Replacing hard drive in Lifebook S6520?

Just purchased a Lifebook S6520 (will ship in 5 days) and was about to order one of the new 7200 rpm 500 Gig hard drives from Newegg.

However, I quickly looked through the S6520's manual on the Fujitsu web site, and saw nothing about removing the hard drive. This was a relatively easy do it yourself job on my old P5010.

Is the hard drive not user accessible in the S6520? I'd like to order an upgraded drive as soon as possible so I can install it when the Lifebook gets here.

Thanks in advance for any info.

 

I would assume and I've never seen the S6520, that's there's a panel somewhere on it to pop off. I can't imagine it's that difficult. If you're that concerned you can always wait to take a look at it.

 

Thanks Zaz, and I would assume the same. But I purchased this to replace a Sony Vaio SZ360 that required removal of the keyboard and palm rests.

With all those dangling ribbon connectors I felt like I was doing heart surgery.

 

I'd post a picture, but my 6520 is (still) sitting in Sennan Shi. Same as yesterday. At least it seems to have been cleared for departure to the USA...

The joys of FedEx online tracking. How did we get by, 15 years ago?

 

mrbigsby,

My 6520 arrived this morning. There is an easily accessible panel for RAM upgrades, but I do not see a dedicated panel for the hard drive. Looks like the bottom of the case must be removed. I'm not up for it at the moment, since I haven't yet decided whether to go with a 7200, ssd, or just leave well enough alone and keep the 5400. It's a snappy little guy as is, and I'm not close to being done with initial setup/optimization/etc.

 

Could go a small G.Skill Falcon SSD, transplanting the 5400rpm drive into a hotswappable optical bay caddy. Looks like a 9.5mm SATA optical drive, so a $15US-delivered Lenovo T400 caddy would do the trick, even giving a right side cutout on the faceplate.

 

chris-m:

Thanks much for the preview. I think I'll hold off on ordering an upgraded drive until the 6520 gets here.

 

That might just be worth a shot. I'm not going to return an item shipped from Hong Kong, but $15 isn't that much to gamble. And if it fits, that could be a really cool addition. The trick is that notched faceplate. The newmodeus ones don't have that. I'm not concerned about appearance for the sake of appearance, but obviously a gaping hole in the side of your laptop is not a good thing...

 

The laptop was in Osaka Monday afternoon and delivered to my office Tuesday morning. Amazing.

In any event, I've had a 1/2 day of cleaning up miscellaneous files, installing programs, and general poking around.

ZaZ was correct -- replacing the drive should be a simple matter. There's an "L" shaped plate (bottom front) that's secured with 6 screws (already lost one, damn). It slides outward just a tad and then you lift up. Hard drive is front left (when the laptop if upside down, front towards you). Haven't removed it yet, but the housing looks pretty standard. The plate is relatively thin plastic so be gentle.

Like chris-m, I'm having second thoughts about purchasing an upgraded 7200 rpm disk -- the machine is already very quick. I didn't think I would notice much of a difference compared to my VAIO SZ but I do. It's a nimble machine.

 

Thanks for the update. Couple random thoughts: One thing my machine is not nimble at is booting. And this is after a week of ownership. It's already downloaded and installed all the windows/drivers updates it needs. I've gently pruned startup processes using Glary Utilities.

I've got a Win7 partition. From the boot selection screen, I get to the desktop in 40-odd seconds, with full usabilty right around the minute mark. That seems slow for the specs I ordered. Maybe I got spoiled by the MBP? Or maybe I didn't prune enough processes? The fingerprint scanner in particular seems slow to load...

If I do splurge on an SSD, bootups will be the big reason. Application performance has been fine. Ripping audio, uncompressed, from DVDs to burn to CD is a breeze, even with the 5400. I'm sure it could be even faster, but I have no complaints w/ current performance.

The other thing I've noticed is keyboard flex. I was not expecting the keyboard to be as firm as, say, a Lenovo or Apple. But I was disappointed initially in the amount of flex I noticed, particularly with the machine on a hard surface (table/desk) as opposed to soft (lap).

BUT, without me doing anything to it, it seems to have "set" over the past few days. I'm sure part of it is me adjusting to the keyboard, but I'm positive it isn't all in my head. Objectively, it's much less bouncy now than when I received it. I wonder if that's just a normal result of the manufacturing process? Not that I'm complaining, mind you...

Edited to add: I should probably write a user review rather than post every impression in a hard drive thread, but . . . I have mixed feelings about the touchpad. The textured surface isn't a problem, but coming from the glassy Apple pad, it's definitely different. The unmarked scroll zones work well enough, as do the other gestures that synaptics supports. But I'd still trade it for 2-fingered scrolling. Overall, though, I wouldn't trade the laptop. I'm happy with the purchase.

 

MrBigsby,

Have you replaced the drive on your S6520 with an SSD yet?

Am thinking of same trick on similarly complex back of S6510.

Would love to replace 5400 RPM 120GB with an SSD.

-

 

unmarc:

I believe it was Chris-M that was considering an SSD.

I did upgrade with another HD (500 GB 7200 rpm Seagate); installation was easy. As an aside, I put the old drive into a SATA external enclosure for use as a backup and could not get the drive recognized by either windows or the bios (in the fujitsu or any other computer). However, it worked fine when I reinserted into the fujitsu. As it turns out, the fujitsu has a tpm security chip protocol installed so the drive was effectively "locked down" outside of the laptop. I had to put the old hd back in and turn off all the hd security features via the bios. Now it works fine as an external drive. Wish the documentation would have said something about that. I never got a response to my inquiry from the usually prompt and reliable fujitsu support.

In any event, the S6520 is a wonderful machine and a pleasure using thus far.

 

Thanks for the tip re: security. I'll have to remember that.

In all likelihood, I will be swapping the Fujitsu 160GB 5400 HDD for a 160GB Intel SSD. There's just the small matter of Intel actually (re)releasing the things. I should be able to report back some time in Sept. about the procedure/performance/etc.

 

mrbigsby: Notice any performance gains by upgrading your HD?

I currently have a 160GB 5400rpm HD and will be installing a 320GB 7200rpm Western Digital Scorpio black in the next day or two.

 

I just installed the new (2nd gen) Intel 160GB SSD in my S6520. Definite improvement (no surprise).

Contrary to documentation, the machine does support SATA 300. Absolutely no problems or complications with the install. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the L-shaped panel slides right off once you unscrew it, and the hard drive is easily accessible.

 

And about a month ago I took the X25 80gb Gen 1 out of my desktop (replaced with a Gen 2 160gb) and put the Gen 1 on my S6510 replacing the 5400rpm 120gb drive.
& put Windows 7 on Both the Fujitsu and desktop.
Desktop ergo now has Trim.

My S6510 (with T7700, 4gb, 1 gb turbo memory) is now Very Very Fast. It was unexpectedly good even with the 5400rpm drive because of the Turbo memory.
But woof! with the old 80GB X25.

The 80GB Gen 1 was slowing on my desktop after about 6 months.. bad after about 9 months.
But new life fresh on the laptop.. and should last for 5 years as I use the S6510 about 1/10th as much as the desktop.