Our 4-year-old (that’s equivalent to 65 human years old.) Sony Vaio PCG-FR720 laptop decided to take a much needed rest that day. Even CompuWay couldn’t help it. Apparently, it’s motherboard needed replacement but unfortunately, it costs bomb to do so. So what the hell, I picked it up from CompuWay after lectures and got daddy’s green light to disassemble it. XD
THAT’s what you do with a dead laptop. XD
R.I.P
Ultimately, I’ll have to take out it’s hard disk to retrieve the precious data inside. So, armed with the curiousity to see what’s under a Vaio’s hood and of course, these tools, I began my laptop-surgery initiative.
First, I had to look for the suitable point to plant my surgery knife screwdriver. Common sense told me the laptop had to be flipped over.
It didn’t take much guessing where the hard disk should be. It should be placed in its own compartment, allowing easy access when the need of replacing arises.
Having a rough idea how big (or small, depends on how you read this sentence) a laptop drive is, I detached a panel that was slightly bigger a hard disk drive. and voila! there it was, sitting there, with some sort of heat-reflecting-pad (I’m only guessing here, no idea what that black pad is.) that almost got me thinking twice if I really got the hard disk. But yes, it was the hard disk all right, under that pad.
Excited with the progress, I quickly unscrewed three of four screws attaching the drive to the compartment. Until I reached the last one — which was completely burred. Crap.
spot the bottom left burred screw. complimentary of compuway technicians.
Those CompuWay technicians must have burred it up and told my mom that the data could not be retrieved. Lazy bums. Says so much about how trustworthy are IT technicians these days. When it’s a hassle to fix, they just write it off and tell you need a new part, pay extra bla bla..
Luckily I did not really believe the ‘data could not be retrieved’ part.
But, that still does not change the fact that the last screw couldn’t be removed! I spent a good few hours into the night trying to remove that bloody screw.
When the clock showed 1.30am, I got fed-up and pryed the whole drive out with pliers. With a snap, the screw gave way along with it’s socket and I finally got the drive out. XD Gee, should’ve done that earlier.
the 40 Gig Fujitsu 2.5″ drive.
hard disk compartment — emptied.
Victorious, I installed the drive into an external hard drive adapter and plugged it via USB into my desktop. As half-expected, Windows couldn’t detect it.
I then decided to try dad’s iBook G4 instead. The Mac took to no less than two seconds before the drive icons popped up on the desktop, ready to be accessed. A Mac just works, doesn’t it? =P
Then it’s retrieval galore!
So much for believing in the words of technicians, huh?. All our data were safely retrieved — every single bloody byte. Next time your favourite PC repair shop says your computer is dead, don’t give up hope!
Welp, I guess it’s a new laptop coming our way! XD
So you mean now that the harddrive become an external HD?!
well, yeah. You could put it that way. =)
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hey dude my own PCG-FR720 just died out. Could you please send me the processor of your PCG-FR720? I want to test if my processor’s burnt out but I can’t do it without another. It’s hard to get an AXMD2200FJQ4C processor nowadays (that’s the 1.35V variant of AMD Athlon XP-M Mobile CPU 2200+ which is used on this model).
Hi. I was wondering if any of you have the this laptop models’ rescue disk ? contact me please. thanks
mine is still tickin but i need new usb ports,battery and cover !!!!!!!!!