[Car121]

I joined this site and have been reading some very interesting topics on memory and hard drive upgrade for the Dell mini 1011. I ordered a memory upgrade through Crucial (2GB). And saw the video on how much is involved to get to the memory. I see once there it just slides out and new one in. I was wondering if it's this easy to replace the hardrive ,or is there more involved when replacing hard drive . Also what is the cheapest hard drive that will work on the mini 1011. Thank you.

[holmes4]

Welcome to the forum! You can find Dell's service manual for the 1011 here. This will tell you how to replace any component. The hard drive is pretty easy.

The drive is a standard SATA 2.5". I believe the height is 9mm. It's really not possible to say what is "the cheapest that will work", as that can be almost anything. You will want to select a capacity and then see what is available. Hard disk prices are fairly high right now due to the flooding in Thailand affecting manufacture, but are starting to drop.

[rrfranczak3]

you can go as high as a 750gb either 5400rpm (Western Digital Scorpio Blue) or the faster 7200rpm 750gb (Western Digital Scorpio Black), Western Digital is just my own preference (5yr warranty too), I wish I could fit a 1 terabyte but the terabyte drives are 12mm and will not fit too well under the keyboard but the 750gb either speed will fit fine, I got a 750gb (5400rpm Scorpio Blue) in mine now and as soon as the prices drop I plan on swapping it with a 750gb (7200rpm Scorpio Black) drive and just use the 5400rpm drive in one of my enclosures as a backup drive, just like 6 weeks ago or so you could have gotten a 7200rpm drive for a little over $100. now they are over $200....like Steve said above they are dropping but not enough for me yet....

[Car121]

Thank you guys this reference will help a lot. Now once I replace it, Is that it? Or are there other procedures involved, like loading any programs. If so how is this done on the 1011?I'm kinda new at this as you can see. Sorry

[rrfranczak3]

well, ya gotta decide what OS ya want.....and dont forget to load any Dell drivers that are needed for that OS

[Car121]

Wow, so I see that replacing a hard drive involves more then just plug and go.... As I said I'm new at all this stuff, I never done this procedure, and have no idea how it's done, so I think I'm maybe over my head. So I probably should just stick with only replacing the memory, which is just a plug in and reboot lap top, I assume. Pardon my dumb questions, How do they add programs to the mini 1011, if it doesn't have a cd drive?, and should these have come with it?

[holmes4]

The most straightforward method is this:

1: Connect the new drive to a USB drive adapter. Some laptop drives come with these, or you can buy them for about $20.
2. Run a disk image copy program that copies the original disk to the new one, connected by USB, expanding the partition. Again, drive makers sometimes include one with the drive, but there are freeware programs available. (People used to suggest a trial copy of Acronis TrueImage, but the trial version no longer allows this.) Some of these programs will run under Windows but it's better if you get one that boots from a USB flash drive.
3. Remove the old drive and replace with the new.

As far as adding programs, you can download them or have them placed on a USB flash drive which you then plug in and install from that. Or you can buy an external USB CD/DVD reader.

[Car121]

So if I skip replacing the hard drive and just do the 2gb, will this improve the speed on my 1011 mini. Just looking to make it run faster while on Internet. Now it runs slow and at times screen freezes. so figure the memory upgrade will solve this issue.

[rrfranczak3]

Originally Posted by Car121

So if I skip replacing the hard drive and just do the 2gb, will this improve the speed on my 1011 mini. Just looking to make it run faster while on Internet. Now it runs slow and at times screen freezes. so figure the memory upgrade will solve this issue.

adding more RAM may or may not speed up your internet browsing, more RAM will allow you to open more stuff simultaneously, it will NOT increase your internet speed, thats something that must be taken up with your ISP, basically the system uses RAM to store things as opposed to having to go out to the hard drive all the time, the more RAM, the more stuff your system can do at the same time without having to do more disk reads....it will not usually speed up your internet connection, you should check to see what else is going on in the background on your system, there could be some background processes that are slowing your system down giving the impression of a slow system, these Dell Minis do tend to come with a lot of 'bloatware' which is crap that Dell has running in the background such as the dock and their support center etc....removing these will sometimes help also, this is why many people decide to just reload windows WITHOUT all the crap that Dell installs, dont get me wrong adding more RAM will speed up your system, I recently upgraded my system to 2gb (which on the 1010 is not easy task nor cheap either), but anyway I have seen a considerable increase in system speed, however my internet connection has gotten no faster...just the general use of the machine is quicker....hope this helps ya

PS. a larger disk never hurts especially if you are a disk hogger like me that likes EVERYTHING loaded....(lol)

[Car121]

So I replaced the memory with a crucial 2gb, all went well. Still running very slow. I read the hard drive and it said it's a 160GB. I'm starting to remove the Dell support center software and some other minor things like Bing to see if it helps. Any other things I should get rid of that are not needed from Dell etc. Oh it also has that Nickolodian them, my daughter grown out of. What about these programs can they be removed, Dell touch Pad, Java, Star dock mycolors, windows live sync, windows live upload tool, windows live sign in assistant, mighty magoo, guffins, microsoft net framework 1.1, 2.0,3.0 and 3.5.