Z Series BluRay Pictures and Disassembly - UJ232A and UJ242ABSX2-S

Howdy folks,

The BluRay drive in my Z11 died sometime last week (UJ242ABSX2-S). After some deliberation, I've made the decision to sit on the warranty claim for now and replace the drive with a 1TB WD hard drive (yes, I know is it 12.5 mm. I believe it will fit).

Simply put, I don't need an optical drive but since the drive cost $500, I'll have it serviced at some point, just not now.

While pulling the BR drive from the Z11, I thought I'd give the BR drive from my Z591 a go in the new machine (UJ232A). It fit in the chassis as you would expect, but you can't fully screw it in place (easily fixed with some sticky tape). It functioned fine; read/write, keyboard eject button, etc.

Also, I believe the faceplate from the X will work with the Z11 with some light modification to the plastic clips. Doing this would be permanent, so I didn't try.

If you haven't noticed already from my other posts, I have little to no hesitation when it comes to pulling stuff apart. This is further reinforced when I pulled the UJ242ABSX2-S apart to take a look at the internals.

Here are some pics. Hopefully they can help somebody down the line.

I took these so I'd know where all the screws went when I reassembled everything.

 

More:

 

Sorry if this have been asked before. Does the Z have power management problem by replacing optical drive with HDD?

 

I believe so, but I haven't looked into the threads yet.

 

Thanks for the pics!

I just ordered the U242 drive to replace the current dvd drive in my Z117GG. Any tips taking the laptop apart and changing the drives?

 

ZoinksS2k, thanks for the photos. I'm sure these pictures will be very helpful to people who need to see it.

 

Nothing special there, you'll just need to remove the mounting assembly and faceplate.

Should be straight forward

 

Thank you!

 

Same as what Zoinks has said. BTW, you can use some of the mounting assembly of the DVD drive for the UJ242.

 

Hi,

I just upgraded my Sony Vaio VGN-Z820 with a blu ray burner (UJ232A).
I made a tutorial movie on You Tube, here is the link:

YouTube - Sony Vaio Z Blu Ray burner upgrade (Tutorial) HD

Thank you for your very important input
Bibu6666

 

Excellent video, great job. And....what was the song info ? Thanks.

 

Sorry, but I loled a bit at the point where you tried rather hard to remove the keyboard... You have to aim at releasing the little indent-tab inside the ethernet port first when opening the Z up.

Can I ask where in eBay you bought your UJ232a from, and for how much?

Though regardless, good job.

 

Thank you for your comments! Hope this will help someone. Sushi: i have to say that i also laugh when i red your comment about the keyboard removal.

The answer to your questions:

1- I bought it used a ebay.com for 157$ (shp included) from eeshops (Hong Kong).

2- The name of the song is: Bionic Base - Eternity Talk (Dj Space Raven Und Dj Alpine Remix)

Regards
Bibu6666