helpful video on installing second hard drive/additional RAM-memory on newer acer laptops

Andrepartthree

Hopefully I'm not breaking any forum rules by posting this but

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=572y9qYOmm8

being the nervous type I do as much online research as possible before messing with the insides of any computer .. I've purchased three acer aspire laptops over the course of seven years and with the newest batch of acer laptops (purchased one just recently January 2023) I've noticed some changes, like the fact that you have to unscrew then screw back in the wifi card (easy enough to do as long as you're careful) in order to install that second hard drive... I found the video link above to be even more helpful than the official acer videos (though you should watch those too :) ) as far as how to install a second hard drive and/or additional ram/memory into the acer aspire laptops that support this (my understanding is most do).

If the above link doesn't work for some reason go on youtube and do a search for "Acer Aspire 5 Laptop Hard Drive & Memory Upgrade by Cadillac Computer Center"

One thing not mentioned in the video .. the hard drive install kit that acer kindly includes with your laptop will have eight screws, four that are smaller than the others... strangely enough the smaller screws are the ones you use to install the hard drive enclosure into the laptop itself , the long ones work better to screw the hard drive itself into the hard drive enclosure.

I found that my small flat head screwdriver let me wedge open the cover on my acer laptop but sadly given it has a metal head it scratched the nice silver/aluminum finish on my laptop a bit :( .. when you order the second ssd drive and ram (I'd recommend both the ram and the drive if you can afford it so you can install it all in one go, even a 16 GB ram stick is surprisingly cheap nowadays as are the 2.5 form factor ssd drives and even the m.2 ssd drives are dropping in price) you might want to order a laptop prying tool made of plastic which hopefully will also do the trick without scratching anything.. having said that I found you need a really flat "thin" head on the thing being used to pry the laptop open to get that cover off so bear that in mind too. Do your research and make sure you're getting the right kind of hard drive and ram (crucial is pretty good about helping you find the right kind of ram based on the model laptop you have if you do a google search including the name of the laptop model and "crucial compatible ram" ) ... also make sure it's a store with a good no questions asked return policy (amazon - select "shipped by amazon" and look for the "free returns" option, or sold and shipped directly by newegg AND has a no hassle return policy not all newegg products fall into this category, or sold and shipped directly by Walmart or Best Buy which also have more forgiving return policies) so you can return those purchases in case your laptop rejects the upgrade - that's never happened to me yet with my three acer aspire laptops but it's always a possibility.

Also in that video they're not joking about the magnetized screwdriver you do NOT want to have that tiny screw vanish into the laptop insides never to be found, very bad news... do a google search for a " Master Magnet Screwdriver Magnetizer and Demagnetizer " , they sell for four dollars at your local home depot right there in the store and worth it's weight in gold when you're messing around with screws inside of any computer.

JackE

Thank you for your report. 🙂