soon as i lifted the lid to the Ram compartment i knew i was in for a full dismantle to get to the hard-drive. I've got enough experience to handle it alone, but to have a walk-through available as a preview - gives you the reassurance that you are not gonna run into any trouble along the way. Thanks for this upload !
Here it is 13 years later (August 2023) and I was given an old N5110. It's an old i5 with 6gb of RAM, but with more RAM and an SSD, it's still a pretty good laptop for my grandkids just entering high school. I've replaced dozens, maybe hundreds of hard drives, but this was the first N5110. It a pain, but I've seen worse. Thanks to your video, it was fairly easy.
It might have had Win 7, but early on, you could install Win 11 and it would activate with the Win 7 COA. I think MS took that away. It's been a while, but I either put Win 11 or Win 10 on it.
Yeah Yeah~~ i have that worst design laptop, n5110. ＼(^o^)／ i had unfixable error few years ago after update. i disassembled. i took all data directly from the HDD. now i want to replace HDD with SSD but thinking about disassembling, i have to make myself encouraged to do lol
Thanks. You have one of the more helpful tutorials on HDD replacements on You Tube. So many details, especially if you're doing it for the first time. All that just to replace the one component most likely to be replaced or serviced during ownership. I also have an ASUS laptop where replacing the HDD takes 5 minutes, removing one flap.
Excellent video - the best I've ever followed (and I have followed a LOT!) You were easy to understand, slow enough so I could keep up (pausing quite often) but not so detailed that I fell asleep. I congratulate you on an instruction video that this 72 year old could follow and successfully replicate.
Great Video. My dell installer missed out appointment and I assumed I could replace this easy peasy, however, did not realize that dell was taking a page from Apple by making things a bit more interesting working on a computer.
As a person whom has never tinkered with anything like this, I Just used this video to replace HD in my Aunts old laptop. Slight hiccup with hard drive removal but thought outside the box and emerged victorious. Lol. And am so proud of myself, it works. Extremely useful. Steps were very easy to follow. Thankyou very much
Thanks Josh. Just slammed a Samsung SSD into an N5110, it's a rocket now. I appreciate you taking the time to make this video - it's really not that big of a deal to tear down and put back. Took me 30 mins after watching your vid.
Mannnnn, I wish I found your video 10 minutes ago. I did NOT know the top with the metal casing popped off. I watched a video with a guy who removed the entire bottom to get to that area. This was so much simpler. Definitely saved this one.
We did it! Thank you so much! Other videos I saw went so fast and were so hard to understand I wasn't about to attempt this. I reallly appreciate your level of detail!
Solid tutorial - as others have mentioned, well narrated/lit/good pace. Insane that someone thought it would be a good idea to mount the HDD below the motherboard.
You have my gratitude for this video Josh. Needed to extract my sister's hard drive since it crapped. I managed to get through it and have a little fun with it on the way.
Really good video. After looking at the Dell service PDF that had me bouncing all over, Googled it and found this. Just removed and installed the new HDD in about 1.5 hrs. taking my sweet time. Every step was well documented to make this task very easy. Installing Win7 now. Thank You very much.
I think it is easier to remove the display (and after closer inspection, it may be required), I find that it gives more room to work and can also make the whole case a little shaky due to the way the weight is distributed once the motherboard is taken out. Thanks for checking out the video, and I hope it was lots of help :)
I have to thank the author of this video as it saved me to send my N5110 to Dell service to replace the hard drive, instead I did it by myself which was way convenient. So, Thank you very much!
Thanks so much for this video! After around 7 years I finally got around to looking up how to remove the hard drive on my old Inspiron so I could recycle it. Really appreciate your help. One thing to note.... I opted to not remove my monitor, resulting in my inability to remove the motherboard at first. It turns out that you need to at least unscrew all the four screws for the monitor piece, at a minimum (the left-hand side being relevant here).
Thank you so much for this video ! My daughter's dell n5110 hard drive died and I ordered a new one, thinking it would be very easy to replace. Who knew ??? Your video was extremely helpful.
I bought one of these when they were new, but always put off changing the drive to a solid state for this very reason, I reckon the person who designed this used to be an engineer at Ford...... so yesterday I dragged it out of the cupboard to see if it still worked, and I followed this video and changed the drive to a SSD and installed Win 10 without a single problem in the installation, best the thing has ever worked!
