Thanks for the update and for the tips! They will surely come in handy for all the other people that will do this upgrade. I’m sure that a lot of people will, when those drives become a little cheaper.

cfloop, how do you like the SSD after working with them a while?

About the papery material, i personally don’t think it will be a problem. The SSD itself won’t become very hot. The casing will tho, but I can’t imagine the filler material to burn. It could be that it will become brittle after a while maybe…

Embyro, thanks for the response.

I am very happy with the speed of the SSD. Bootup/login times are quick—maybe twice as fast as with the hard drive (may partly have to do with reinstalling from scratch too

It turned what was becoming a painfully slow system into one I again use just for quick email checks because it comes on and shuts down so much more quickly. Very glad I did this upgrade.

I have no quantitative comparisons, but I do *not* see a dramatic improvement in battery life.

I did wind up sending the X505 to Sony to replace a broken hinge and to swap the Japanese for a US keyboard. The keyboard swap itself would have cost $99 (I had already purchased the US keyboard $120+? thinking I could do that myself, which after opening the X505 I realized was completely out of the question). The notes that came back from the repair included “isolated hard drive” (even after they told me they wouldn’t do anything with the “custom” hard drive I had installed. I haven’t looked, but I imagine they attached a little plastic isolator like you see on the existing hard drive to prevent it from making contact with the USB cables that sit over it.

Oh, and I purchased the X505 manual from Sony, which was useful for part numbers but not helpful in terms of how to disassemble. Maybe if you are more mechanically inclined it would help, but…

Hey cfloop,

That’s interesting info. Could you tell us a bit more about the Sony-adventure? I hadn’t realised that they’d be willing to help out in a case like this. Did you bring it to a shop or did you send it in? What did they charge you for the ordeal?

Thanks!

Regards,

julian

Yah, sure.

So I bought the US Keyboard from Sony Parts, the Triwing Microdriver #00 from mcmconnect.com , and the SSD from dvnation. I opened up the X505 per the instructions on this site and easily replaced the drive. Booted, reinstalled the OS, life was good.

I called Sony and asked them how much it would be to replace the X505 keyboard if I provided them the keyboard. They told me $99.99. (At that point I hadn’t broken the hinge.)

I then tried to disassemble to replace the keyboard myself, but it looks like you have to take the whole machine apart to get to it. In the process of closing the X505 without the back screwed on, one hinge snapped. Seems the back needs to be secured for the hinge leverage to work.

There was some confusion about whether Sony would work on it (an email response said I would have to send it to Japan). But on the phone they looked up my serial number, saw it was a
PCGX505 and agreed they could do the swap.

When I asked about replacing the hinge; they said send it in, and a tech would call back with the estimated repair price. The tech did call, told me he wouldn’t do anything with the “custom” hard drive but would replace the keyboard and several parts (not just as simple as replacing the hinge unfortunately). Total cost was around $280. I FedEx’d it to California, and they FedEx’d it back. Total time was about a week.

An expensive lesson, but I do have a working and speedy X505 again…

I am pleased to report my successful upgrade of a US X505ZP to a 32GB Samsung MCBOE32G8APR-0XA00. I purchased the drive from NewEgg for $399.00 + $5 shipping. (NewEgg SKU# 20-147-021). The online instructions (http://www.siliconpopculture.com/forum/viewthread/4402?t=4402)  posted by ngvuanh were invaluable, although a bit incomplete. But I managed to get it apart and to swap in the Samsung. This drive is pretty “slim”, and appears close to 5mm thick, but w/o a micrometer I can’t say very accurately. I wasn’t happy with the fit slipping it back in with the rubber bumpers from the original HDD, so I omitted them, figuring I wasn’t likely to get much vibration from an SSD! Amazingly I managed to get everything reconnected on the first shot, and it powered up and ran. I previously saved my drive image to a network drive using Acronis True Image Home, and I was able to restore the image into a nicely larger partition w/o grief. WinXP rebooted lickety split. Formerly it tooks 75 seconds from power on to the XP login prompt. Now it is 20 seconds. Restoring from hibernation also takes only 20 seconds.

For $400 I now have a much better machine than ever before. Significantly faster and with more disk storage to boot. I don’t plan on running Vista on the machine; the CPU is rather wimpy and there is only 512KB of RAM.

Very nice to hear another success story. I just received my Samsung SSD drive yesterday and plan to do the same.

FYI: the main differences I found from the posted instruction are: remove ALL the screws on the bottom plate, not just the ones shown in the images. You also need to remove the two plastic covers which cover the hinges on both sides, in addition to the plastic parts where the power cord and power buttons are. Each of these has tiny flanges which must be spread carefully in order to slip them off. Only then will you be able to lift up the bottom cover and slip it out. Finally, pay very close attention to the orientation of the existing hard drive connector. There are two positioning pins, one is round and one oval. Make sure to orient the replacement SSD in the same fashion. There is no “dead” pin on the connector to ensure correct orientation as you typically find in standard IDE drives.

Thanks for the info MrSniffer, very valueable for anyone who wants to upgrade their x505!

I just wanted to report that I successfully installed the Samsung SSD into my Japanese X505/SP.  Thanks to Eric who assisted in guiding me through prying out the guts of the SSD. 

The instructions provided here are priceless and I mimic Sniffer’s comments.  Unfortunately, I don’t have anything else to add. However, unlike Mr. Sniffer, I retained the stock rubber HD bumpers so that the HD would stay in place.

I bought a DDRW3 on ebay and plugged it into the X505 and ran the recovery system disks.  I bought the X505/ZP recovery DVD from Sony but, it wouldn’t install, saying that the type wasn’t compatible.  So I used the Original Japanese Recovery CD’s, but I can’t read japanese, so installation was challeging.  So I’ll have to get a US XP CD and install the drivers.

I’ll update shortly.

The Japanese recovery disks worked, but since I can’t read Japanese, I have to find a US XP CD to install the OS.  I was able to FTP the drivers and utilities from the Sony website.

I am extremely impressed on how fast XP boots with this new HD.

Edit:

I took out the SSD from the japanese X505/SP and installed in into a US X505/ZP to reinstall the OS using the US recovery disk.  Installation went smoothly.  Updating the XP pro to SP2 took longer than the actual installation itself.  It took about 15 min each to take apart the notebook computer shell now that I’ve done it 3 times.  Installation of the software took approx 45 min.  SP2 update took almost 2 hours. 

If any needs assistance installing their SSD please let me know.  I can pretty much do this blindfolded now. LOL!

I got a 16Gb SSD! 32Gb is nowhere to be found anymore…. I don’t mind, it’s more then enoug for the OS, and that’s really all that matters.

Where did you guys get the screwdriver to open the X505? I can’t find any in my home town. The part numbers of the original sony screwdriver are being looked up right now, but that might not turn up anything. Any ebay-links?