Fujitsu P8010 Laptop Disassembly and Hard Disk Drive Replacement

Time-stamp: <2011-12-08 10:07:59 jjd>

This is a guide for how to replace the hard disk drive on a Fujitsu P8010 laptop including how to disassemble the machine to get to the drive. The length of this document would indicate that this is a long and complicated process, when in fact it was relatively easy. This document is long just because I'm trying to be complete.

I have a Fujitsu P8010 that I purchased direct from Fujitsu USA in August 2008. The machine is a very nice combination of performance, small size, light weight and a nice keyboard and display. It is almost netbook size, but with a real dual core processor, 4GB of RAM and an optical drive. On it, I run Ubuntu Linux (10.10, currently) as well as (occasionally) Windows Vista. The commands used below to duplicate the disk are for Linux. Presumably you could do the same thing from Windows using a tool like Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, or Macrium Reflect. I don't have experience with these tools.

In December 2010, I started seeing disk errors in the console log. They looked something like this: 


[   78.711885] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code
[   78.711888] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[   78.711893] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor]
[   78.711900] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
[   78.711903]         72 03 13 00 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 
[   78.711919]         12 2a b0 5f 
[   78.711925] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Address mark not found for data field
[   78.711933] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 304787551

... and ...


[   78.711941] Buffer I/O error on device sda6, logical block 16790233
[   78.711945] Buffer I/O error on device sda6, logical block 16790234

In my experience, this can only mean one thing: The disk is going to fail. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Maybe tomorrow.

Copying Data to the New Disk

  1. Since my disk was compromised (as it was failing) I booted off a Linux live CD. I used the Ubuntu 10.10 install CD, but you could probably use just about any other live Linux CD such as KNOPPIX.
  2. Now, we need the new disk connected to the computer as well as the old disk. I used a nice docking station adapter from Kingwin that allows a bare SATA drive to be inserted and can then be connected to the computer with USB. These only cost about $20 and are well worth having around to deal with disasters like this. You can see it in this photo:
    Fujitsu P8010 with Kingwin adapter
  3. A friend recommended that instead of using straight Ubuntu ‘dd’ command to copy the disks, that I instead use ddrescue which is better about copying when the reads might result in failure due to the dying drive. I loaded the ddrescue tool using ‘sudo apt-get install gddrescue’. The ddrescue man page recommends that you use a logfile in order to keep track of anything that fails. So I used the command: 
    
ddrescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb /nfs/otherhost/u/jjd/ddrescue-logfile
    This took about four hours to copy my 160GB disk. At the end, the output looked like this: 
    
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued:   160041 MB,  errsize:    4096 B,  errors:       1
Current status
rescued:   160041 MB,  errsize:    4096 B,  current rate:        0 B/s
   ipos:         0 B,   errors:       1,    average rate:        0 B/s
   opos:         0 B,     time from last successful read:       0 s
Finished
    This indicates that after all its automated retrying, ddrescue was still unable to copy 4096 bytes from the old disk to the new disk. This was towards the end of the copy, so I knew it was in my sda6 partition which had already been damaged due to the disk errors. I was OK if that partition was lost.
  4. Once the copy was done, Linux didn't recognize the new partitions on the new disk due to the fact that /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdb2, etc. didn't exist. I solved that problem by unplugging the USB disk from the computer and plugging it back in. At that point, Linux noticed the partitions properly.
  5. Before mounting the newly copied partitions read/write, it's important to run fsck to make sure they are OK. So I ran: 
    
fsck -f /dev/sdbN
    for each N that contained a Linux filesystem. In my case, it found no errors on any partition except my /dev/sdb6 that I knew had been damaged. Fsck fixed the errors on /dev/sdb6 (presumably by clearing a few files), and I was able to mount it at that point.
  6. If your new disk is larger than your old one, at this point you can use a tool like gparted to add new partitions in the unused space on the new disk, or to grow existing partitions. 
    
gparted /dev/sdb
  7. Once you are happy that the old disk has been copied to the new disk and the filesystems repaired, it's time to exchange the disks.

