Tearing apart a netbook?

[shteamroller]

thank you for the information - nice to see an expert in action....

[davidfordapple]

I'm typing on a netbook right now. Mine has 250gb though

[SEwalkman752]

netbooks suck! when i got my compaq netbook, the damn thing booked in 1 year, and so i was forced to return to my old deskop pc, hate those mili laptops ¬¬

[JAREDMICHALLE]

I agree about the placement of the Hard Drive,and not to mention how your supposed to get it out.It's stupid that you have to take the thing apart to get to the hard drive.Why not just have the hard drive readily removable.That way you could just get a new hard drive,then quickly swap it out.

[classicmacintosh]

HDs generally get killed by magnetism...

Also get a MacBook or ThinkPad as AFAIK they have motion sensors to shut the HD off if you drop it. This works at the hardware level (at least it does for MacBooks - I don't know if ThinkPads do)

[MN12BIRD]

@classicmacintosh Yeah that feature is built right into the hardware of certain hard drives like the G-Force series from Seagate. They detect the G-Forces of a fall and quickly park the heads before it hits the ground.

[zzap999]

Mine right now won't start up. It powers up and has a weak fan noise. I'm assuming the cpu fan is dying and causing the cpu to not work? There is no screen message saying "hard drive error". The screen won't even light up.

[experimental0000]

@MN12BIRD don't forget the ribboncable for the touchpad too when you take the cover off :)

[experimental0000]

I know they're not meant for much but you'd think they'd find a way to make them run faster cpu wise and add the trap doors on the bottom to change the hdd or ssd and ram like laptops do. while keeping it under $300. I've seen an 11.6 inch netbook but with laptop internals and it was $430 ish. for that price I'll just get a 15.6 inch laptop that has an easier to see screen

[MN12BIRD]

@experimental0000 Yeah I've seen other netbooks with the HD under a flap door or even under the keyboard witch is still much quicker and easier to change than this old Acer was. The Atoms aren't that bad they do have dual core Atoms now and AMD has the Neo single core K10 things that are in some of these now. Not sure if it's any faster it's about the same clock speed. I think it's just a matter of size, heat and battery life. They could cram a low power Ci3 in one I'm sure.

[DJsynista]

How did you get the exterior off of the hinges? I have all of the screws out but it gets stuck at the hinges and it won't come off. I am afraid that I will break it if i just pull.

[buzzin92]

hard drives arn't damaged by heat, only if temperatures reach over 100C of which i would doubt :P and vibration doesnt particulaly kill them as they produce lots of vibration themselves. its most likely been dropped or shaken around while running.

[amalavasi]

exellent video, you're right about the hd design, just stupid... great tutorial though

[meisteranimator99]

transcribe audio on this vid is hilarious!

[james42519]

if was mine i would be tempted to just cut the bottom plastic out and made a way to take the harddrive out and memory if need to again. wouldn't think would that hard.

[SMAAAASHTV]

you might be able to recover data from the hard drive with a program called getdataback. I used it on a failed hard drive that was making clicking noises and windows wouldn't see it anymore and recovered a surprising amount of data from it. Just a little tip for the next time you're working on a computer with this problem. If  you can't get the program just PM me and I'll link you up to my mediafire account.

[consoletimmy]

I personally think that standard notebooks/laptops are more resistant to hard drive failure

[TheBloodyKnife1]

that would be well enough to play cs 1.6 on

[slaymass6]

I like the color,mines sappire blue.

[wildbilltexas]

I've edited basic 640X480 AVI videos on my Acer Aspire One using Windows Media Maker. But compressing the videos to Windows Media took awhile. I doubt more extensive video editing programs like Premiere will work.

[gamesforall129o]

Another big flaw is one my netbook. The speaker is one the bottom, so it's hard to hear Youtube videos without headphones if it's on my lap!

[TheNitrohp]

acer is popular but not the best netbook.......

[MN12BIRD]

I never said it was the best. It's one of the cheapest though. I like the Asus and Msi with the N280 and 9 cell battery :) but those cost much more of course.

[MN12BIRD]

Heh me too but you can't take your desktop with you on a train or to class for example! But if you don't need the ultra portability it's pointless to use.

[anderalex129]

Hey Jake,out of your views with netbooks, can it run Flash, Nes emulators,and Wifi radar software?Also?Is the battery crap?

