Guest article- How to put a 60 GB hard drive into the Sony UX50!
Owners of ultra-portable devices are often willing to push the envelope a bit when it comes to upgrading the hardware components to get more power/ performance/ speed/ storage space. It was no surprise to me when Kevin gutted his Samsung Q1 to bring the memory up to 1 GB and it didn’t surprise me when a long-time reader of jkOnTheRun contacted me to let me know he had upgraded the hard drive in his Sony UX50 to 60 GB.
Fernando Miralles has probably owned every ultra-portable device that has ever been produced and his latest productivity tool (toy) is the Sony UX50. Fernando is a power user so the 30 GB hard drive the Sony ships with was just not enough so he quickly decided to upgrade to a 60 GB drive and he has been kind enough to share the instructions for changing the stock drive for a double capacity drive. After the jump you will find the guest article by Fernando (thanks for sharing!). Full specs on the Toshiba MK6008GAH drive that Fernando put into the Sony UX can be found here. NOTE– any upgrade like the one described here should only be undertaken at your own risk and if you know what you are doing, like Fernando!
Sony Vaio UX50 60 GB HDD Upgrade
By: Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm
I wrote this simple and brief set of instructions to upgrade the Sony VAIO UX50’s hard drive from 30 GB to 60 GB. It is a pretty simple operation (believe me, I am not an expert), and the end result is a whole lot of more storage capacity. The only tool you will need is a Phillips screwdriver (small) that is suitable to the screws in the UX50. I found a screwdriver in my laptop tool set that was good for both the inside screws (which are a bit smaller) and the outside ones.
Step 1: Starting from the outside
Well, of course, this will be the toughest step of all, because it is when you decide to open this baby up. There are four visible screws in the back of the UX50 (Figure 1). These are very easy to get out.
There are two more screws that are “hidden”. The first (long silver screw) hides inside the battery compartment, so take out the battery and you will see it. The other hidden screws (short screw) lies below the stylus. To get to this one, you will need to remove the small cap that guards the stylus compartment. See Figure 2 for the location of both of these hidden screws. The screws themselves are shown in Figure 3.
After these six screws have been removed, the back cover of the UX will loosen up and un-attach fairly easily. Now you have the insides of the UX exposed (see Figure 4).
Step 2: Removing the bezel that houses the hard drive
You will notice that the hard drive is housed and covered by a bezel that has five small silver screws holding it in place. You will need to get out these five screws to get to the hard drive. Once you do this, the bezel can be set loose and you will be able to physically access the hard drive. You may find it more comfortable to unlatch a gray cable (see Figure 5) that is somewhat in the way if you want to access the hard drive. Not a big deal, as the little cable snaps right back in place.
Step 3: Removing the hard drive
Once the five bezel screws are removed, you can raise the bezel (for example, with your finger as shown in Figure 6). From here, you can un-latch the hard drive by gently rotating the black latch that sets the hard drive loose. To get the hard drive out, you will also need to remove a black piece of tape that holds an orange electronics strip over the hard drive. Voila, the hard drive is out (see Figure 7).
Step 4: Replacing the hard drive
Well, from here on it is pretty much in reverse. You will need to insert your new hard drive (see Figure 8), snap it on, secure it in place by rotating the black latch to its “locked” position, lower the bezel and put back the five little screws in place, snap the gray cable back in case you had removed it, put back the back cover and get those six infamous screws back in place. You are done now !!!
A couple of other (common sense) pieces of advice:
- Because you will need to reinstall all the drivers, I suggest you back up your old hard drive before you initiate this process; you will need them to get your upgraded computer up and running again !!!
- You will need to install the OS from scratch. There are several guides online on how to do this. This one, http://www.micropctalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35, for example, will get you through.
Can we get step by step instructions on how to reinstall all of the drivers? ty :)
Posted by: JuzMe | July 04, 2006 at 04:44 AM
Any issue with the size of the HDD? I thought the MK6008GAH was 3mm thicker.
Posted by: Jim | July 04, 2006 at 06:02 AM
I'm hoping with Vista coming out, Sony will do this themselves on next years version of this model.
Posted by: scoobie | July 04, 2006 at 06:02 AM
Hello all, let me try to respond to comments.
JuzMe: There is a set of instructions to install the OS from scratch plus all the drivers. This was posted by Sony themselves (well, that is progress !!!) at the site:
http://esupport.sony.com/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VGNUX180P&UpdateType=
All the drivers are there for download as well.
