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Removable/replaceable HD in a laptop needed

ehume

ehume

Golden Member
I have a 500GB Samsung 840 I bought because it is only 7mm thick and should fit in a laptop, so I could swap it for a spinning-disk HD and save some money. Then I hear from a salesman at Best Buy that HD's are soldered in, so I can't switch disks. While I'd believe that with pre-installed SSD's, I have a hard time believing that is true for spinning-disk HD's.

So, my question: what decent but inexpensive laptops can have their HD's removed and replaced?

This will not be used for games. A 13-inch screen would be fine. A 15-inch screen is OK. An i3 cpu would be good enough: the most taxing thing that my wife will be doing on this laptop is composing and showing Power Point presentations -- which means we'll need a video output.

I can research the i3, the screen size and the output. What I really need to know is the removability of the HD.

Thanks
 
I can't think of a laptop HDD that can not be replaced. Sounds like the BestBuy guy was FOS! 🙂
 
I know in some cases, it takes some effort to open up a laptop to replace the hard drive (e.g.: Dell Latitude 2100, Asus X202E). Like even after removing 9 screws, have to use thumbnails and old credit card to push tabs in all around to remove the bottom lid.

But to say it's soldered in?; I would have asked the dude at Best Buy to show me a laptop that has a hard drive soldered in to prove us wrong. Just flip the laptop and look for accessible "panels" on the bottom, usually indicative of memory or hard drive.
 
lightningbaron said:
I know in some cases, it takes some effort to open up a laptop to replace the hard drive (e.g.: Dell Latitude 2100, Asus X202E). Like even after removing 9 screws, have to use thumbnails and old credit card to push tabs in all around to remove the bottom lid.

But to say it's soldered in?; I would have asked the dude at Best Buy to show me a laptop that has a hard drive soldered in to prove us wrong. Just flip the laptop and look for accessible "panels" on the bottom, usually indicative of memory or hard drive.
Click to expand...

Even the thin and lights with mSATA or proprietary SSDs they are still removable. The RAM is soldered on some systems, and the CPU on more than that, but the drive??

OP, if the laptop you choose has a regular spinning drive, then it is removable.
 
I still tell computers at frys(much bigger selection of laptops) and I have never seen one thats soldered. Even the ultrabooks arnt soldered...difficult to get to yes, soldered no
 
Thank you.

Hmm. Frys. I can get to a Micro Center. Hmm.

Just bought the wife a 256GB Mac Air (we went to Best Buy to look at PC Laptops, and she despised Win 8, despite touchscreens). So the pressure is off.

But I need a laptop. I'll be looking at an i3 with touchscreen and -- thank you folks -- a spinning disk HD. I can do a data swap and put my 500GB SSD in the laptop.

When I was looking around I found an expensive 15-inch Sony Vaio T with a hybrid HD -- 24GB flash storage. But it was 3d-gen.

Now I will have time to find a 4th-gen i3, preferably with a 15-inch screen.
 
ehume said:
Thank you.

Hmm. Frys. I can get to a Micro Center. Hmm.

Just bought the wife a 256GB Mac Air (we went to Best Buy to look at PC Laptops, and she despised Win 8, despite touchscreens). So the pressure is off.

But I need a laptop. I'll be looking at an i3 with touchscreen and -- thank you folks -- a spinning disk HD. I can do a data swap and put my 500GB SSD in the laptop.

When I was looking around I found an expensive 15-inch Sony Vaio T with a hybrid HD -- 24GB flash storage. But it was 3d-gen.

Now I will have time to find a 4th-gen i3, preferably with a 15-inch screen.
Click to expand...

In the case of the laptops that have the small amounts of flash (usually between 16 and 32GB), and then a large amount of spinning storage, what they have in there is a 2.5" HDD, and an mSATA SSD. Both can almost always be replaced. And they make mSATA drives up to 256GB IIRC.
 
Even budget computers have removable hard drives. I would think it would be too much of a hassle designing hard drives with custom controllers just to solder them on.
 
4th gen CPUs (laptop) are slowly flowing out. I think you'll see a lot more pop out closer to August (back to school sale)
 
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