[MN12BIRD]

This isn't mine and I've never used one but I can say the battery is crap on THIS one specifically as it's only a 3-cell battery. The models with 6 or 9 cell batteries last forever. They are fine with standard flash video, they can do most emulators just fine so NES shouldn't be a problem and it could run Wifi radar software. It's Windows XP on most of these after all so it can pretty much run anything as long as it doesn't need more power than a small single core and basic intel graphics!

[ScrewAttackEurope]

Can you show us the Hard Drive a bit more pls?

Is it a PCM IA drive as it looks a bit like one.  You can hack those and use them as memory cards for Neo Geos as well!

[DawnOfTherion]

lol how the hell do people figure stuf like that out?

[ScrewAttackEurope]

lol, probably people love shoving things into each other, and if they don't explode or catch fire, they must be compatible somehow :D

[MN12BIRD]

Its just a standard 2.5" SATA hard drive not PCMCIA or anything like that :(

[TyTazzyTiger64]

sweet! i had no idea! i don't have a neo geo, but i'm trying to get one for a good deal

[ScrewAttackEurope]

OOh, well good luck with that, great machine to own. and still have that arcadey feeling :D

[ScrewAttackEurope]

A pink notebook? Must say it's definitely your color Jake ^_-

[MACSMovies]

I have one of these.

[nathanallan1]

PINK ROCKS! What's the matter with pink? :) I know why *I* like pink.

[demonhiei7]

Ah Thanks for this, I was going to pull one apart blindly. Your video just makes it easier, sometimes just buying of these makes you not want to mess with it. Heh.

[specialedbob]

i use my netbook all the time, MSI wind u123. handy for going on the web while laying back watching tv. and easy to transport.

[daiatlus79]

did you try taking the drive itself apart to see if there was platter damage?

[NextNate03]

Which came out first?

MacBook Air or Netbooks

If Macbook Air came out first, then the other computer companys took Apple idea to the next level. They made computers cheap enough for most people to buy.

MacBook Air= $1500

Netbooks= $299

Why am I doing this? I do not know. I have no life.

:(

don't know if this make sense.

[CharX782]

Netbooks were first, although they haven't been too popular until now.

[MN12BIRD]

and they aren't really comparable the macbook air is still a 15" screen meaning it's still as big as a notebook just slimmer while the 10" screen means this is still way smaller.

[NextNate03]

Thank you!

[TheBalroth]

Netbook hard drives are still typically SSD based. Not sure where you got that info.

[MN12BIRD]

Nope. %75 of Netbooks sold in the past year have used a 160GB 2.5" SATA HD and some now have 250GB Hard Drives.

[StickPeopleAndPuff]

my gateway does

[nathanallan1]

Agreed, horrible design. I guess they figure they're disposable these days.

Removable hdd's are a MUST.

[PhantomGamer2304]

Hi Jake, happy new year.

I took mine apart last year, I have the Acer netbook too only mine is in white, 8GB SSD and I added 1GB of ram and once I put it back together it made no difference at all.

Any Ideas?

[MN12BIRD]

You added 1GB to what 512 or 1GB? Windows XP runs fairly well on 512MB when you aren't doing much at once or running anything advanced and usually on a netbook you aren't! So I wouldn't think you would need over 1GB RAM in these for what they do.

[oliverjdavis]

good video dude, unfortunately, my netbook is running linux and only has an 8 gig hard drive so is only used for web browsing, I seriously need to upgrade!!!!

[32629282]

This happened to me years ago on a compaq notebook. I dont know if its still available for purchase but I fix it with a program called HDD Regenerator. It basically writes to the whole hard drive until the sectors become writable.

[Sean3614]

The Gateway Astro was a cool pc I loved its 400mhz celeron , floppy and cd drive, and Intel graphics. for its time it was a great for playing older games. I was surprised it could handle XP. I but a 512mb stick in it but it would not go past post. I died when i but 500mhz celeron in it. My it rest in peace!

[Sean3614]

Did you max out the ram on it? It would run xp better? I ran xp on a Gateway Astro it had a max of 256mb or ram lol

[MN12BIRD]

Well it's not mine so I don't know how well it ran XP or if it was ever upgraded to 1GB. But yeah 256MB on XP is awful. Just going from 256 to 512 would make a huge improvement!

[FAKEBC]

it's kind of pointless having a hard drive on a netbook. netbooks are supposed to be internet focused so there is little need for anything more than a cheap 64GB SSD.

[MN12BIRD]

Good point but even a 64GB SSD costs twice the price of a 160GB HD and in these the cost is bottom line. People buy these because they are $300 and they don't always want to put a $100 SSD into a $300 machine. Heh I would but we know better ;)

[dbz1229]

Wow. Hopefully that doesn't happen to mine.

