Harddisk repair of a laptop (finished)

In my last entry I wrote about a laptop from a friend that had a damaged harddisk. Yesterday I had some time to replace the harddisk with a new one. Replacing components from a modern laptop can be very cumbersome nowadays. It also requires special equipment. I used the tools from a Velleman repair kit (actually this kit is for iPhone repair) together with a set of small screw drivers. The harddisk is a Western Digital 500Gb 2,5 inch drive (5400 rpm) comparable to the damaged harddisk. Below images of the several steps that I needed to take.

The ASUS X750L together with the new harddisk (top right) and the special tools needed. Marked by the yellow circle is the guitar pick opening tool needed to open the case.

First I removed the twelve screws on the back of the laptop with a small philips screwdriver.

After  opening the case with the guitar pick opening tool I removed some of the flat cables to gain access to the interior of the laptop, The harddisk is clearly visible on the bottom right of the image.

After unscrewing the harddisk bracket from the laptop the harddisk can be slided of the motherboard and taken out of the laptop. The bracket is replaced to the new harddisk and inserted into the laptop.

The laptop is closed but before tightening it with the screws on the back I restored Windows 8 from a recovery disk connected to USB that I had prepared earlier. ASUS provides the Backtracker software for these steps which worked flawless

With Windows 8 fully installed using the recovering disk the repair was finished and my friend can collect his laptop.