Excellent vid thanks!. When it came to lifting my hard drive off, there were two strips of double sided tape underneath which made it slightly tougher to lift off though.
This has to be the most work to change a hard drive on a laptop. Great video. Thanks for creating it. I will mention one thing for others as a heads up. There is a small 1"x 1/4" circuit board near the front motherboard screw and directly beside the white two pin cable you have to unplug that will pop off. It is at the 5:55 mark in the video. It took me a few minutes to figure out where it went.
Thanks for this great tutorial guide. What a nightmare. They put it in the hardest place to get to. Lots of things could easily have gone wrong. Much appreciated. Mike
I completely destroyed my laptop. It was amusing ripping away at all this stuff for about 30 minutes. Thank you for showing me where it was located. I finally got it out!!!
AWESOME video Josh! Thanks a million. I just swapped a dead HD following this video. It would have taken me A LOT longer without it. A note: When attempting to unscrew the 2 screws that hold the right screen hinge, the two plastic posts they screw in broke. I was very careful but... due to poor design these posts are weak and can't take the torque of a tight screw. I've had to order a new bottom cover. Funny thing on ebay and someone is selling a bottom cover with the 2 posts broken.
yeah, this particular laptop uses a socket G2. so that's what you want to look for when ordering one. just have to unscrew all the heatsink related screws, and the cpu just pops right off like a desktop one.
thank you, thank you, thank you! Fried my motherboard on this dell and had to get the hard drive out. Really Dell? what a pain. earlier models were user friendly. Several sites had the step by step frames, which I liked, but yours was the real deal. To reinstall I had to do it in steps to go backwards so yes I'd have appreciated the slower reinstall. I'm not a techie but can hold my own on a pc. It's off to the [still covered under Costco] warranty store and my hard drive contents are safe on an external drive ~ thanks to you Josh!
Great video. I have the same laptop and I've been experiencing some issues with the hard drive and some errors. I also plan to add an SSD to this laptop but I'm going to replace the original hard drive with a 1TB one for storage in the optical bay.
All I wanted to do is properly dispose of an old laptop without leaving the hard drive in and there's no way I could have done that without this video! good thing I was going for disposal because the keyboard got wrecked in the process! 😂
You don't need 'two' magnets to magnetize a screwdriver. Take on magnet place it about an inch or two from the tip and slide the magnet off the driver to the end (the magnet is stuck to the metal and you're dragging it off to the end). Do that 2-3 times and it will be way more magnetized than putting 2 magnets and leaving it for awhile.
Thanks for this video. such a big help on such a pain in the arse laptop. Wish i'd disconnected the monitor as the hinge broke like everyone else but it ok. Can't believe the improvement.
i'm gonna be upgrading my i3 in the laptop to an i5. thankfully videos like these exist. i've taken apart & repaired a few other laptops (last years inspiron 15 amd) so this shouldn't be too difficult. it sucks that the hard drive is all the way under the mobo, but seeing as its 1TB i can't see myself replacing it anytime soon... unless it dies.
thanks for posting this; luckily my laptop was otherwise shot, so I could break it a little while I took it apart! Next time I buy one, I'm going to pay attention to where the HD is!
great tutorial, I am on the verge of moving, so decided to take out the hard drive of my old Dell and discard other parts. The screw heads are all damaged so I couldn't reassemble it :-/ but at lease I could take out the hard drive. Phew !
Thanks for the video. Have performed this task 3 times now, still miss removing one of the screws holding the keyboard on & I hate the catch mechanism that finally secures the keyboard (always feels like I'm going to dislodges a keyboard tile!). Dell really have built these down to a price.
I know this video is a tad old, but I personally prefer to use a cupcake tray instead so that I could sort the screws according to type and order of removal. That way they wouldn't get lost or mixed up.
10. Disconnect the spk cable connector, the wifi antenna cables, and finally remove the cmos cell battery (recommended if replacing hardware, you will have to re-enter service manual in bios later) 11. Remove the 5 board screws 12. The motherboard can be now removed (no need to remove the display at all!!!) 13. remove hard drive screws and finally hard drive..