I have a red Aspire One 10inch and I play CrossFire and MappleStory and GTA San Andreas on it! =)

[shaurz]

I have a nine cell battery for my Samsung NC10, lasts all day...

[gretzkyv99]

I use one of these netbooks sometimes when I go to class. XP on it is normally fast but then after a while it gets slow. So I decided to put Windows 7 32 on it and now it runs pretty fast for a small little netbooj

[clrplstc]

my mom got a netbook for christmas so it's good to see how to take then apart

[16mmDJ]

...pink?

[Laserchicken88]

first: it's pink

second: it's acer

conclusion: crappy netbook :p

[MN12BIRD]

Third: its not mine, fourth: there's nothing wrong with Acer.

[Kscorps2]

@MN12BIRD

Acer makes good and strong laptops, my brother had one, it survived constant drops, there was food all over it, and he ever spilled soda on it! It pained me to see the thing finally break down, but man, I don't think anyone else can make such a strong laptop.

[Laserchicken88]

appart from acer being the only notebooks nowadays that's sometimes get too hot when gaming (not all models) it's malfuntion rate is almost as high as gateway and HP.. so ye there's something wrong there :x

[MN12BIRD]

Almost all gaming notebooks have overheating issues. No one should buy a notebook to do serious gaming.  Besides I didn't say Acer was the best or their stuff never breaks I just said there is nothing wrong with Acer and for $300 there is nothing wrong with the Aspire One! Acer was rated number 1 in notebooks sold per least notebooks repaired for 2009 and they also sell more notebooks than HP, Compaq, Gateway etc etc etc. They are 2nd in sales next only to Dell.

[NerdHelpDesk]

my laptop dosent have a hardrive door on it eather, so i have to take the whole damn thing apart just to get at it. i think they do this so that you get it fixed with the company who makes the laptop, things like this need to be iilegal. like the xbox 360 is the biggest market scam i have ever seen.

[youtubasoarus]

I think it's a horrid design for the hard drive like that but i'm sure you can appreciate the cost savings afforded by the design. It looks to be a very integrated package. It's actually quite astonishing when you consider its power and size relative to price.

[poppyopi]

I guess if there was anything important on the HD (which I doubt) they could always take it to a data recovery expert. I remember about 10 years ago our school lost a whole heap of important records from HD failure. Apparently, the cost could reach up to $1000/KB of data recovered (Yes... I said one thousand dollars per kilobyte).

[ToadNokiPiantaGoomba]

Why put XP on it? Put Ubuntu Netbook on it! It's a netbook, meant mainly for surfing the Web. You don't need a resource hog like Windows XP. And if you get Ubuntu, or any version of Linux for that matter, you don't need to worry about viruses. That's why I put Linux on my grandparents' netbook and why I'm trying to do the same on their desktop (they actually PAID for Norton 360.)

[MN12BIRD]

Trust me if it was mine I would be putting Ubuntu Netbook edition on it so fast but it's not mine and it had XP on it so it gets XP back on it. I don't actually know the person who owns it I'm fixing it for another business.

[Zain844]

if it was yours i would hope you would do something about the pink color LOL

[MN12BIRD]

not mine lol

[ToadNokiPiantaGoomba]

My mom and grandparents have netbooks which are perfect for Facebook. I put Ubuntu Netbook Remix on both and they're great. They don't need to worry about updating anti-virus software or any of that, and it's fast. You don't need XP on a netbook. Hell, you don't need XP except for a VM or a secondary OS. (I use Linux Mint as my main OS, have XP as a VM and Vista as a dual boot.)

[xXxLAMBOFGOD12xXx]

I had this laptop, mine had linux on it, I switched over to a Dell mini.

[ZombieFrank]

I got a Dell mini 10v recently and I would like to upgrade it to 2gb but unfortunately I have to go through the same process as you did. It is like the companies went out of their way to make it difficult to upgrade.

[LusoGam3r]

is it pink?

[ToadNokiPiantaGoomba]

@LusoGam3r Yeah, but he said it's not his. Which is why it is pink. ;)

[misterintellivision]

i was thinking of getting a netbook (it is about as powerful as my pc..lol) but now I am having second thoughts if I have to repair it..lol

[TheDVDGamer]

have you seen the channel semiconductorDOTcom  , they do some very cool tear downs

[roboraptor10]

It's pink because it is, or it's white and it looks like it's pink because of the light.

