Medion MIM2120 Upgrade of HDD & RAM

Wonder if anyone has had any experience of upgrading one of the above.

My system has a WDC WD400UE-22HCT0 [Hard drive] (40.01 GB) -- drive 0,
s/n WD-WXE905047004, rev 09.07D09, SMART Status: Healthy. It's a Scorpio.

Bus Clock: 133 megahertz

BIOS: Insyde Software Corporation M1.00 09/09/2005. Not sure what that is.

It also has 256MB of RAM.

I want to upgrade the drive to either an 80GB or 120GB capacity and the RAM to 2GB which is the maximum, according to the Crucial site, that can be fitted.

I have been in contact with Medion UK who have been quite helpful in tellimng me waht type of hdd I need. The recommend replaing it with another higher capacity WD Scorpio to avoid port and physical size problems but so far they have not been fortcoming with any documentation/diagrams that would help me and there is no infor on their web site or in the manual.

I've worked on desktops in the past but never touched a Notebook and don't want to blunder in blind. I have taken the two panels off that are under the Notebook. The larger one shows the CPU and fan but couldn't see any RAM although I believe that the RAM will be in the same plane as the motherboard so may not be as easily identifiable as on a Desktop.

The smaller panel reveals the hdd which looks to have a fixing bar at one end that is attached by a single screw to the case housing. Don't know what other fixings it might have.

If anyone has any diagrams or documentation they could provide I'd be grateful. Alternatively, if anyone has done the upgrade and can talk me through the process that would be great too.

You can find Scorpio drives on Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136130

As for the actual replacing, I haven't done it on that model. You should fiddle around with it, just ground yourself first, and don't force anything. It shouldn't be too hard to switch out the HDD. Maybe unscrew that screw and the fixing bar comes up?

I replaced a damaged power socket on one of these recently. I had to completely dismantle the entire unit to get the logic board out. The battery would not charge unless the PSU lead was wiggled until the charge light came on.

Your job is much easier.

Ground yourself before starting and remove the HDD panel. There is only one screw holding the drive in the bay. Once the screw is removed, gently rock the hdd from side to side from the screw end and pull on it slightly. The drive will decouple from the HDD socket.

As for RAM, I upgraded this model to 1GB from the original 256MB. I used a DDR2 PC2-5300 SO-DIMM, leaving the second slot free. The person whose Medion I upgraded has already commented on the difference in performance, so much so that the rest of their family is now hogging it. I bought the memory from Mr Memory as it was less expensive than Crucial.com, but not by much.

Hope this helps.