My HDD stopped working - I have it all ready for the new HDD to go in. Your video was magic thank you - please may I have put it back together - Thank you
Thanks! I upgraded to a 500 GB Solid State drive. Your video was perfect--I was able to use a free ghosting program, and it started right up perfectly!
5. Remove the keyboards and disconnect all internal rebon cables 6. You only need to remove 6 screws on the back, not 10! (see page 32 on service manual) 7. Remove sdcard holder 8. remove the screws under the keyboard 9. remove the palm rest (the main case cover)
Thanks for the instructions and the good presentation. Actually it would be much appreciated if you could upload the reassembly too. I was going through the dell site which had the instructions to pop out the processor, so is possible to upgrade it except for replacing and if yes than what would the options be? possibility for i7 or maybe 3rd gen i5?
Great tutorial video. Having followed the video to the letter, when I got to the motherboard removal, I discovered that the screws attaching the motherboard were very tight. Attempts to remove said screws with the proper Phillips screwdriver resulted in the stripping of two of the screws. At that point, I stopped trying with the other screws. The Dell N5110 laptop is a terrible design for the replacement of the hard drive that is buried and requires the dismantling of the entire laptop. I was stopped 4 screws away from success having wasted all that effort and time. To have gotten so near and yet so far away, unable to complete the installation of the hard drive, is extremely frustrating. Any advice is appreciated.
I've worked on hundreds of laptops and never had one with a hard drive this difficult to change. Thanks for the video.
Very much appreciated! Been a technician for 15yrs and this is the worst notebook assembly I've seen.
WTF???? The person who designed this model needs to be fired!!!!!
Only fired? Killed.
soon as i lifted the lid to the Ram compartment i knew i was in for a full dismantle to get to the hard-drive. I've got enough experience to handle it alone, but to have a walk-through available as a preview - gives you the reassurance that you are not gonna run into any trouble along the way. Thanks for this upload !
Thats exactly what came to my mind as well lol
Another satisfied customer -- I used these instructions to repair my wife's laptop. Thanks for the tutorial!
Thank you! Wow, I can't believe they buried the hard drive this deep in a fairly modern laptop. Your video was very helpful.
Here it is 13 years later (August 2023) and I was given an old N5110. It's an old i5 with 6gb of RAM, but with more RAM and an SSD, it's still a pretty good laptop for my grandkids just entering high school. I've replaced dozens, maybe hundreds of hard drives, but this was the first N5110. It a pain, but I've seen worse. Thanks to your video, it was fairly easy.
Did you install Win 10?
It might have had Win 7, but early on, you could install Win 11 and it would activate with the Win 7 COA. I think MS took that away. It's been a while, but I either put Win 11 or Win 10 on it.
@@marathonhippo I believe the i5 can be upgraded to an i7 @ and 16GB RAM. Think it can run okay with Win 10. Thank you
Fun Fact: Dell had a contest for who could make the absolute worst laptop design ever. The winner made the N5110.
Lol this is a real piece of shit, are you serious though?
ROFL, great comment.
The n5010 disagrees
ha ha ha corrrect
Yeah Yeah~~ i have that worst design laptop, n5110.
＼(^o^)／
i had unfixable error few years ago after update. i disassembled. i took all data directly from the HDD.
now i want to replace HDD with SSD
but thinking about disassembling, i have to make myself encouraged to do
lol
Thank you Josh 2 1/2 years later and your video still rocks
I had to change my Hard Drive and it worked like a charm!!!
Thank you so much for the PERFECT instructions!!
Thanks. You have one of the more helpful tutorials on HDD replacements on You Tube. So many details, especially if you're doing it for the first time. All that just to replace the one component most likely to be replaced or serviced during ownership. I also have an ASUS laptop where replacing the HDD takes 5 minutes, removing one flap.
Four years after this was posted, I needed to remove this drive. Really happy to find this very clear video. Thanks much!
excellent description of the disassembly of an extremely complex device
Excellent video - the best I've ever followed (and I have followed a LOT!) You were easy to understand, slow enough so I could keep up (pausing quite often) but not so detailed that I fell asleep. I congratulate you on an instruction video that this 72 year old could follow and successfully replicate.
Great Video. My dell installer missed out appointment and I assumed I could replace this easy peasy, however, did not realize that dell was taking a page from Apple by making things a bit more interesting working on a computer.