[tylerandjosephine]

i have the white acer aspire one (im actually using it right now) and the inside piece of plastic that surrounds the screen is black so that means the netbook is really pink not white. Well tough men like pink.;)

[thehumansilversurfer]

Can it run mame 32 ?

[MN12BIRD]

I'm sure it could run many MAME32 games and all the 8-16 bit era emulators just fine.

[townsjim]

I hope a company can develop one that has a dvd drive, it would make them even more appealing

[crusherbad64]

why pink?

[oxoxTwinklexoxo]

I don't know how you manage to squeeze out 8 hours from your laptop battery. I can barely get two hours out of mine, and I have an Aspire One.

It was even advertised with an hour and a half battery life. :/

[MN12BIRD]

Yeah it's an original model without an LED backlit screen and only a 3-cell battery and everyone complained the battery life was pathetic hence it's so cheap. The Asus 1000HE came out with LED backlit screen and a bigger 6-cell battery and claimed 8.5h battery life. I didn't say THIS one gets 8h just that some do.

[oxoxTwinklexoxo]

heh, sorry if I came off as a douche. :p Didn't mean to. :)

Also, mine does in fact have the trapdoors underneath for the HD and RAM. I've never seen the pink model you're working on here.

[Zain844]

Why is it pink

[townsjim]

it's not his, obviously

[theimporter]

Vone, two, three, four, five, six, six screws, mouhahaha

[desertman123]

Put it in a freezer for 24 hours.

[thebonefish]

Hell yeah! That trick actually worked for me a couple times. Position it, whatever, be creative!

[Jared3737]

pink lol

[Cloudz2789]

My sister has a 9-watt battery.

[sinistermoon]

Have you considered trying SpinRite? I mean yeah that hard drive you got there sounds like it is beat. But then again I have fixed plenty of hard drives with SpinRite.

[MN12BIRD]

No I'll check that out never seen it before.

[fuyingbro]

have you tried to use a hd recovery software i had a hard drive that went out on me and some how lost its boot section so all hd info was gone and windows could not find the drive but i was able to do a very small partion on the drive in dos and with doing that i was able to use a program to recover all my info on a 1 tb drive. i was pretty happy because i had just converted about 900 dvds, and 400 cds of mine to the drive that too me good part of last year.

[kiddfridge80]

very cool video!!!!!! I think I'll stick with my laptop for now, even if it's only 256ram and 80 gig hard drive lol

[DragonUltraMaster]

How cute, it's pink :3

xD

[RorytheRetrokid]

can you get a netbook with mac os x

[epinky2295]

you can probably hack it to run osx, but I don't think Apple does netbooks

[MN12BIRD]

Yeah I've seen OSX running on an MSi Windbook

[james42519]

well you can put windows on a mac so why not mac on a pc? they use the same hardware now so i don't see a difference.

[topsyandpip56]

@james42519 Because the Mac hardware does not have BIOS, and boots differently. Therefore, a standard PC wont understand the boot media on a Mac install disk.... unless you install Darwin Boot Loader.

[Nieman164]

you can my friend did it

:D

[standardmagnus]

apple don't sell notebooks, but!...

there release the apple islate

[Zynt453]

Man, I was thinking about getting a Netbook too, thanks for the upload MN12BIRD, you saved me wasting my money lol

[Maxxarcade]

After seeing how that is put together, I'm glad I got a Toshiba NB205 instead! There are access doors for the HDD and RAM, and I was able to install 2GB of memory and Windows 7 Pro.

Also, if you need to diagnose/repair hard drives in general, look into a program called HDAT2. I like version 4.5.2 the best. And for testing RAM, Memtest86+ 4.0.

[STEAGZ]

i reckon they design them like that so people who aint got a clue will just go out and buy brand new ones everytime something goes wrong

[Lachlant1984]

What's the key between the left shift key and the Z key directly below the A key.

[MN12BIRD]

Not sure it's the European keyboard they sell in Canada the US version I don't think has that.

[Lachlant1984]

I know netbooks are cheap and small, but personally I don't like them much because they're underpowered, if you want a laptop, get a standard sized one, you don't need one with all the trimmings, but I personally want one with more power, more RAM and a large hard disk. These laptops don't have optical drives because of their size, I would want one with an optical drive and more connection ports.

[MN12BIRD]

Many people like these for the portability and they don't want to lug around a larger and heavier notebook. Some people actually buy both. Not saying I would buy one but I can see why many people want them.

[alielmir2]

imagine playin call of duty mw2 on those netbooks it would lag like shit but cool idea though.

[Emocrest]

those netbooks cant be used to watch hd videos on youtube. they lag too much.