Disk removal

So, the first thing I needed to do was figure out how to open up the machine to access the hard disk. Typically, I would search the Internets for "fujitsu p8010 disassembly" or "fujitsu p8010 hard-disk-replacement" but no matter what my search terms, I couldn't find any instructions or videos on how to disassemble the machine. I needed to be sure I could disassemble the machine before investing in a new hard disk so I could be sure I could replace it successfully.

Lacking any help from the net, I started on my own. It turns out it was substantially easier than I thought it was going to be. My usual problem disassembling modern electronics is that they are made of plastic that requires bending and snapping to get the pieces apart. This often leads to broken pieces. Luckily (and surprisingly) the back panel of the P8010 is actually made of aluminium. I suspect that Fujitsu determined that plastic didn't have sufficient structural integrity at the thickness they needed.

Here are the steps I followed:

Fujitsu P8010 screw locations

  1. Shut down the machine
  2. Remove the battery
  3. Turn the machine upside down. Using a very small philips head screwdriver, remove the two screws holding the door over the memory slots. This is the one that probably has the Windows authenticity sticker on it.
  4. There are 10 other screws on the back that need to be removed. You have to be careful and keep track of which screws came from where because there are three different sizes. Basically, you need to remove every screw you can see on the back, except for the tiny screw that is usually hidden by the battery.
  5. Finally, you need to remove the two bolt-like lugs surrounding the VGA connector on the left side of the machine. I happened to have the right size socket for this, but I suspect you could use small pliers if you had to.
  6. At this point, you can open the case slightly on the right side, and then slide it off the connectors on the left side.

You can see your target, the disk drive, staring at you in the upper right of the case as in the pictures here: (Note that in these pictures, the P8010 is upside down in orientation compared to the assembled picture above.)

Fujitsu P8010 disassembled Fujitsu P8010 disassembled, closeup
  1. The entire drive can slide carefully out of its SATA connector now. Be careful of the orange folded SATA connector cable.
  2. The drive is inside a plastic envelope of sorts. It seems to be there to reduce vibration and possibly help with static and grounding. Carefully slide the old drive out of the plastic envelope, as seen below.
    Fujitsu P8010 disk and sleeve

    The drive I found inside is a Fujitsu 160GB MHY2160BH. It is a 2.5" SATA drive with 9.5mm height. Presumably any 2.5" SATA drive of 9.5mm or less should work as a replacement.

    For reference, the specifications for the OEM drive are as follows:

    I chose to replace the OEM drive with a Seagate Momentus XT ST93205620AS 320GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA drive. I paid $109 for this drive from newegg.com.

    The interesting feature of the new drive is that it is a “hybrid” SSD/magnetic drive. It has 8GB of SSD memory to optimize frequently accessed sectors from the solid state memory to avoid accessing the rotating media. User reviews indicate that it can be substantially faster as well as operating cooler. It will be interesting to see if this really is faster in my typical Linux environment.

  3. Now it's time to put everything back together. Carefully slide the new disk into the plastic sleeve and then slide the sleeve back inside the P8010, being careful to insert the SATA connectors properly. I held the cable connector with a screwdriver so I could push the disk against it to set it properly. Then, put the case back on and put all the screws back in their proper places. Voila! You are done.

--Jim Dempsey--

Update: December 2011

I've now had this new Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive for a year. It has worked well with some notable exceptions. Other users of the drive (not me) started having significant problems, particularly when the drive spun down. As a result I updated the firmware on the drive to the latest firmware, but it basically disabled the drive spindown feature which reduces battery life and increases heat.

Seagate now has a next generation Momentus XT (here at newegg.com) that is 750GB and, according to Seagate's community forums, solves the spindown problems. Users are reporting very good performance for this new drive.

Credits

If you are looking for info on how to replace the disk on a Fujitsu P7000 series (P7010D), please check out Stephen's page on LifeBook P7000 Disk Replacement. He's the one who encouraged me to write this page in the first place.