Dell Inspiron Mini – Adventures in Hard Drive Replacement

So an employee asked me to look at her Inspiron Mini 10 because it wasn’t working. Turning it on showed a possible hard drive crash because there was no boot device, press ctrl-alt-del to reboot, etc. So, no problem, just pop another 2.5″ hard drive in and reload Windows. Unfortunately, this is one of those consumer models that computer manufacturers like Dell don’t want you doing anything to later. No doors on the bottom to remove, but some screws. What to do…

  1. Do it yourself. So I take all of the screws out of the bottom and start trying to pop the white bottom apart from the black top. I work it apart some along the front, then, no dice. With laptops, I was taught long ago never to force things. so, step 2…
  2. Google. Searched replacing hard drive in Inspiron Mini. Wouldn’t you know there were several different types. I looked at two examples, but they were not quite like mine. Time to look for the exact model numer … 1012.
  3. Revised search and found this page from IFIXIT (a staple of Maximum PC) by a nice person named Barrington. HIs short, but sweet, instructions showed me how to remove the keyboard and get to the hard drive (silly Dell, we’re going to get there sooner or later). Once there, nothing to it to put in a working drive, put it back together, and start the loading process. Have a handy external DVD/Blu-Ray drive for this since the laptop doesn’t have an optical drive.

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