Mod idea for z2 (HDD in battery bay & use sheet battery)

Hi,

Can the new 2011 Z2 be used without the normal battery, but with just the sheet battery???

If so, this could then create a nice little hole for a 2nd/3rd HDD/SSD/etc/etc...
Mod some connectors/cables to run into that bay and Bob's yer Uncle.

Just an idea.

 

So, looking at that one of the tear-down vids, the main battery is made of two pack with a bridge across them...
So, are the packs bigger than a 2.5" HDD/SSD? Can we fit two drives in there???
And does the Z2 run with just the sheet battery?

 

^Why would you do that? The laptop is pretty chunky and heavy with the sheet battery. Just pick up a good USB3.0 external drive.

 

Because some of us need a lot of disk space in a small powerful laptop.
I have a TZ with a 64GB SSD + 750GB HDD at the mo and it's an awesome setup. But with the end of the T line, and this big change in the Z line, we're buggered.

I already have many externals, but to store all my photos', etc., i need safe, robust storage, like an internal disk... External disks are liabilities and i've killed one of my own and met lots of people who have lost everything when theirs have died/been killed.
Optical drives work well when used externally

Just because you're happy with a little bit of storage space, it doesn't mean everyone else is.

This mod idea is out of desperation, but it would mean that any future storage upgrade would be as cheap as any laptop.... We all need more space eventually ;-)

 

MY point is it's NOT a small laptop with the sheet battery on it. Just get a bigger laptop. Or ducktape a usb 3.0 HDD to the lid and it'll still be smaller and lighter than it is with the sheet battery, and you'll have all that storage.

 

The sheet battery is 520 grams, but i'm guessing(!?) an HDD + SSD weighs less than the Z2's internal battery being removed, so that will offset the weight increase. So it'll only be a bit heavier.
The sheet is only 7.6mm, plus a bit of air gap, it's probbo adding less than 10mm... And I don't care if it's a bit thicker, as it really skinny to start with. The other sizes are the important ones.

The Sheet Battery

If i could get hold of a new z13, i would. That's dead easy to chop in the 2nd HDD.

 

OR

Perhaps we can chop out half the main battery pack and put an HDD in there?

Z2's main battery
The spec says: "Cell (Parallel x Series): 6 (2p3s)"
So it's 2 lots of three cells...

So i'm guessing that if we take out one side we're left with a battery of half the capacity, but that will still power the laptop just fine.

A neat solution, no added thickness, decreased weight, unlimited HDD/SDD upgrading with the only compromise of less battery life.

 

So where on the motherboard are you connecting the HDD to?

 

This is where i'm hoping the Z1 SSD modders might help out...
The SSDs are in a raid array yeah? So there's at least two connectors (is there four?)
So that's where we can plug in...
We 'just' need to make some ribbon connectors and run them to the battery bay... with a bit of slot cutting, etc...

It's not gonna be a plug'n'play swap out like swapping the ODD for HDD/SSD in a Z1, etc... But it's probably possible...

 

Last I checked there were a couple of new Z12's and Z13s on eBay and many nice options if you keep watch on the Sony Outlet for Z1 refurbs, which are generally excellent cosmetically and operationally. If you don't believe in refurbs, I seriously suggest you get over that; it's irrational. They are almost always a great deal, especially with Z1s. If you don't need the speed of the SB cpu or the ability to run a better gpu via the PMD, the Z1 is the way to go. Get yourself a unit with 256GB or more SSD and remove the DVD and put in a Newmodeus caddy and add the largest 2.5" HDD or SSD your heart and wallet desires.

What you're suggesting with the Z2 sounds like a terribly tortured - if creative - way to achieve a rather pedestrian result, IMO.

 

Seconded. This would require cutting into the main body and some serious oragami to get the SATA cable in a place where another drive could be utilized.

I suppose you could do a drive swap with the DVD/BR drive in the PMB like was done with the internal drives on the Z1, but this is likely more trouble than it is worth.

USB 3 makes the addition of external drives a valid way of attaching more storage. It should be fast enough to satisfy most requirements.

USB 3 vs 2 performance (from a different thread)

 

Thanks for the tip, i will be watching the Outlets very closely... i don't mind buying a second hand one as long at it's 100% working... A few scratches are irrelevant... My TZ is held together with insulating tape and stickers. I don't buy a laptop because of how it looks... it how well it works...

 

OK, the main battery will be severely hacked apart... The cells on one side removed...
But the mod to the main body will be very minimal... Just a little slot cut to allow the ribbon out from the SSD bay... See bellow.

Where the sony sticker is, is where the HDD could go, the SSD bay is right next to it.

Yeah i know it's quite a mod... but i'm just seeing if it's possible... Perhaps when everyone's had there new Z2s a while, they'll start modding them ;-)

 

I'm sorry but this sounds like the worst idea ever.

