Evidently the laptop manufacturers expect the hard drive to never fail

[hobbit709]

Most of the new models have no hatch on the bottom to replace the drive. You have to disassemble the whole thing to get at it. A 45 second job now takes an hour.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

1. Seriously?

that's some FUBAR design.

[hobbit709]

2. Yep. Bad enough the UEFI BIOS wants to lock out any OS except 8

[jrandom421]

3. Interesting

On my Dell Latitudes, it's remove two screws, and slide it out.

[hobbit709]

4. Look at the new ones

Just had an Inspiron with a bad board. took half an hour to get at the drive to take it out and read it on another computer to save the data. My new Asus has the same deal and so do a lot of other makes.

[mockmonkey]

5. Got my Inspiron last year

The first week I got a notice that the hard drive could fail. It took me all weekend to get Dell's on-line system detect to work. When it finally did work I was able to test and it told me that the hard drive was bad and they sent me a new one in two days.

It took about a half hour to replace since I have never messed with a laptop before. I took the battery out and then 2 or 4 screws later (I forget how many) and replaced the hard drive. I could probably do it in less than ten minutes now, it was that easy. That obviously was a problem that needed to be fixed by the manufacturers. LOL!

[jrandom421]

6. I've got new Latitudes

Several E7440s and E7240s, fresh out of the box. I've upgraded and changed out RAM and Hard Drives with little problem. Apparently, things are different with the Latitudes (considered business class) and the Inspirons (considered consumer class).

[hobbit709]

7. Evidently the slim models don't have a hatch anymore. Some don't even have easy battery access.

[TroglodyteScholar]

8. That's super lame

In my experience, the HDD is the very FIRST thing to go. Well, besides the battery maybe.