As a person whom has never tinkered with anything like this, I Just used this video to replace HD in my Aunts old laptop. Slight hiccup with hard drive removal but thought outside the box and emerged victorious. Lol. And am so proud of myself, it works. Extremely useful. Steps were very easy to follow. Thankyou very much
This is a very well done and very useful demonstration, as this model laptop is more complex than many
Thanks Josh. Just slammed a Samsung SSD into an N5110, it's a rocket now. I appreciate you taking the time to make this video - it's really not that big of a deal to tear down and put back. Took me 30 mins after watching your vid.
Mannnnn, I wish I found your video 10 minutes ago. I did NOT know the top with the metal casing popped off. I watched a video with a guy who removed the entire bottom to get to that area. This was so much simpler. Definitely saved this one.
We did it! Thank you so much! Other videos I saw went so fast and were so hard to understand I wasn't about to attempt this. I reallly appreciate your level of detail!
Thanks for the video, very well prepared. Without it, I could never have.
Solid tutorial - as others have mentioned, well narrated/lit/good pace. Insane that someone thought it would be a good idea to mount the HDD below the motherboard.
You have my gratitude for this video Josh. Needed to extract my sister's hard drive since it crapped. I managed to get through it and have a little fun with it on the way.
Really helpful, well explained, no annoying music, really good tutorial video.
Really good video. After looking at the Dell service PDF that had me bouncing all over, Googled it and found this. Just removed and installed the new HDD in about 1.5 hrs. taking my sweet time. Every step was well documented to make this task very easy. Installing Win7 now. Thank You very much.
I think it is easier to remove the display (and after closer inspection, it may be required), I find that it gives more room to work and can also make the whole case a little shaky due to the way the weight is distributed once the motherboard is taken out.
Thanks for checking out the video, and I hope it was lots of help :)
I used this video to change my hard drive to SSD. Great video well explained I think this is the best video on the subject, many thanks for posting.
I have to thank the author of this video as it saved me to send my N5110 to Dell service to replace the hard drive, instead I did it by myself which was way convenient. So, Thank you very much!
Thanks so much for this video! After around 7 years I finally got around to looking up how to remove the hard drive on my old Inspiron so I could recycle it. Really appreciate your help.
One thing to note.... I opted to not remove my monitor, resulting in my inability to remove the motherboard at first. It turns out that you need to at least unscrew all the four screws for the monitor piece, at a minimum (the left-hand side being relevant here).
Thank you so much for this video ! My daughter's dell n5110 hard drive died and I ordered a new one, thinking it would be very easy to replace. Who knew ??? Your video was extremely helpful.
My sincere thanks for taking the time to create this guide. It helped my so much to replace an N5110's SATA disk with an SDD. Thank you again!
I bought one of these when they were new, but always put off changing the drive to a solid state for this very reason, I reckon the person who designed this used to be an engineer at Ford...... so yesterday I dragged it out of the cupboard to see if it still worked, and I followed this video and changed the drive to a SSD and installed Win 10 without a single problem in the installation, best the thing has ever worked!
I am utterly flabbergasted that this is what you have to go thru to replace a hard drive.
Whoever designed this laptop deserves to be slapped.
Suggesting magnetizing your screwdriver was a really great tip.
Thank you very much for the detailed instructions and the great video, much appreciated
Excellent vid thanks!. When it came to lifting my hard drive off, there were two strips of double sided tape underneath which made it slightly tougher to lift off though.
This has to be the most work to change a hard drive on a laptop. Great video. Thanks for creating it. I will mention one thing for others as a heads up. There is a small 1"x 1/4" circuit board near the front motherboard screw and directly beside the white two pin cable you have to unplug that will pop off. It is at the 5:55 mark in the video. It took me a few minutes to figure out where it went.
+Charles W. Hall It took me about 2 days!
Thank you very much! My uncle's computer HDD died and I had to help him by following your steps! Good job! Great video!
Thanks for this great tutorial guide. What a nightmare. They put it in the hardest place to get to. Lots of things could easily have gone wrong. Much appreciated.
Mike
Great video, Josh. Helped a lot; saved me loads of time. Replaced old spin drive with an SSD, and husband is much happier!