This is not a flawless operation. I am still having a bit of an issue with the Sony not wanting to go into stand by, but I am confident this will be fixed soon. The larger HD is well worth it.
Jim: even though the 60 GB HD is thicker, it fits quite well in the UX. There are no gaps and no pressure issues inside the machine. I found there is plenty of space in there !!!
Which begs the question that Scoobie poses: why didn't Sony offer this to begin with? Perhaps they could have offered a high end version with the larger HD. Not sure who dropped the ball there...
In any case, for less than $200 (that is what the drive costs from a few online outlets), the higher capacity is definitely worth it in my mind.
Posted by: Fernando | July 04, 2006 at 06:34 AM
We should point out that those drivers ae for the US version (180) so there might be other drivers for other UX models.
Posted by: jk | July 04, 2006 at 07:42 AM
On a sidenote, I got a job at the local SonyStyle store and there are 10 UX180P's coming into the store within the next day or two, so I'm definitely going to pick up one (the employee discounts are well worth it, too!)
I assume it voids the warranty, but I'll consider the upgrade if it becomes a flawless procedure.
Posted by: Raphael | July 04, 2006 at 09:28 AM
I'm very tempted to do this once my UX180 arrives. I already have a 60gb ipod video so I could just swap the drives. Anyboy ever tried putting a 30gb drive back in to a 60gb ipod?
Posted by: Scott | July 04, 2006 at 12:01 PM
Hey, Scott, as probably the only person on this planet who hasn't ever owned an iPod before, I like this idea. I could finally buy an iPod and switch the drives, and that way I wouldn't end up with one drive lying around being useless.
Can this be done and how?
Posted by: JuzMe | July 04, 2006 at 08:54 PM
JK/Fernando or anyone, could someone please help me with another question? I see that conics.net is selling the Japanese version of the UX with a Flash Memory Drive option.
I really don't know what flash memory is and this conics.net site seems to imply that the 16 megs of flash memory *replaces* the 30 meg hard drive.
Is this true? if so, what advantage is that? isn't 16 megs of flash memory drive half the storage space of a 30 meg hard drive? What are the pros and cons of this FMD model? and does anyone other than conics.net offer it? because they'r located in Japan and I just called them at 11:35 am Japan local time and all I got was a voice mail in Japanese. Doesn't sound like the kind of place that I'd feel comfortable ordering from due to likely communication problems.
?
Posted by: JuzMe | July 04, 2006 at 09:42 PM
Conics.net has been around for years, and I almost bought a U70P from them had it not been for Kurns & Patrick (www.kurnspatrick.com) giving me a better deal in the end.
The 16GB flash drive version supposedly runs faster than the 30GB drive, provides about 13% more battery life to the entire unit, and makes the unit able to sustain bumps and jolts a lot better since there's no moving hard drive arm to destroy the platters of the hard drive. Of course, you're losing more than half the capacity, and it's much more expensive (the unit's specs are worse than the comparable 30GB version, i.e. Celeron vs Core Solo, etc).
Conics will also sell you the UX in bits and pieces, rather than a bundle package that SonyStyle will give you. If you don't need the Cingular EDGE capability and can deal with the out-of-country warranty, Japanese letters on the keyboard, unofficial yet near-perfect Japanese-to-English conversion of the OS and software, then go with Kurns & Patrick, Conics.net, or Kemplar (www.kemplar.com). Otherwise, SonyStyle will have their next batch to ship out July 12 and many SonyStyle retail stores will actually have them in stock as early as tomorrow.
Posted by: Raphael | July 04, 2006 at 10:18 PM
Hello Scott and JuzMe:
The iPod hard drive swap is definitely do-able, but pretty tricky. It can be done, but you need to be careful. I would search online for a guide to do the replacement before cracking up one of those babies.
This link provides a guide, but this is for iPod photo (4th generation), although it will provide you with a good idea of what is involved.
http://www.notpopular.com/blog/comments.php?blogID=63
Posted by: Fernando | July 05, 2006 at 07:20 AM
Oh, I almost forgot. The issue with the UX not wanting to go into stand by has been fixed (thanks to the Micro PC Talk forum folks), so it is a flawless install. For anyone interested in taking the plunge !!!
Posted by: Fernando | July 05, 2006 at 07:42 AM
Fernando, what was the fix for the "not going into standby" problem? is there a link? That's the only piece to the puzzle that I don't have. I've been following this closely here and on the other forum.
