Toshiba Satellite P55W Hard Drive Replacement

Geschrieben von: Netmammal
  • Kommentare: 31
Toshiba Satellite P55W Hard Drive Replacement

Schwierigkeitsgrad

Moderate

Schritte

5

Zeitaufwand

15 - 30 Minuten

Einleitung

How to remove bottom panel on laptop so that HDD can be replaced with SSD. (Or upgrade RAM memory etc.)

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    • Do not remove the footpad on the upper left, there are no screws under any of the footpads on this model of Satellite

    • A reader with a p55w-B5318 DID have screws under the footpads, Worse, he missed that one of the footpads had a white double-stick section which stayed on, and covered over the screws when he removed the pad. If you can not get the bottom off with a reasonable amount of force, check under your footpads for screws. (See 3rd photo)

    • Once all of the screws are out, slide your tool of choice between top and bottom (plastic razor, credit card or guitar pick)

    • Start at front of machine, and work your way around to the black hinge side.

    • The black hinge side looks almost like it is a separate piece which the silver bottom slides under. Nope! It is attached to the rest of the bottom.

    • Once you have separated the silver areas, lift the front of the bottom slightly, and push backwards horizontally towards the hinge side. The backside black area "cups" the hinge area, you can not lift it straight up like the rest of the bottom.

    • As you remove the bottom, do not worry about the on/off button. It is attached to the bottom shell, and has no connection to the motherboard.

    • The 2nd picture is a side view of the on/off button area after the bottom has been removed. There are no connections or cables of any sort between bottom shell and rest of laptop.

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    • The bottom shell has three very strong magnets. Do not lay the shell down on another laptop or near any hard drives!

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    • The hard drive is in the blue square.

    • Some models come with a factory-installed mSATA drive instead of the 2.5" SSD pictured. In that case, the mSATA drive will be where the yellow arrows indicate the RAM memory is, with the pins lining up against the blue area, and the butt towards the bronze heatsink.

    • To remove, unscrew the one screw in the upper right hand corner of the drive (would be approximately where the top yellow arrow is.) Gently lift the free end until it angles up from the pins. Pull and it slides right out.

    • The 2.5" drive bay is empty, but there are no connection sockets. According to Toshiba, it is there due to the variations in the P55W models (as seen in this guide) and all use the same motherboard and layout.

    • You may have to pry the 2.5" hard drive up with a little bit of force, the silicon was sticky.

    • The RAM SIMMs are located under those gray flaps with two yellow arrows above the hard drive.*

    • The orange arrow points to the battery taking up all of the lower area to the right of the hard drive.

    • If you have owned your laptop for a while, now is a good time to blow out any dust in the fan and heatsinks. (Red circle.)

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    • Remove the SATA cables before you attempt to remove the hard drive. Pull in the direction of the pink arrows.

    • You may need to lightly pry the hard drive out. The blue silicon was sort of sticky, and held it in.

    • Remove the light blue silicon "frame" from the HDD, and place it on the SSD. You'll probably have to try twice to get aligned with the right end going on the right end of the SSD.

    • You want to end up with your SSD attached with the SATA cables in a way that keeps the original fold in the ribbon the same way.

    When removing the HDD’s SATA cable I broke its black plastic connector. Derp! Pulling it *straight out* with patience is what’s needed ;-)

    Mike -

    • The white cable that goes to the power button needs to be reinserted into the adapter on the cover just before snapping the cover back on.

    • Once the SSD is in, replace the bottom shell, and re-insert all of the screws you removed.

    This is an immensely helpful, easy-to-understand guide. Thank you!!

    Mike -

Abschluss

To reassemble your device, follow these instructions in reverse order.

Tinte & Feder

Netmammal

Mitglied seit: 30/04/15

2111 Reputation

29 Kommentare

Thank you so much!! The only videos I found were for other models (with hidden screws, misc cables, etc.) Very cool of you to post this for us that have the same model!

2fnlo4u -

I used the Easus free disk cloning software to set up my SSD, and then followed your instructions, and everything works just great! Thank you for these instructions.

