Help with Asus N43 disassembly - accessing HDD and Optical Drive.

Sorry, was hoping to get some specific help with the N43 in particular, as I've seen a variety of approaches to taking the new N*3 series apart, but don't know which applies. I got the laptop today, I have a Patriot Inferno SSD and a Sony BD burner waiting to go into it, but I can't figure out how to access the components. I was committed to winging it to the point where it looks like I'm genuinely at risk of breaking the plastic, and... it seems I'm there now.

I've seen it stated that the Optical Drive is accessed by taking off the RAM access panel first, and removing a screw under it. But I'm not sure about taking the RAM access panel off in the first place. I took out the screw from the battery bay, and the panel does seem to start pulling off from the lower right corner, but not completely, the rest of it still seems secured, and I'm afraid of putting too much force into prying it for fear that there might be a second screw somewhere and I might break something. I have lifted the keyboard and removed two screws from under it, but that doesn't seem to have done anything.

Another thing is that one of the screws I've removed from under the keyboard appears to be in a very good position to possibly be the optical drive restraint itself, if it's actually not in the RAM bay. But I've just come to the realisation that I have no idea how to yank the thing out even if it were - I've ejected the drive tray and gave it a light tug, but it the unit wouldn't budge, and something tells me that it's not the correct procedure for removing it, is it?

Finally, the hard drive bay. Big panel on the back, I'm sure, but no idea how to access it whatsoever. No screws visible aside from those under the keyboard, but at a guess it doesn't look like any one of them aligns with the borders of the panel. Someone said that you're supposed to take off the rubber feet and look for screws under there (especially since there's one peculiar round rubber foot in middle of the laptop, on the HDD access panel), but wouldn't that mean tearing them off, then having to glue them back on? Or do they socket in there?

If anyone's taken apart an N43 or knows how to, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

is it possible to know the keyboard size?

 

Did you look under the rubber feet?
Try removing the 2 screws under the 2 rubber feet of the panel then sliding the cover (that's how the N53's are done)

It's stuck on with double sided tape.. just make sure you don't get them dirty and then stick them back on after you're finished

 

Roughly looks like 30 x 10.7 cm on a measuring tape, if that's what you wanted to know.

Thanks essense, that solved it! The large panel on the back is opened by removing the two rubber feet and taking out the screws under them. This gives access to the HDD alone, though. The other panel is indeed removed by taking out the battery and the screw on its bay wall, I was just being too much of a wuss and had to put in just a little more pressure in prying out the panel. This panel gives access to the RAM modules, as well as to the screw securing the optical drive.

A word of warning to anyone wanting to replace the ODD and being fairly new to disassembling laptops (like me), have a jewler's phillips screwdriver ready, the screws holding the mounting bracket to drive are very small. I didn't have one so I had to make do with the tip of a Swiss army knife. Also arm yourself with some patience with taking off the wedge shaped outer panel off the drive tray, seems to come off a little bit harder than standard ones.

Of course, now that I have both the hard drive and the optical drive replaced I have a new problem, in that the recovery procedure for the OS seems to crash every time. Lovely.

 

I was thinking to buy this laptop and replace the keyboard with a backlight one from u80 Worlds Greatest Site for Asus Spare Part, probably it has the same form factor,same size but i don´t know about connector.

Are u satisfy with N43? Can you post some pictures on left/right side?what´s about battery life? Have you JF or JQ?

 

I'll post some images and impressions once I actually have the thing working. For now I'm still struggling to get it to work with the bloody SSD.

Can't offer any advice on the backlit keyboard, I'm afraid. Though from what I gathered from these forums you'd need to solder the power for the lighting yourself, and you wouldn't have any way to turn it off.

 

Hey Felix
I'm a newbie at notebooks. Did you buy a drive bay that fit into the n43jf and what kind of drive did you use?
Maybe you have some links?

Or maybe someone else can tell?

 

If you mean replacing the original HDD with an SSD, then no, the latter follows the same 2.5 inch form factor of the former so you just swap it into the mounting bracket. I got a 120GB Patriot Inferno SSD, left some notes here on accessing the components. If you meant putting a second hard drive into the optical bay instead of the DVD drive I can't be much help, I didn't do that, though NZWaverider gave some general directions as to how to approach it in this post.

 

Thanx for the fast reply!

I have already gotten an SSD drive in to replace the system drive.
Its the optical drive I meant. I think I'm gonna try and contact NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks for help or Asus to hear wheather its SATA or IDE