How to open and upgrade HDD

And to finish my upgrade report:

Can the EP121 support 8GB RAM?

GeIL: ASUS eventually told GeIL that I'll have to ask for support myself from ASUS directly since the laptop wasn't GeIL's. Kind of silly and anyway I had already requested support from ASUS on this question that they didn't answer until I reforwarded my request.

ASUS: They told my to take the EP121 to a local ASUS Service Represenative after I reforwarded my request to them but they didn't actually say when or not the EP121 can support 8GB RAM.

me: I ordered the 8GB GeIL RAM and tried it: does not work so if it can support it then the ASUS Service Represenatives must be modifying some sort on onboard firmware.


The 240 (223 formatted) SSD is working fine. In fact after installing everything I need on the EP121 I copied the 'Windows\Installer" directory back to the c: drive and am again allowing Windows to manage the page file rather than restricting it to 1.5GB.

I have about 90GB free so I'm good for a while since I don't keep videos, pictures, and MP3 saved on the SSD drive.

 

What am I doing wrong? The computer gets to a screen that says "ASUS AIRECOVERY, Do you want to recover your system?" I click "ok" and then I get a message that i completed it successfully. Then nothing happens.

Help? I get an error that says "BOOTMGR is missing"

 

Bootmgr is missing means your media is not bootable.

Perhaps try format your new ssd using usb adaptor first before install onto EP...

 

I just want to report my experience w/ a couple of drives...

Corsair M4 does not work. It crashes upon resume from suspend, and is often not detected in bios after the crash.
Tested w/ two drives.

OCZ Nocti does not work. It crashes upon every other resume from sleep.
I found a post on the OCZ forums where at least 2 other people have the exact same issue w/ ep121.


--Edit--
I just updated from bios 701 to 704 and both drives appear to be working now!

 

I did a bunch of benchmarking and power measurements last night, too. But have to admit, I didn't learn anything new.
Stock Sandisk is slow! What's crazy is it's between 2 and 30x slower than the m4, depending on the test! The M4 is about 2x faster than the OCZ. The m4 uses about 300mw on average more power than the OCZ, depending on what it's doing. If my rough calculations are correct, that's about 10 min of run time difference.
Then the last observation is even going between the stock sandisk and the 10x faster m4, I can't see any difference in boot or application load times.

Sandisk:
Seq Read/Write 135/17.1
512k 96.1/6.7
4k random R/W 8.9/2.2
qd32 10.6/3.5
No power readings (didn't bother)

OCZ Nocti
Seq Read/Write 108.1/81.7
512k 104.9/81.6
4k random R/W 11.5/23.5
qd32 48.2/81.1
Idle Power (whole laptop) 9.5-9.7 Watts
Playing Video Power 14.4-14.7 Watts

Crucial M4
Seq Read/Write 210.9/173.1
512k 192.3/170
4k Random R/W 14.23/22.69
qd32 114.5/95.4
Idle Power (Whole Laptop) 9.7-10.0 Watts
Playing Video Power 15-15.6 Watts

 

FYI. You don't really need a USB hub. You can get by with just the 2 native USB ports because the Repair Disk can dynamically change USB devices.
At any time, you can unplug a USB mouse and plug in a keyboard as needed and vice-versa. Also once you have booted up, you can remove the boot media and plug in an external USB hard drive. I find that a mouse is better than a keyboard (as the Repair Disk is mostly a point and click interface - with a keyboard you have to do a lot of tabbing and use arrow keys to move around and use the spacebar to select items).

Still you might want to get an external USB 2.0 hub - so you could connect 3 or 4 devices at the same time. But it is not needed. If you get one, you might need a hub that plugs into AC power to drive all that.

 

Are there any issues was with CT256M4SSD3?
I have installed it in my ep121, but unfortunatelly I cannot boot from bootable Usb after that.
I have tried to connect CT256M4SSD3 to PC and format it but it doesnot helps.

Do You have any ideas?

Regards,
Vyacheslav

 

i've just bought a crucial M4 SSD 256Go to upgrade my ep121 2g/32go wich is under windows 8 pro, so with all setup for wacom and app i'm using
wich process i can follow to upgrade ssd without reinstalling system
i've make some windows 8 recovery usb drive but what next ?
using windows 8 image disk or cloning ssd with third party app ?
whats the best and safe methode to upgrading ssd under windows 8

do you habe any ideas ?

regards.

 

update bios first.
Then, make a windows system image. Then install the new drive. Boot to the recovery cd and restore your system image to the new drive. boot windows. Increase the partition size to use the entire space of the new drive.

 

thanks for reply
well bios is updated with 704-mod bios
i've made a recovery boot usb but where put the system image ?
can i put in the usb recovery flash drive or it must be an another usb drive ?