Upgrading Samsung Series 9 SSD

Filed Under Laptop at 21st April 2014 0:01 by Danny

Tags: clonezilla, NP900X3C, samsung, SanDisk, Serial ATA, Series 9, solid state drive

Overview

I have been using the 128GB SanDisk SSD that came in the Samsung Series 9 NP900 X3C A02UK. The SSD is the achilles heel in an otherwise well packaged laptop. Not for the lack of space but the bottle neck when the drive is busy. When this happens, the system freezes whilst the drive queue is working. Whilst the system was not designed to replace the hard drive, it isn’t very hard to do so.

Pre-Requisites

Apart from the laptop itself the following tools required:

Philips #0 precision screwdriver
mSata (preferably SATA 3) SSD

The screwdriver is very important to get the correct size or you can damage the heads very easily. Also depending on the backup / restore solution an external hard drive, USB memory stick or external disc drive might be required.

Backup

As usual it is advisable to take a backup before starting. The new drive will be empty and therefore will require a reinstall of the OS or restoring from a previous backup.

I chose to use CloneZilla, take an image and store it on an external USB drive and restore it once the install was complete. Backup goes beyond the scope of this post.

Install

Take a backup of the system.

Shutdown and turn off the system.

Flip the laptop over and there are 10 screws at the bottom which needs to be removed.

Use the SD card slot to pull the back off moving to the front (trackpad end).

The rear has tension clips in the hinge. Gently lift the bottom off.

Unscrew the 2 screws holding the Sandisk SSD.

Slide the drive out.

Slide the new drive in. The bridge connector may be loosened by light upwards gently to angle and slide in the new drive.

Reverse the above to complete the job by screwing the 2 drive screws, re-connect the bright if necessary. Place the back plate back starting on the hinge side. Screw the screws back in.

Summary

All in all it was fairly easy to install. I managed to break one the screw points on the back which is held in by few mm plastic. Looking at the other components, it looks like the wireless card and battery should be fairly easy to replace. The main problem would be sourcing the parts.

About Danny

I.T software professional always studying and applying the knowledge gained and one way of doing this is to blog. Danny also has participates in a part time project called Energy@Home [http://code.google.com/p/energyathome/] for monitoring energy usage on a premise. Dedicated to I.T since studying pure Information Technology since the age of 16, Danny Tsang working in the field that he has aimed for since leaving school. View all posts by Danny → This entry was posted in Laptop and tagged clonezilla, NP900X3C, samsung, SanDisk, Serial ATA, Series 9, solid state drive. Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to Upgrading Samsung Series 9 SSD

James says:

8 January 2015 at 1:22

Hi Danny where can i get a recovery disk for a newly replaced ssd for the series 9? Currently my old one had died on me and since my samsung is out of warranty the local samsung support refused to assist me. Appreciate any advise from you. thanks.

Reply
- Danny says:
  
  3 February 2015 at 21:48
  
  Hi James,
  
  I was in the same boat and gave up in the end. You could buy Windows of the same edition e.g professional if it came with professional and re-use the CD key labelled on the power supply. This will mean you have a spare Windows License.
  
  Also this means you have to create a Windows bootable USB stick:
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool
  
  or an external DVD drive.
  
  Good luck
  
  – Danny
  
  Reply
Danman says:

17 February 2015 at 18:40

Hello Danny,

Do you know if the SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-MTE250BW mSATA 250GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive from Newegg is compatible with the Samsung series 9 NP900 X4C A01US?
Thanks

Reply