Solved: How To Disassemble an Asus X550, X552, X553, X751 Series Laptop and Replace the Hard Drive

This Asus X series laptops are very interesting because they use new Intel Pentium Bay Trail N2830 N2930 and N3530 CPU’s that use about 4 watts of power.  This means:

• they do not need active cooling (i.e. no CPU fan)
• which means they have no moving parts,
• which means they can be sealed like a tablet,
• which means the underside of the unit has no vents,
• which means you can put it on lap and nothing will get sucked into the case and clog it up

Because of this, ASUS has gone back to a very old design of having the keyboard come off rather than the back.  This works very well.  To gain access to guts of your Asus X Laptop and change the hard drive:

1. Flip it over and take out the 10 screws
2. Flip up back upright, use your thumb to press open tiny gap between the keyboard and plastic bottom somewhere on the front
3. Jam a credit card into that gap and slide it around the top
4. Take out the four screws holding the drive cage to the chassis
5. Slide the drive cage (and drive) toward the screen until it pops out
6. Remove the 4 screws holding the drive to the cage
7. Insert your new hard drive (SSD I hope) into the drive cage and screw it in
8. Slide the drive cage (and drive) toward the front it is firmly connect
9. Put the 4 screws holding the drive cage back in
10. Put keyboard back in place and squeeze the edges so it clips back into place
11. Have a nice day

Note that if you are not careful you can (and I did) pull out the keyboard ribbon.  Fortunately that is very easy to put back.  Just make sure that the beige clip is UP when you put the ribbon back to its correct position, then push the clip DOWN to pinch that cable.