sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Robin - <robinaudy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

It was straightforward, it's not that difficult.

There are youtube videos that show how to open the laptop which can help. Pulling off the bottom cover once the bottom screws are removed is the hardest, you need to slightly bend the bottom plastic cover for the sides to go over the external monitor plug, ethernet plug cover and power plug. The plastic is flexible enough, but the first time you do it it's scary.

Besides changing my SSD, I did a screen replacement, and that job was harder. For those who want to attempt it, don't bend the screen hinges once you remove the cover of the base except with extreme care (or get ready to make screw seats repairs with epoxy glue). The base cover holds the hinges, and with only one screw per hinge they will pop out with the torsion. That should not be a concern when you change a hard drive, since you can keep the screen lid closed, there is no need to open it (don't risk it).

Overall, it's a very workable chassis, and an SSD change is fine.

By the way, another easy and cheap upgrade you can do while you are at it is to change the wifi card, my original one did not support 802.11ac. I installed the Intel Wireless 7260 (rev bb).


-R


Hi Robin,

Was it hard to change the SSD yourself or would you recommend sending it in to a service centre? I'm considering purchasing the SSD that you recommended.

Thanks
Nikhil

On 18 January 2017 at 23:29, Robin - <robinaudy@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:robinaudy@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

I did the SSD upgrage a few years ago on my laptop and my wife's. Search for MZRPC512HAFU.

I've been on ubuntu since day one. 16.04 works fine. You need to use the server version to activate RAID, but besides that it's great.

Cheers!
-R


Hello Folks,

I really do enjoy my SVZ13. I've got the quad core i7 with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM.

A few questions:

  1.  Has anyone successfully upgraded the SSD to 512GB? I've found a couple cards that claim to be compatible on ebay and aliexpress. Like this<https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Raid-LIF-SATA-512GB-SSD-For-Sony-VAIO-VPCZ2-Series-VPC-Z2-Z22-Z23-Z21/32720927966.html>. However if there's 1TB I'd love to get that in instead!
  2.  Has anyone succesfully installed linux (preferably debian stable [maybe with some unstable backported packages etc]) and got it to recognise the disk as one striped disk using the intel based RAID, rather than two separate disks? The one install guide that I found claims that this is not possible.
  3.  Has anyone been able to increase the RAM to 16GB or even 32GB? Could you link to the modules that you purchased? I run VMs for dev work and the extra RAM would be really useful to get the machine to go a few more years. Alternatively if the processor is going to be a bottleneck or SSD based swap will be good enough for the VMs, then please indicate so. AFAIK the processor supports up to 32GB.
  4.  I have broken the flimsy sim tray. How to replace it?

There's nothing on the market that really necessitates me changing my machine, it really is a performance beast. Want to give it a breath of new life!

--
Yours,
Nikhil Somaru