Thank you. That was by far the most complicated Dell Laptop I have had to remove a HDD from in a long time.
I completely destroyed my laptop. It was amusing ripping away at all this stuff for about 30 minutes. Thank you for showing me where it was located. I finally got it out!!!
Thank you! This video helped me a ton! I had no idea this model was such a PIA to swap the hdd. Clean install is running now. You are the man.
CMOS battery is CR2032, worth changing at the same time! Excellent clear video, would like normal speed reassembly
AWESOME video Josh! Thanks a million. I just swapped a dead HD following this video. It would have taken me A LOT longer without it.
A note: When attempting to unscrew the 2 screws that hold the right screen hinge, the two plastic posts they screw in broke. I was very careful but... due to poor design these posts are weak and can't take the torque of a tight screw. I've had to order a new bottom cover. Funny thing on ebay and someone is selling a bottom cover with the 2 posts broken.
My N5110 has 12 screws on the underside of it. Two of the screws are under little pieces of rubber that can be removed with a safety pin or push pin.
Thank you! Saved me from a few hours of headache. This build is insane... Who came up with the idea and who approved it? :D
This video was just what the doctor ordered, you did a super job with this. Many thanks.
Thanks so much! Your directions were very helpful and allowed me to replace a busted HD with a new SSD.
Thanks so much! Our Inspiron has been sitting forever because I didn't want to recycle it with our files inside. You're a life saver!
yeah, this particular laptop uses a socket G2. so that's what you want to look for when ordering one. just have to unscrew all the heatsink related screws, and the cpu just pops right off like a desktop one.
wonderful, i like the way you open the laptop and changed HDD step by step. Thank You
Very helpful would like to see the slow reassembled
thank you, thank you, thank you! Fried my motherboard on this dell and had to get the hard drive out. Really Dell? what a pain. earlier models were user friendly. Several sites had the step by step frames, which I liked, but yours was the real deal. To reinstall I had to do it in steps to go backwards so yes I'd have appreciated the slower reinstall. I'm not a techie but can hold my own on a pc. It's off to the [still covered under Costco] warranty store and my hard drive contents are safe on an external drive ~ thanks to you Josh!
Just wanted to say thanks for posting this, without it I am sure I would have wrecked my PC trying to replace the hard drive! Peter
Thanks for the guidance - made the HD replacement super easy for me!
Thank you.. Today I successfully replaced my N5110 hard disk by watching your video.. Thanks a Ton...
Unbelievable all that work to get to the hard drive.
I'm really considering cutting out a hard drive access panel.
Great video. I have the same laptop and I've been experiencing some issues with the hard drive and some errors. I also plan to add an SSD to this laptop but I'm going to replace the original hard drive with a 1TB one for storage in the optical bay.
I was unaware that you could actually change the CPU's in laptops lol. But best of luck to you and thanks for watching!
Just wanted to say thanks - used this to replace the HD with a SSD last week. Excellent
All I wanted to do is properly dispose of an old laptop without leaving the hard drive in and there's no way I could have done that without this video! good thing I was going for disposal because the keyboard got wrecked in the process! 😂
I have this laptop and does it allow SSD placement?
Thanks for the video. Completed and everything worked on power on. New SSD.
You don't need 'two' magnets to magnetize a screwdriver. Take on magnet place it about an inch or two from the tip and slide the magnet off the driver to the end (the magnet is stuck to the metal and you're dragging it off to the end). Do that 2-3 times and it will be way more magnetized than putting 2 magnets and leaving it for awhile.
Thanks, great video. I just installed a SSD to this Laptop. Great Improvement.
Thanks for the video. Helped the repair of the mother in laws laptop no end.
Great demo, i followed it and got replaced my HDD with no problems.
I have this to do for a friend, and this is a great confidence boost. The rare earth magnets is a great tip for holding screws. Thanks!
thank you.
but why do they do that.. this is the one hardest harddrive replacement i think
Thanks for this video. such a big help on such a pain in the arse laptop. Wish i'd disconnected the monitor as the hinge broke like everyone else but it ok. Can't believe the improvement.
i'm gonna be upgrading my i3 in the laptop to an i5. thankfully videos like these exist. i've taken apart & repaired a few other laptops (last years inspiron 15 amd) so this shouldn't be too difficult. it sucks that the hard drive is all the way under the mobo, but seeing as its 1TB i can't see myself replacing it anytime soon... unless it dies.
