Fujitsu P1630 Drive Replacement

Inasmuch as there’s nothing quite like the warranty expiring to turn a person’s thoughts to tinkering with the insides of their computer, I recently upgraded the 1.8-inch solid-state drive of my Fujitsu P1630.

This procedure worked for me. There is no guarantee that it would work for you, and you use these instructions solely at your own risk. As always, back-up your data and remove the battery before fiddling with the insides of your computer.

The underside of the P1630, with battery removed, is shown below:

The drive bay with the cover removed is shown below. The drive is covered by a plastic sheet, and it’s the four foam-rubber pads at the edges of the sheet that holds the drive in place.

Every muscle, every sinew, every fibre of your being will scream that it isn’t so, but you just need to lever up the disk drive to be able to take it out (taking care not to damage the flat cable connecting to the drive):

After you disconnect the flat cable from the drive (another moment where you wonder exactly how much force will be “enough” force), you can take the plastic/foam-rubber combo off the old drive, put it on the new drive, and do the reverse procedure to reassemble the P1630 with the new drive.