?
Posted by: JuzMe | July 05, 2006 at 04:35 PM
For JuzMe
You need disable (uncheck the checkbox) the option Power Management > "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" for all "USB Root Hub" in Device Manager / Universal Serial Bus controllers.
I'll try to update a M$ KB patch for USB and power management problem, hope it'ill fix this problem
Posted by: Augustin VU | July 05, 2006 at 06:20 PM
so has anyone added a bigger hard drive to the Q1???.
also are there larger capacity hard drives for the UX. maybe 160gb??
Posted by: medah4rick | July 05, 2006 at 07:25 PM
For JuzMe: the link for the fix is in this link, pretty much the same that Agustin VU is explaining.
http://www.micropctalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26
For Medah4rick: I think the largest hard drive available for the UX right now is the 60GB.
Posted by: Fernando | July 05, 2006 at 07:30 PM
My UX50(J) is on the way, I also ordered one MK6008GAH. I have a question about if I change the new 60GB hard drive, how could Ire-install the XP to the empty hard drive?
Posted by: kenji | July 06, 2006 at 06:29 AM
Kenji: depending on who you bought your UX from, you may get a recovery disk, and then the answer to your question is easy. My vendor (Dynamism) has not provided the recovery disks yet, but they are in the process of sending them out. If you have the Windows install disks (like I do), then you use those as well. Make sure you back up all the drivers which should be either in the recovery disk, or saved in the hard drive itself.
Posted by: Fernando | July 06, 2006 at 07:22 AM
Thanks so much. So want I need is a usb CD-drive to install winXP?
Posted by: kenji | July 06, 2006 at 09:58 AM
Yes, pretty much. Make sure the "boot from external USB drive" is enabled in your BIOS. I am pretty sure that is the default option, so you may not need to do anything else. Good luck !!!
Posted by: Fernando | July 06, 2006 at 10:08 AM
To Kenji: You can make a ghost image of your old disk and ghost it to your new 60gb disk - Try TrueImage, it's very good to dupplicate disk2disk
For use en USB CD External, not all most will work (bootable) with UX50 - I tried with an ICE BOX + DVD Writer Plexor 750, it found the external USB but dont boot, but with my mutibay HP DVD RW, it can boot without any problem...
Posted by: Augustin VU | July 06, 2006 at 07:01 PM
Has anyone upgraded the RAM yet? is it a standard DDR2 dimm? or is it soldered?
Posted by: GuardianZX9 | July 07, 2006 at 09:13 PM
where can you buy this 60G toshiba drive?
Posted by: Ivan | July 09, 2006 at 11:24 PM
Ivan: you can try the iPodmods folks at: http://www.ipodmods.com/shop/1616-ipod-hard-drive-disk-mk6008gah.html, or also the welovemacs at: http://www.welovemacs.com/mk6008gah.html. Try a google search for more vendors. I got mine on ebay, so you can try that as well.
Posted by: Fernando | July 10, 2006 at 08:32 AM
I completed this upgrade tonight on my new UX180. Pulled the 60gb drive out of my video ipod and installed to the UX. I'll eventually put the 30gb back in the ipod but haven't yet. Very easy swap. The 180 does have an extra wire attaced to the GSM antenna but if you can reach inside and remove the tape the wire can stay attached. Otherwise it's exactly as detailed above. I even booted from my recovery DVD's and restored the entire system without a problem. You can even recreate the recovery partition if you want but I didn't. Probably about 15 minutes to install the drive (after it's out of the ipod) and another 45 for the (slow!) recovery dvd's to run but definitely worth the time spent! BTW I have the $99 drive from SonyStyle, the DDRW3.
Big thanks to Fernando for posting this. I wouldn't have even thought I already owned a 60gb upgrade to my UX!
Posted by: Scott | July 10, 2006 at 10:24 PM
Now, the $99 DDRW3 is not available on sonystyle, I just buy a DDRW4 for $360, so so so expensive, but I just wanna try to change my 60GB drive ASAP, it's so fantastic～～～～～
Posted by: kenji | July 11, 2006 at 01:58 AM
Scott -- Can you provide any info or links on how to take apart the 5G iPod Video? I want to do the same swap but the iPod looks like it might be challenging to take apart. I couldn't find anything specific to the 5G iPods at iPodLounge.com.