Great Video. I could successfully replace my hard drive by watching your video. Thank you once again.
Josh, can you please also give the reverse assembly non-forwarded video. That would help to be sure of not making any faults... many thanks
Excellent video, TY. Can I get the slow motion reassembly version. TY
Thank you for the video!!
Very helpful!
Diamond Computer, Hungary
You saved me a LOT of time and possibly my sister's laptop which I was able to restore thanks to this video. Thank you so very much.
thanks for posting this; luckily my laptop was otherwise shot, so I could break it a little while I took it apart! Next time I buy one, I'm going to pay attention to where the HD is!
Dude, you are awesome. Upgraded the wife's N5110 HDD to SSD. Thanks a bunch.
HP are so easier... thanks man, saved me tons of broken plastic.
Really good video thanks for uploading it. It made a tricky HDD replacement really easy.
great tutorial, I am on the verge of moving, so decided to take out the hard drive of my old Dell and discard other parts. The screw heads are all damaged so I couldn't reassemble it :-/ but at lease I could take out the hard drive. Phew !
Thank you so much for the video, I've had to replace the hard drive in a few laptops, but this was just absurd!
thank you for this video! i was able to fix my daughter's laptop not have to take it to a shop in town for the hard drive replacement.
Thank you so much! I was having issue trying to find my hard drive on my dead computer, but now I have it.
Thanks for the video. Have performed this task 3 times now, still miss removing one of the screws holding the keyboard on & I hate the catch mechanism that finally secures the keyboard (always feels like I'm going to dislodges a keyboard tile!).
Dell really have built these down to a price.
I know this video is a tad old, but I personally prefer to use a cupcake tray instead so that I could sort the screws according to type and order of removal. That way they wouldn't get lost or mixed up.
10. Disconnect the spk cable connector, the wifi antenna cables, and finally remove the cmos cell battery (recommended if replacing hardware, you will have to re-enter service manual in bios later)
11. Remove the 5 board screws
12. The motherboard can be now removed (no need to remove the display at all!!!)
13. remove hard drive screws and finally hard drive..
Thanks for the video. It saved my day. I should have watched the video before I bought the laptop, which I wouldn't have bought it.
My HDD stopped working - I have it all ready for the new HDD to go in. Your video was magic thank you - please may I have put it back together - Thank you
Thanks! I upgraded to a 500 GB Solid State drive. Your video was perfect--I was able to use a free ghosting program, and it started right up perfectly!
What kind of SSD did you use? How can you tell which is compatible or not?
It was a Samsung--I think 885. It's 500 GB. Same as what I had, but definitely much faster~!
Thanks much. Detailed and well shot.
5. Remove the keyboards and disconnect all internal rebon cables
6. You only need to remove 6 screws on the back, not 10! (see page 32 on service manual)
7. Remove sdcard holder
8. remove the screws under the keyboard
9. remove the palm rest (the main case cover)
This is exactly what I needed...Thank you. All perfectly explained.Thank you thank you thank you.
Would appreciate a slow speed assembly, can you upload?
Thanks for the instructions and the good presentation. Actually it would be much appreciated if you could upload the reassembly too. I was going through the dell site which had the instructions to pop out the processor, so is possible to upgrade it except for replacing and if yes than what would the options be? possibility for i7 or maybe 3rd gen i5?
Many thanks for this, 240Gb SSD fitted and windows setup under way.
Use a guitar pick instead of a flathead along the edges if you don't have the spudger tool, you won't damage the case
Great tutorial video. Having followed the video to the letter, when I got to the motherboard removal, I discovered that the screws attaching the motherboard were very tight. Attempts to remove said screws with the proper Phillips screwdriver resulted in the stripping of two of the screws. At that point, I stopped trying with the other screws. The Dell N5110 laptop is a terrible design for the replacement of the hard drive that is buried and requires the dismantling of the entire laptop. I was stopped 4 screws away from success having wasted all that effort and time. To have gotten so near and yet so far away, unable to complete the installation of the hard drive, is extremely frustrating. Any advice is appreciated.
This was really helpful. Thank you for making and sharing this video :-)