Book 1 battery and disk replacement

[Wayne Orwig]

I have an original Book. It sat unused for a number of months and now I have found a use for it. Oddly, while sitting powered off, the screen battery has gone bad. As in, it only lasts about 10 minutes by itself. The keyboard battery still appears to have about full capacity.
So, I ordered a replacement battery for the screen. And I am going to try to replace it. I have had moderate success with this type of thing, so I think I can do it without destroying it. Has anyone else had any luck with this? There are a couple of Youtube videos on it.
But, my main question is, it has a 256Gb hard disk. I would like to upgrade it to a 500Gb disk while I am in there. I am looking at this:
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-500G.../B086BGWNY8/ref=psdc_1292116011_t3_B07M7Q21N7
I have not followed disk drive specs, so I am guess it would be OK. I would also like to image my current disk to the new one before installing it. I'm not sure how that will work with BitLocker turned on. Or maybe I will stick with keeping my largest data files on the external SD card.

So any feedback on battery and disk replacements is appreciated, before I dive in.

 

[Wayne Orwig]

Well, I got the replacement battery.
I got a replacement SSD drive.
I got a USB to NVME adapter, and cloned the 256GB drive, to the 512GB drive.
I carefully, using a lot of heat, removed the display. Somewhere along the line I messed up the display (or a display cable). Now the display does not work.



I found replacement displays, but not cables. Bummer. I'm not sure what is bad.

 

[Wayne Orwig]

I got a replacement display, YEAH.
I plugged it in, and it worked, YEAH.
I unplugged it to continue with the battery replacement, YEAH.
I damaged the cable, WHAT!

Found a cable and it is on order.

Too fragile for me I guess.

 

[sharpuser]

YEAH.

 

[Wayne Orwig]

Ok. I just got back to this.
Replacing the $30 battery was a major pain. As I mentioned, the display was damaged in the process, though the damage was not visible. So that was another $120. And I damaged the $10 cable testing the replacement display. The LiPo batteries are glued in place VERY well. As in, I damaged the swollen battery outer cover in the process. Though there was no problem. (that battery is now outside on the concrete)
I started to reassemble it, and after screwing down the mother board (I think it is 800 little screws, maybe only 799 ) I realized I had forgotten to put in my new disk upgrade.

So now, it is back together. New battery. 256GB disk upgraded to 512GB. And everything I have tried so far works great. The only issue remaining is to get some replacement tape to reattach the display properly. Total cost was a touch over $200 I guess. Luckily for me the parts are available.

I used the guide on the iFixit web site. It was very helpful, but is not accurate. There were a few little things that you need to watch out for, like hidden screws that they don't call out.

Now to run BitLocker on that new drive.

 

[sharpuser]

You are a pioneer. Thanks for posting your experience!

 

[GreyFox7]

Daniel Boone would be proud. Of course, he'd still just think it was a normal day to day activity.
We've never been here before but it doesn't matter because that's just what we do...

 

[Wayne Orwig]

It is nice having the battery capacity back, maybe even better then ever. I used it, keyboard attached, for about 4 hours this morning. Just general web surfing and reading. After about 4 hours it still shows 49%. So close to 8 hours was likely. I don't ever recall it being that good.
Plus I can now put all of my media on the new large drive. I used to have it stored on the SD card, so you couldn't access it if the keyboard was disconnected.

BTW, I forgot to run CrystalDiskMark before, to get a before and after speed check. Does anyone happen to have the disk speed results for a Book 1, 256GB?

 

[Wayne Orwig]

Well, so much for that.
They other day, the display started to flicker. But only when on charge. It worked fine on battery.
Then the next day, it started to flicker, when on battery or charge.
The next day, dead. Nothing.

So apparently, I weakened something going in there. Hard to imagine is would be ESD, since I was always discharged to the metal case.

So, moving on. I found a good price on an opened box Book 2. I'll put the 512GB SSD in a USB case at least.