By the way, I highly recommend making the recovery disks so you can do a complete restore. The available drivers at the Sony USA site do not include several Sony utility packages (settings utility, special keys utility, zoom utility, maybe more). Without the settings utility, I don't know if it is possible to change the display brightness.
Posted by: paulnerd | July 12, 2006 at 09:47 PM
Paul,
I don't know of a guide specifically for the 5G ipods but you may have better look lucking for a battery replacement guide since that seems to be the more common swap. Honestly the only difficult part is opening the case. It can be difficult to start the split but just take your time and go carefully. Once it's open the hd is very easy to remove.
Posted by: Scott | July 13, 2006 at 12:24 PM
okay now that weve upgraded sonys built in hard drive now can someone please upgrade the hdd in the Q1!!.
i really need to know if i can upgrade the hdd in the q1 because if i can't then i'll just get an eo but i want to get a q1. you feel me?
help!
Posted by: medah4rick | July 13, 2006 at 02:11 PM
Thank you for this excellent article on how to upgrade the UX180's Harddrive. This was something I was considering.
Since battery life/performace is important to me, I would rather have more flash drive than more harddrive therfore:
Is it possible to upgrade the 16GB flash drive that they are coming out with or are they soldered on? Are flash drives something that I can buy online ? If so, from where and what capacity. I tried looking online but couldn't find anything, then again, I'm not sure exactly what I am looking for. I
Thank you and I look forward to reading your valuable advice.
Posted by: frak | July 28, 2006 at 06:57 AM
I ran out of 6008 so got a new 60GB ipod and used the 60GB today for an upgrade ...
my only prob now is getting the 30GB drive to work in the ipod...
(I get the "folder" error after the apple logo)
tryed the latest ipod updater from apple, but the ipod just hangs there when I plug it in...
(tested the 30GB HDD in a UX, it's fine)
I'm not too concered, but would like to use the ipod (never owned one before either :-)
p.s. if you want to open the 5th generation ipod without scratching them - start at the bottom and work your way up to the top (no scratches on mine, but still - it doesn't work yet :-)
Posted by: ConicsNet | July 28, 2006 at 08:14 AM
http://www.notpopular.com/blog/comments.php?blogID=63
a little shake and we're in action!
30GB from the UX now running in the ipod :)
Posted by: ConicsNet | July 28, 2006 at 08:41 AM
p.s. I'll try to remember to take pictures of the flash drive next time we get some.
Posted by: ConicsNet | July 29, 2006 at 01:16 AM
This may be the answer for those of you who want to upgrade to a flash drive (given the included UX drive is of the 2.5" form factor).
http://www.dvnation.com/ssd.html
It looks like a very pricey option though. It also looks like a 32GB and 64GB option should be available soon.
Posted by: Brian Ernesto | August 18, 2006 at 10:58 AM
Hi, does anyone know where I can get anEnglish Manual for the UX 50? The box came with only a printed Japanese manual. Thanks
Posted by: Nahom | April 24, 2007 at 01:40 AM
The 1.8 ATA Samsung 32Gb SSD listed in dvnation is USD999 w/o shipping wow that's too expensive IMO. Still looking for the Tosh MK6008GAH locally [I'm from the Philippines], before hitting eBay.
Posted by: bnycastro | June 07, 2007 at 03:42 AM
Help, well for a technical guy I screwed up the install. I noticed that the new 60GB drive did not boot, and on examination realized that I introduced a small tear in the ribbon cable connected to the HD (not the controller but the one that also serves the USB port).
Can anyone recommend who I can source the part/speak to about replacing internal parts unless the best answer is Sony. Specifically the part that I need has the USB interface as well as a connector. I've removed this part.
Thanks
David
Posted by: David | September 30, 2007 at 03:00 PM
Hi
how did you manage to get the hard drive screws out, they are so tight i've tried all sizes of philips screwdrivers
Posted by: ram | October 31, 2007 at 03:46 PM
Anyone know where I can get a replacement HDD cable for the UX-180P? I tried to put an 80 GB HDD (same as the 60 GB drive) in, and I ripped the HDD cable. :(
Chris
Posted by: Chris | November 03, 2007 at 07:27 PM
I just bought a ux 50 on ebay but the software is missing and when the guy wiped the info he also wiped the fingerprint reader software I tried the us 180 software from sony website but it would not work it said it was the wrong device. I would be grateful for any help.
Thanks Bob also had the blue screen on the camera problem
Posted by: Bob Sargent | December 04, 2007 at 12:00 AM