m18x hard drive optical caddy mod after-action report

holy cow that was by far the hardest optical drive i have ever had to take out of a laptop

the entire process took me 2 HOURS, longer even than my CPU swap a few weeks ago and required disassembling the entire laptop -_-

http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN114885/EN

upon reassembly my function keys and escape keys would get stuck and i had to take the keyboard off a total of 3 more times to make sure everything worked smoothly again >:

then when i flipped the computer back over i realized i put 2 longer screws in the palmrest area and they made 2 bulges in the plastic next to the touchpad =O (replaced screws with smaller ones and filed down the bulges with a nail file =/ )

now i am prepped for getting an SSD put in =)

 

Congratulations on the mod! Haha you're lucky. I've read somewhere that some people had done the same thing and driven those screws right throught the palm rest

 

You're right, tis a right chore. I just put a 1TB HDD there so it's not something I will be doing again in a hurry.