is black and is made of matte plastic. I find that the feel of the machine feels mid to high end. To replace the Dell Vostro 1710 laptop hard drive please follow these steps.

Things you will need:

• * Clean work area
• * Soft Cloth
• * magnetized Philips Screwdriver (cross)
• * flathead screw driver
• * container to hold screws
• 

1.) You will need to make sure that the machine is off. I like to lay a towel down under the laptop to prevent the laptop from getting scratched.

2.) Lay the laptop on the towel so the bottom of the laptop is facing the ceiling.

3.) You are now going to have to remove 5 screws from the bottom of the laptop. If you have any repair experience you will notice the hard drive symbol on the the bottom of the laptop.

4.) Take the plastic hard drive cover off the laptop using a flathead screw driver.

5.) Disconnect the SATA cable from the hard drive that is connected to the motherboard.

6.) Once the cover is off you will need to remove these 3 screws holding the hard drive caddy in place.

7.) Now that the screws are removed you should be able to lift the hard drive caddy straight out of the laptop using the blue lift tab.

8.) You will notice if you flip the hard drive caddy over that the hard drive is being held on to the caddy by two more screws. These screws are bit wider then the other screws you’ve removed so far. They are also much shorter.

9.) Remove the SATA cable from the drive.

10.) Now is a good time to run a “chkdsk” on the drive with the fix modifier enabled. The Dell Vostro 1710  laptop I was working on had a bit of hard drive corruption. I did the scan on a machine that was up and running using a Vantec NexStar Hard drive dock. I find this device to be pretty fast and works great with SATA drives.

To re-install the drive, just reverse the steps mentioned above.

Dell’s website is not nearly as detailed as my review but if you dont’ trust me you can always verify my steps from the horse’s mouth.

Dell Vostro 1710 Laptop Service Manual

Again just a reminder you might also consider reading : how to install new memory in a Dell Vostro 1710 laptop.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Computer Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.