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Replacing the Acer Aspire S3’s 7mm Hitachi HDD

The HDD on my Acer Aspire S3 conked out a couple of days ago. Don’t know what caused it but by the time I booted it up in the morning, the hard drive was already trashing the plates like crazy. This is the first time I’ve had a laptop HDD crashed on me.

Since this is my primary laptop, I am forced to have it repaired or do the repair myself.

With the right screw driver and a spare 2.5″ 750GB Western Digital HDD lying around, I thought I could replace it myself.

After a couple of hours struggling with the dozen or so screws, I managed to peel off the back cover and removed the damaged HDD.

Problem though is that when I was placing the new HDD, it would not fit on the bay. Turns out my spare laptop HDD was thicker than the one on the Aspire S3.

A few Google searches and I found the Hitachi Travelstar Z5K320 is just 7mm thin and not the 9.5mm most other regular laptop drives are. The highest capacity for this model is actually the 320GB used by the Aspire S3 which is from Hitachi. My enthusiasm fizzled.

I now have to look for a 7mm thin HDD so I can fix the Aspire S3 and get back to my regular work schedule. Problem is this model is rare and since we have a HDD crisis, it’s going to be expensive. Just find it really strange the drive gave up just like that.

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

36 Responses

  1. Avatar for Jon Jon says:

    Does anyone have a copy of the restore image for the Aspire S3 MS2346..? i can pay you….

    ACER wants 46 dollars for it….

  2. Avatar for joe oloughlin joe oloughlin says:

    Successfully installed Win 7
    BUT
    the 320gb HD isn’t shown in Computer
    so all is going on the SSD. Other
    software sees the 320gb so don’t know what is going on
    Suggestions?
    Thanks

  3. Avatar for David Haworth David Haworth says:

    HI Wish I had seen this before I replaced my hard drive last week – I too popped in a ssd – ocz agility 3 I got on offer. and I too noticed the keyboard bulge !!! again removing the cover meant it fitted fine it works well too. I made an error ages ago of installing windows 8 and deleting the 20gb ssd drive from windows – anyone know how I can get it back – it’s still fitted but no idea where it is or what I have to do to get it showing up in hardware >??

  4. Avatar for Jonathan Taylor Jonathan Taylor says:

    i replaced mine with a ocz agility 3 ssd i thought it would just fit being a 2.5 inch i was wrong it was pushing the keyboard up slightly so i removed the bottom on the ssd case and now it fits perfect

  5. Avatar for Qwerty Qwerty says:

    has anyone actually installed an SSD in this ultrabook? Did you encounter any issues?

  6. Avatar for GhostHunter GhostHunter says:

    @Steen Larsen:

    I played with the idea of replacing the original HDD with a SSD but the cost is prohibitive to get the 256gb or higher capacity SSD.

  7. Avatar for Ole Steen Larsen Ole Steen Larsen says:

    Replace it with SSD.
    All Intel 320 and Crucial M4 SSD has only 7mm height

  8. Avatar for GhostHunter GhostHunter says:

    BTW, I replaced the original Hitachi HDD as a precaution of it failing in the near future.

  9. Avatar for GhostHunter GhostHunter says:

    I have an Acer S3 and I was able to purchase a Seagate 320GB 2.5in 7mm HDD from V-Mall Greenhills.

    Openning the S3 chassis was simple enough. Unscrew all the screws and it’s open. Cloning the HDD’s contents took a couple of hours (or so) but once swapped, the S3 booted just fine.

    BTW, I noticed that using my disk partition utility that I could access the SDD. I could re-format it so I can directly access it in Windows7. But for now, I left it as is.

  10. Avatar for Beaver Beaver says:

    just bought the s3,i can not belive you say it took you a few hours to get it open,16 screws small philips undone,used a credit card to separate the plastics it took less than 5 mins to open the chassis cover.tbh this laptop sux,if the hard drive fails then it’s knocked out on ebay a faulty hd,then back to a decent lappy tbh the ultra thin are going to be chuck away units at a very expensive price with no option for ram or hd upgrade. :(

  11. Avatar for Acer Aspire 5742 Acer Aspire 5742 says:

    Wow, I’ve got to admire your bravery at attempting to replace the hard-drive yourself. It’s
    unusual for Acer HD’s to malfunction.

  12. Avatar for Leslie Leslie says:

    No updates on this? Did you find a replacement HDD or SSD for the crashed Hitachi HDD?

  13. Avatar for Nic Nic says:

    Acer should have used a SSD in this Ultrabook as other OEMs have. Spinning platters would not last long in a notebook designed to be lugged around.

  14. Avatar for BdGoals BdGoals says:

    I heard Acer was one of the best in customer satisfaction, Their support canter sphreaded everywhere. Don’t they help us if something wrong happened with our S3?

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