Richard Chalk -

I have the p55w-5813 with a factory mSATA, and this was GREAT. . Two issues, though. . First, *THERE ARE SCREWS UNFER ~BOTH~ REAR FOOTPADS*. I removed the one shown in your guide, endind up with the specified 10 screws. I even removed the other footpad, just in case. . Unfortunately, the white sticky bottom must have seperated from the pad, so a quick look showed a smooth white surface. I proceeded to remove the cover, and it was only when putting the bottom cover back on, that I saw the that corner had been secured identical twin screws under the footpad. . The cover had came off because the think plastic/metal snapped around them when I removed it with gentle pressure. I wish I had a way of attaching a picture to illustrate the placement of the screws and the chunk it took out. If you would update your instructions where you say there aren't any under that footpad, you'll save a lot of people (at least with my specific model) from broken bottom covers.

Misty Stuebs -

Second issue (my first was too long to cover both)...

The other issue is to include that the white cable that goes to the power button needs to be reinserted into the adapter on the cover just before snapping the cover back on.

Thank you for a great guide. It literally took me 20 minutes to remove.

Misty Stuebs -

Misty, thanks for the info (and the great photo!) I have updated the guide. Sorry my guide mislead you, its almost like Toshiba wants that kind of confusion! :-(

Netmammal -

My computer says "no bootable drive detected" when I try to boot up.

Vince Offer -

Thanks for the guide! I usually tend to work with old notebooks, so I had no idea of the double screws on the footpads. Hope my client enjoys their new SSD, hehe!

el-man2009 -

Thank you for these detailed instructions. Mine had the screws under the rear footpads and the flexible power cord which came unplugged because I jerked it a little too fast. When I put it all back together it wasn't getting any power. I found a tiny pin hole reset on the opposite side from the power, I stuck a pin in there and held it for 10 seconds. It booted right up and works great. Thank you!

Meredith -

Quick question. after HDD crashed, installed SSD but can't access boot menu or bios to change. just keeps giving no bootable device restart pc. is there a trick that i can do to get this so i can change boot so it installs from bootable device such as usb?

Ryan Reynolds -

There are two possibilities for working through this:

1. Try getting in to the Boot menu screen by repeatedly tapping (or holding down and periodically releasing momentarily) the F12 key. BTW, this key will work on most modern PCs and laptops to get to the boot device selection override menu.

Netmammal -

2. Even if you get to that screen, it still may not boot using the device you wish. In that case, I think you have to get into the BIOS/EFI menu, I do not have this PC to refer to, so my description will be a bit vague. I can not even remember what the key is you have to tap to get in to the menu for this Toshiba, but it may be F2.

Once in the menu, you will need to change the "Secure Boot" option to disabled. Once this is disabled, then the option to disable the CSM boot (or the option to enable Legacy boot) will become available.

Netmammal -

Now you will have the ability to boot from external devices. I think you will also have the ability to change the default device boot order in the BIOS. If you reinstall Windows, it will then be "trained" to always want the unlocked BIOS. If you are cloning or using the same windows bits from the old hard-drive, once that copy of Windows is installed, you will have to go back in to the BIOS/EFI screens and renable CSM (or disable Legacy boot), because Windows will only boot in the mode the PC was in when Windows was installed.

Netmammal -

All of this aggravation did not happen by accident, and almost all modern PCs make you go through this grief. Microsoft says its all an improvement to make you computer more secure. One might read that as meaning its more secure from the bad guys. I doubt it. What they ended up doing is making your computer more secure from being repaired or modified by the owner or a tech.

Make no mistake, Microsoft's most important customers are not you and I, it is the hardware manufacturers. Those guys want everyone to just toss their broken, slow or dysfunctional PCs into the trash and buy a new one (with a new copy of Windows, a new copy of Office), and new hardware.

If Windows were more secure, you would not have Cryptoware in the news every other week. I mean, I suspect BIOS viruses are academically possible, but I've never heard of one in the wild, unless the NSA was targeting a specific person.

Netmammal -

The end effect is that as a computer repair tech, I sometimes spend 15 minutes screwing around with this BIOS stuff before I can even start the fix or change. I've had jobs where I have spent more time trying to boot my stuff than I spend actually doing the fix.

Netmammal -

Here are some links to pages of interest here:

Instructions for updating the firmware on Toshiba. You are not doing this, but you need to go through the same steps in the beginning

http://support.toshiba.com/support/viewC...

Fairly generic and well-written description of getting through secure boot "wall":

https://neosmart.net/wiki/disabling-secu...