 

I have a mod idea for the Z2.
Take the sheet battery and add the drive and dGPU from the PMD to it so that you have the best of both worlds. Less weight and portability when needed, just detach the slice/dock. Power and performance when needed (including on the go) attach the slice/dock for performance and portability unmatched in an ultraportable.

To do this we can take the lightpeak port from the side and adapt it somewhere near the port on the bottom for the slice battery. We need to make sure to keep the batteries from the slice as that is what gives back the additional battery life that will be lost by making the disc drive and dGPU once again portable. The nice thing is we will be able to put different dGPU and drive combinations in the new slice/dock and the customer won't need to upgrade their entire notebook just by a new slice/dock.

We can call this mod "the Vaio Z". (couldnt figure out if I wanted to put a smiley or frowny after this...sony!!!)
Disclaimer: I am most likely going to be the owner of a Z2 soon. I am searching for one in stores to check out before I make my final purchase decision.

--
In all seriousness it seems like you are looking for something other than a Z2. The time, energy and cost to do what you are looking to do would most likely be spent better on a machine where your idea can be accomplished much easier (such as replacing the disc drive with a hdd). Modding the Z2 to the extreme you are talking about would most likely compromise the stability and integrity of the entire machine and all for another sdd/hdd or two. The Vaio Z1 or SA sound more like the machine for a mod like this, or look at adding it to the PMD like Zoinks stated.

 

^ sounds good, what about cooling of the discrete gpu? where does it vent in/out?
and what about the power required to keep the discrete gpu running...can the battery/sheet battery provide/sustain it?

 

In the uk, it costs £1150 to go from 128GB to 512GB of gen3 SSD on the Sony Style site at the moment...
So you could say that it's £3/GB...
Now i could go an buy a 500GB 2.5" HDD for £48 from Span.com...
That's 10p/GB (£0.096/GB)

£3/GB vs 10p/GB... That's why it's perhaps worth the mod.

 

He he, i like the idea :-D
Sony chasing that stupid Macbook Air has party caused this stupid Z2... Thinness isn't THAT important... With-it brings soooo many compromises, and the death of the Z line and the birth of the Sony Vaio Air...
Hopefully they'll revive the Z1 formula to make a worthy Z3

 

Replacing one of the battery cells with a HDD unforunately means you now have a serious source of heat under the palmrest, nowhere near any ventilation. Unfortunately another physcial constraint on your proposal

I'm agreeing with others here that it's probably more useful to have an external hard drive if you need to carry around a serious amount of data. I bought a USB3 2.5inch enclosure off eBay for about €15 and threw in one of the many 2.5inch HDDs sitting in my "man's drawer" at home, and this works marvellously. It's compact and light and travels in the laptop bag. I've even been running HL2 directly off it and it's not noticeable to me that it's running from an external disc and not the SSD (note; my copy of HL2 is a personal ripped copy of the retail Steam version of this game and can be run as a "portable" installation on a HDD - it's more practical for playing the same game on mutiple machines). I've tried running it from the USB2 port and it's amazing the difference USB3 makes; it's practically an internal drive at this point.

If you're desperate, and wealthy, you could push the total storage of your Z21 to 672GB (512GB main SSD, 128GB SDXC memory card in the SD slot, and a 32GB MSDuo card in the MSDUO slot).

Slightly off topic, I've been (rather optimistically) imagining there may someday be a "media" accessory that would essentially be a set of speakers and a subwoofer with an additional battery, in a similar package to that of the sheet battery. Clip it on the bottom of the Z21 and you have a high quality portable cinema experience!

 

Yeah dude, I know what the cable looks like.

 

Don't forget that the reason the internal battery is secured by 8 screws rather than a couple simple latches is to increase the rigidity of the main unit. If you modify the battery casing (which you would almost certainly have to do to accomodate a 9.5mm-height drive, as the battery pack is only 10.5mm thick; and that's before trying to deal with venthilation), you could seriously compromise the strength of the main unit casing.

Although I agree the Z2 is far from a perfect design, it does a lot of stuff that I think makes sense. Because it's so thin and light, it's incredibly easy to carry around every day; and because you'll carry it around all the time, it makes sense to get rid of fragile rotating HDDs (though it's a shame the 1TB quad SSD option is gone, even though it would be prohibitively expensive). An external USB3 drive is a viable solution for me, especially as it makes it much easier to use files on either the Z2 or my desktop without constant file shuffling. And if you only need it for storage, you really ought to invest in some system with redundancy (RAID or equivalent).

 

Don't forget that my TZ and many other VAIO users have a HDD in where the ODD used to be, with no ventilation... I don't think they generate that much heat... Not compared to a GPU say.

 

As i said, i have externals, but when comparing an internal HDD to an external, they're a genuine liability.

Desperate, yes... Wealthy, no... I can warrant spending a wad of dosh on a very good performing small laptop... But not £3/GB vs 10p/GB.

We effectively have over £1000 to play with to mod it to add a standard HDD, which will increase the storage space to double what it can be spec'd at maxed out, and still be cheaper!