How to Remove HDD from Caddy?

I'm trying to upgrade my HDD and the old drive seems to be really tight in the caddy. All of the screws are out but it looks like the pin adapter is through a couple of holes on the front of the caddy and I can't figure out how to get the drive out because of it.

Here's a picture but it's kind of hard to tell that the adapter is through the caddy holes (you can tell in person that it's supposed to be like this) but I just can't get the drive to pull away from the caddy and I don't see anything obvious to do to release it.

 

The harddrive caddy should be able to slide.
You want to slide the caddy away from the adaptor. That will disconnect the drive from the laptops adaptor. Than you will be able to remove the caddy, and put the other drive in.

K-TRON

 

Can you ease those two metal sections back until the black plastic nubs can be freed?

 

Can you push it further into those holes (gez that doesn't sound right) and lift up on the other side? Can the part of the caddy be pushed down a little to release the HDD?

 

Grr. Here's the other end. I don't have much wiggle room and that sucker isn't budging.

I have removed the drive from the bay and have attempted to slide the caddy away from the drive. Am I understanding right that that's what I'm supposed to be doing? I just feel like I'm putting too much pressure on it when I'm trying to slide it out. I know these buggers are sensitive so what am I doing wrong or are there any other photos I can take to help out?

 

Sorry to post again so quickly. I cross-posted with pixelot and Jin.

I managed to move the caddy back and free the black connectors like pixelot suggested. But it still won't move! It's like it's super glued to the caddy. It won't move a fraction of an inch. I see nothing else holding it into place at all.

 

What was it that K-TRON was saying? It sounded as if you didn't need to remove the caddy...

But when I took my HD out of the caddy to put it in an external enclosure, it just had a tab that I pulled and it slid out after I undid two screws that connected it (the caddy remained in the notebook), so I'm not sure how this one works.

 

rtdogs,
look at these two links:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1720/en/SM/hdd.htm#wp1180055

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1720/en/SM/hdd.htm#wp1180149

You should be able to slide the caddy very simply in order to change the harddrives
(You need to pull the tab upwards in order to lift the drive out of the laptop)

K-TRON

 

Thanks for the info. I was working off of those links from another thread when I started so I couldn't believe I had run into this problem and couldn't find any other posts about it (here or through Google). I actually had to slightly pry the back edge of the caddy. There's an indention that faced to the inside of the drive so it was lodging it in there. It looks like it is supposed to be there but it's not showing up on those links from Dell.

It wasn't sliding one bit but after I held the side open, I removed my old drive and the new one went in like a champ with no problems.

I wonder why those indentions are there because they were holding that baby firmly in place without screws or anything. Maybe that's why but it sure made it a bugger to get out.

I thought I was going to tear it up...and the old drive may not work if it's too sensitive to withstand my finger slightly touching the edge of the circuitry by accident when it finally popped free. I won't be able to find that out until tomorrow when its caddy and adapter arrive, though.

Thanks for the help. Reps for all!

 

Let us know if it works!

 

i've been working with PCs for over 20 yrs.. never seen a grounding strap IRL and after literally thousands of PC builds and many notebook upgrades and repairs i have yet to damage anything from static simply by touching the components...

now if ya had to use enough pressure to cause the hdd case to flex in and push the read/write head aginst the platters you could have problems,, but i'm willing to bet you are in fine shape!

 

The new drive is working great. Going from a 120GB 5400RPM (Dell installed a Western Digital) to a 320GB 5400 RPM (Hitachi) is a HUGE difference! The only problem I ran into was in the Vista install when it would hang on the "Completing Installation..." part. I just needed to click "load driver" in the install process to load the SATA driver. After that, it was a piece of cake but I'm still installing drivers for my hardware in Vista. The fun part.

That's good to hear bigozone! I will update this thread when the second HDD bay comes in today. Hopefully I won't have any problems because I'd love to snag some of my drivers off of the old drive to make sure I've got the right ones. I know. Should've done that before uninstalling it! Hindsight!

The only hard drive I've ever installed was 15+ years ago in a desktop so I'm relieved that I didn't tear anything up (so far!).

 

rtdogs, when you have a chance, can you run a hdtune benchmark of your 320gb 5400rpm hitachi drive. I dont think anyone else on notebook review has one yet, and there are no benchmarks.
I want to see exactly how much faster it is than the samsung and wd drives.

K-TRON

 

I don't mind at all, K-TRON. Can you give me instructions or point me to a thread that shows exactly how to do it? I'm such a benchmark n00b.

BTW, the old hard drive is perfectly fine. My mashing the drive to get it out (not that hard of course) and touching part of the circuity didn't damage it, thankfully.

Got the second caddy and adapter a little bit ago and had the second HDD in in less than 5 minutes. I felt like a pro today.

 

Good work rtdogs, I am glad everything assembled and worked for you.
+1 rep for you

Here is the download site for hdtune:
http://www.hdtune.com/
I would download version 2.55, since its an easier interface.

Once you download it, run the installation, it takes like 1 minute.

When installed, go to the benchmark tab, and than look in the top right corner of the window, you will see an icon with two gears in it.
Click on this
than click benchmark,
put the test speed/accuracy slider to accurate, and then put the block size to 8mb.
then click okay
Then click on the start button, and the benchmark will run. It may take a few minutes, that is normal.
When the benchmark is finished, click on the icon which looks like a blue floppy disk, and then save your image.
Then upload the image, for us to see.

Before running the benchmark, make sure all other programs are closed, so that the test is more accurate.

Thanks in advance,

K-TRON

 

New thread for you K-TRON...thanks for the instructions!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3311450