Home
In the following guide I explain how to remove the hard drive from a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (1010) netbook.
There is no easy access to the hard drive from the bottom of the netbook. The hard drive is mounted inside the case, under the keyboard.
You can use this guide for removing/replacing the keyboard and removing/replacing/upgrading the hard drive.
STEP 1.
Turn off the laptop, unplug the AC adapter and remove the battery.
Remove three screws from the bottom. These screws secure the keyboard.
STEP 2.
Insert a thin object between the top side of the keyboard and laptop case.
Lift up the keyboard and continue removing it with your fingers.
STEP 3.
Lift up the keyboard as it shown on the picture below and flip upside down on the palm rest.
STEP 4.
Under the keyboard you’ll find the hard drive assembly and wireless card.
It’s not necessary to disconnect the keyboard if you are replacing the hard drive or wireless card.
If you would like to replace the keyboard, you’ll have to unlock the connector and release the cable.
In order to unlock the connector, very carefully move the brown lock about 2 millimeters towards the touch pad.
The lock must stay attached to the connector base.
When the connector unlocked, you can pull the cable and remove the keyboard.
Looking for a new keyboard for your Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook? Search here.
STEP 5.
Remove one screw securing the hard drive assembly.
STEP 6.
Slide the hard drive assembly to the left and disconnect it from the motherboard.
STEP 7.
Remove the hard drive assembly.
Now remove four screws securing the hard drive to the caddy and separate the hard drive from the caddy.
In my case I had a regular 160GB 2.5″ SATA hard drive installed. This hard drive can be replaced with a larger 2.5″ SATA hard drive.
April 10th, 2013 at 5:49 am
Dear Tony,
You can install windows on these netbooks in one of two ways.
1. External CD/DVD drive
2. Bootable USB pen drive.
with the first option, all you do is take your normal installation disk and put this into the external drive and go into your BIOS settings and boot from the external drive first.
The second option is a little more time consuming to setup. It involves copying your installation disk as a bootable ISO format and then using PowerISO, you can convert the disk files onto your pen drive, the software will also allow you to make the USB device bootable.
In either case, going onto google will be the best way to get the relevant knowledge and also the software tha you will need.
I hope this information helps you and do let e know on here how you get on.
Yours sincerely
Jianglong Wang
JIATEK SOLUTIONS
March 17th, 2013 at 1:44 am
wow you are awesome. thank you!!
February 9th, 2013 at 10:26 am
@ jiyajain,
Have you tried replacing the battery?
February 7th, 2013 at 8:37 pm
my dell mini battery shorted and damaged two adapters while trying to charge as adapter light continuously blink and finally off permanently during battery charging but lapy fine works directly on adapter without battery, pls help any solution for battery shortage problem?
January 27th, 2013 at 4:17 am
Hello!
My question was whether the Dell Mini Laptop or has no hard drive.
I wanted to see if by chance something is badly connected and up to test out the disc because it is giving error message: Operating System not found.
June 15th, 2012 at 9:04 am
Tony,
Do you have Windows installation dics?
Do you have an external USB DVD drive?
June 15th, 2012 at 5:00 am
Please could you tell me how to install windows on a dell mini.
My old one dont work properly so was adviced to buy a new one, but it happens to be blank. How do i go about it, l will make a donation please. Thanks
March 12th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
@ WeWe,
Here’s service manual for this model. Should help.
March 10th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
hi thank you for this tutorial can you make a full taking apart for this one because am having screen problems thank you again
December 23rd, 2011 at 6:50 pm
@ Christien Gagnier,
I don’t have this guide.
Most likely the audio jack soldered directly to the motherboard. You’ll have to remove the motherboard and find someone who can desolder the broken jack and solder a new one.