Nitro 5 AN515-52 How to remove original and install new Toshiba MQ04ABF100 HDD

RickRoll

Hi All, 

I have an Acer Nitro 5 AN515-52 gaming laptop and the Toshiba HDD is running at 100% whilst doing minor tasks like searching the web. I have tried all of the fixes online with no luck. To save me time and a massive headache I want to replace it with a new Toshiba MQ04ABF100 HDD. As I am not that familiar with carrying out this process, I was wondering if someone could help guide me through what I would need to do? I have tried searching for this and not 100% sure if what I have watched/read is what I need to know.

Any help at this point would be greatly appreciated as I am now at a loose end.

Thanks,

Rick

[Edited the thread to add model name]

StevenGen

RickRoll said:

Hi All, 

I have an Acer Nitro 5 AN515-52 gaming laptop and the Toshiba HDD is running at 100% whilst doing minor tasks like searching the web. I have tried all of the fixes online with no luck. To save me time and a massive headache I want to replace it with a new Toshiba MQ04ABF100 HDD. As I am not that familiar with carrying out this process, I was wondering if someone could help guide me through what I would need to do? I have tried searching for this and not 100% sure if what I have watched/read is what I need to know.

Any help at this point would be greatly appreciated as I am now at a loose end.

Thanks,

Rick

Your secondary drive should not be interfering with your M.2 boot drive, are you using the 2.5" secondary mechanical drive as a boot drive? As the AN515-52 uses an M.2 PCIe 3 x4 at 8.0GT/s or the M.2 SATA 3 6.0GBits/sec drive as a boot drive? And has provisions for the following drives:

• 1x M.2 PCIe 3 x4 or SATA 3 drive
• 1x 2.5" SATA3 dive accusable from the laptop back window

These are all the upper OEM 512GB M.2 drives fitted by Acer to the AN515-52

• INTEL - SSDPEKKW512G7 – PCIe 3 x4
• INTEL - SSDPEKKW256G7 – PCIe 3 x4
• HYNIX - HFS512G39TND-N210A – SATA 3
• MICRON - MTFDDAV512TBN1AR1ZABYY – SATA 3

The AN515-52 windows boot drive should be on an M.2 drive and not on a 2.5" drive. This laptop has an optional space for a 2.5" HDD SATA 3 and is supplied with a kit that consists of a SATA cable, mount and screws to add a 1x 2.5" SATA 3 secondary drive. You should only be using the M.2 PCIe 3 x4 or SATA 3 (whichever was fitted OEM by Acer) as a boot drive for either Win-10 or you can upgraded this laptop (and IMO do a clean install) to Win-11) as your laptop is compatible with Win-11.

If your laptop was fitted by Acer with an OEM M.2 SATA3 drive then I would change it to an M.2 PCIe 3 x4 type drive (like the well priced for performance Western Digital M.2 PCIe 3 x4 range to match what Acer fitted OEM as their speediest M.2 PCIe 3 x4 at max 8.0GT/s like the WD NS570 types, as they are very speedy and much better drive than whatever Acer fitted OEM to your laptop) as the only reason that you get the "running at 100% whilst doing minor tasks like searching the web" is because you must have the OS on this 2.5" drive, give us more details. 

Updating the secondary mechanical drive to another mechanical drive and to a used Toshiba MQ04ABF100 HDD, which btw I've used and had lots of problems with, as Toshiba drives are not reliable as either their platter or heads go faulty after a while and if you have valuable data on them, it will cost you allot of money to recover your data, so be warned! But and if you have this Toshiba MQ04ABF100 HDD already I wouldn't use it, as an old 2.5" mechanical HDD's are prone to problems and I wouldn't put any valuable data onto them as I would buy a brand new drive that's under warranty! IMO purchase a 2.5" SSD drive like the new Samsung 870 EVO SATA 3 type SSD drive (as I've used an EVO 850 for 5years daily and had no problems with and its working 100% still) and replace the 2.5" HDD in your AN515-52, which is a simple process that you should follow the steps below:

Open the back laptop HDD window

Take out the old HDD and replace the new 2.5" HDD like this