The usual only marginally helpful Microsoft article on this:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...

Winkipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Ex...

Netmammal -

Is it possible to add a 2nd drive ? 1st ssd drive and 2nd 2.5" drive.

If possible, how to setup ?

Thanks

kilika

Cris Nuguid -

I don't think there is a bay for a second hard drive, but so many variations of this model have been reported since I posted this, that I can't be sure for yours. It is also possible that there is a M.2 connector, you'll have to google what that looks like. Your best bet is to either install a hybrid drive, or to stick the HDD in an external enclosure, and attach it with a USB cable.

Netmammal -

Thanks for the reply, this is my wife's notebook, Toshiba model P55W-C5210-4K, ordered with 256gb SSD, M.2, and has an emty HDD drive Bay for 2.5".

I am thinking of installing a 2tb 2.5" HDD together with SSD drive. My question is, will it work running 2 drive at the same time ?

Thanks

Cris Nuguid

Cris Nuguid -

This sounds like it might work, but there is one really big IF....

IF you can find the right cable for the hard drive. Now it is always possible that Toshiba might have pre-installed the proper cable for the empty drive bay, and it is also possible that I may walk on the moon, but I would not plan on it.

I did a quick google, and could not find anything, but maybe if you called Toshiba, they could tell you the part number and how to order it. Look through any online manuals for this, that might have the part number listed.

Maybe there is a standard laptop SATA connector, and I just have not noticed, but I think most laptop manufacturers go the proprietary route.

If you get the part number, please pay it forward and post the part number here to help your fellow Toshiba owners, this one fixit has gotten a surprising number of hits since I wrote it (like over 400.)

Netmammal -

Hello, thanks for info, I found a cable with HDD Sata connector "OEM Toshiba Satellite Radius P55W-B5220 Hard Drive Connector w/Cable DD0BLSHD000" at eBay, owner who have HDD instead of SSD drive and upgrade to SSD drive.

Hope it help

Cris Nuguid -

Awesome! Sometimes I think it stupid that I spend too much time writing up this stuff, but its great to be able to help. Best of luck working on your laptop.

-Dave

Netmammal -

hello i hv a motherboard problem with my P55w-c5316 4k can any one please give me the compatible motherboard number? there are plenty of diff numbers on the P55w series

sohil -

Hi. I own the p55w c5200x model and i want to install a ssd keeping the hdd. Do you know if that model has an msata port for installing the ssd? Thanks

Gastón Giro -

Установил сразу 2.5 hdd и m2 диски. Пришлось только срезать резинку которая крепит диск и срезать немного пластика с корпуса.

Kirill Kirill -

I dropped the screw that attaches the ssd to the motherboard. Where can I get another?

A. John Peters -

You have got several choices:

o Close up the laptop with the SSD loose. Whatever kind of shock would damage that would most certainly demolish your laptop before it hurt the SSD. Problem with this is that it might rattle a bit. It also might move around enough to loosen the cable connector, requiring you to open again and re-attach.

o If you have got some non-conductive tape, like electrical tape, you could tape the SSD down, either by creating 1-2 tiny loops of inside-out (sticky side out) tape to make the SSD stay in it’s location. You might also just tape over the SSD to anchor it to nearby stuff.

o Do the “right” thing and get some screws. They are standard HDD screws, I’m not sure the size it might be this metric size M3 screw of this size 2.0 x 3mm (CM2x3-3.3) you can probably get some at your local hardware store, or you could order this screw kit https://www.amazon.com/CO-RODE-Notebook-...

Netmammal -

can this laptopp55w-c5200x handle 16 gb of ram and if it can where can i buy 1 8gb stick bc i already have a 8ram chip in my laptop and i just need the 8gb stick

lance cavalone -

I have a problem with my Toshiba laptop p55w-c5200x it don't recognize my pny ssd how do I fix and is there a certain ssd that I have to buy to make it compatible. Can u please email me at aaronlam1982@gmail.com

Small Minded!! U yes U! -

I replaced the HDD with an SSD. Instruction were perfect. I used Macrium Reflect to clone the new drive. The first time I restarted it I got the “boot device not found” error. Restarted, continuously pressed the delete key, started right up. It's working fine, now. Thanks for the guide - with the variations for different models!

Joanne Davis -