[iggienator]

@Emocrest

the screen is even to small :D

[standardmagnus]

imo notebooks suck

if you want a computer save up and buy a mac or gaming pc cause if you want something done, do it right

[Kscorps2]

@standardmagnus

Honestly macs aren't worth the money, you can do so much more on a good PC than on a mac. you can't upgrade a mac either. you don't need a gaming PC to get something done.

[standardmagnus]

impo macs are the best as i am using 1 now,

but im an apple fan boy so im sort of biast

[Kscorps2]

@standardmagnus

Apples do good on image editing and any kind of graphic work, plus they're easier to set up, but you sacrifice upgrades and compatibility. With a PC you can play games and run a lot more programs.

[standardmagnus]

why do you keep saying you can't upgarde?

on my macbook pro theres a lever on the underside which you pull to open a panel to show the battery and hard drive.

plus macs can run mac osx,linux and windows!

and you can play pc games on it when using windows

[james42519]

hmm interesting. you are saying you can put linux and windows on a mac? so that means you can put mac os on a pc then right? tell me why i would want to spend all that money on a mac when you can get a good pc for $400 or $500 that can play about every game can find now if you pick the right parts and build it. you can put a mac os on it too if you really want too.along with the windows and whatever. there is no such thing as mac and pc now. they have same parts and pay more the the apple.

[standardmagnus]

screw this,

im going back to my forms!

where there on MY side. :(

[experimental0000]

@james42519 from what I gather, you'd need an intel cpu to run the mac os on a regular pc. what you describe is a triple boot, though don't know of many that do that. the only reason apple is more is because of the case, which is ridiculous honestly "oh well it's machined aluminum" big freaking deal. I agree with you that for less than half the $ you can make a good computer that would bury the apple competition spec wise. making a hackintosh works but apple is trying to stop that

[Zynt453]

@Kscorps2 Yeah, I see no reason to get a Mac at all when a PC can do everything a Mac is supposed to do better than Macs do

[MN12BIRD]

People buy these for the convenience when they don't want to lug a bigger/heavier notebook around. Plus these only cost $300-350 now. I personally don't need one but I can definitely see the point to wanting one. I've even seen people who own both a netbook and a big 17" notebook.

[JarrodDrover123]

good vid

[BackForwardPunch]

Good stuff, sort of "The Life of a PC Tech" type of video. That sure seemed annoying to remove, and as evidenced by the position it was totally unnecessary to be made that way.

[zeldajunkielol2]

I also never knew there were harddrive testing programs.

[Sypran]

these things can't handle games at all to my knowledge. One my mom has cant play games from the windows 95 era, and if Game Maker, with EXTREME cliping I had 40% speeds. - but yeah they are nice and fast enough to turn on and quickly check email and watch a video or 2.

[orbitmint4]

what do those things cost

[unibrow9]

i bought mine (Acer aspire one) for 299$ last year, right now there even better , bigger screen and whatever, for around the same price, also some mobile internet companies give you one for free,, i got another one from telus for free when i got a 3yr contract

[zeldajunkielol2]

Yeah, I started noticing Foxconn makes a lot of computer parts when I started tinkering with computers.

[rctman12]

send it in! send that hard drive into to the company it has 5 year warrenty on all HD i always send my crapy ones in!

[MN12BIRD]

Toshiba Hard Drive warranty is 3-year for drives bought from Toshiba suppliers. Hard Drive that came in notebooks and MP3 players have no warranty by Toshiba and only by Acer (1 year) - from the Toshiba web site. So no warranty for this. OEM drives that come in a notebook are rarely covered by the manufacture of the drive itself and they can tell by the SN if it was a retail, bulk retail drive or a drive that was sold to an OEM like HP or Acer.

[TheGeek1028]

HAHA I have the regular Aspire.

[VideoGamer945]

what are your thoughts on songbird? I'm using it and I think it's a bit too slow

[MN12BIRD]

Never heard of it before. I just use Foobar. It's fast, small, simple and has kick ass sound quality. That's all I want!

[VideoGamer945]

hmm, it's another mozilla program, plays flac and even .m4p (protected itunes), in an Itunes like setting, I like that. I'll give foobar a chance too.

[HybridPineapple]

Why do you have a pink one?

[MajinFrahma]

@HybridPineapple

Did you watch the video?

[MN12BIRD]

Well it's not mine I'm just fixing it lol.

[Evmoy15]

I swapped the RAM out on my old Acer, the same as that one. The screws were so tight that i had to use a wrench to remove them.