Hp Pavilion Chromebook 14 C050Nr Ram Ssd Upgrade Procedure Repair Guide

Difficulty

Moderate

Steps

Time Required

                          1 - 2 hours

Sections

RAM and SSD Storage
5 steps

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An awesome member of our community made this guide. It is not managed by iFixit staff.

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What you need

Video Overview

Step 1

              YouTube video of opening the laptop.

Watch before attempting! Be sure to read all steps before attempting. Strongly advise getting the “Essential Electronics Toolkit IF145-047-1” from Ifixit.com if you are lacking proper tools for working on tiny screws and prying apart stubborn and fragile plastic stuff.
Don’t complain about the video to me. I did not create it. He kinda glosses over the connector part of this process in my opinion. All the connectors are the latching ribbon style except a few that are male/female pin types.
The one connector that kind of scared me was the video connector which has a little flexible ribbon handle to pull it off vertically from the main board up close to the hinge area. Putting it back on is kind of spooky too but I had no real problems with it.

Watch before attempting! Be sure to read all steps before attempting. Strongly advise getting the “Essential Electronics Toolkit IF145-047-1” from Ifixit.com if you are lacking proper tools for working on tiny screws and prying apart stubborn and fragile plastic stuff.

Don’t complain about the video to me. I did not create it. He kinda glosses over the connector part of this process in my opinion. All the connectors are the latching ribbon style except a few that are male/female pin types.

The one connector that kind of scared me was the video connector which has a little flexible ribbon handle to pull it off vertically from the main board up close to the hinge area. Putting it back on is kind of spooky too but I had no real problems with it.

1024

Step 2

              Memory used for upgrade....

8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
PC3-12800 Non ECC Unbuffered 204-Pin SODIMM
The above 8GB memory module was sourced from memoryamerica.com, but you may find better deals elsewhere.
The pictured module is the original 4GB one in use prior to upgrade.

8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
PC3-12800 Non ECC Unbuffered 204-Pin SODIMM

The above 8GB memory module was sourced from memoryamerica.com, but you may find better deals elsewhere.

The pictured module is the original 4GB one in use prior to upgrade.

Step 3

              SSD used

SanDisk 128GB SATA 6.0GB/s 2.5-Inch 7mm Height Solid State Drive (SSD) With Read Up To 475MB/s- SDSSDP-128G-G25
Above SSD was sourced from amazon you may find a better deal elsewhere.
Actual original SSD is pictured. However box shown is the upgrade SSD box.

SanDisk 128GB SATA 6.0GB/s 2.5-Inch 7mm Height Solid State Drive (SSD) With Read Up To 475MB/s- SDSSDP-128G-G25

Above SSD was sourced from amazon you may find a better deal elsewhere.

Actual original SSD is pictured. However box shown is the upgrade SSD box.

Step 4

              Don't skip the following pre upgrade operations!!!

Make a backup of existing SSD so you can restore the chromeos image into the new SSD. The backup is done with the “Chromebook Recovery Utility” from chrome web store as shown in 1st image. You will need a empty 4gb thumb drive.
Write an empty partition table on your new drive before installing it. You will need a linux system with a usable SATA interface and the gparted software to perform this step.
The drive will not be recognized by the system without this empty table!!!! Second image is the “gparted” software screen shot.
You merely need to point the gparted software to the new raw device file and the partition table will be created if it does not exist (it should not if this is a new drive). If it DOES already exist you should clear it so that chrome can initialize it correctly for you later (hint: delete key press to remove a selected existing table row).
You can even perform this prep step for your new upgrade SSD with your chromebook. You would need two things: #1 a working crouton install either on your existing SSD or on a removable SD card (basic Crouton install tutorial). Please note that I am not sure that crouton will fit on the stock SSD drive as I’ve never tried it. And #2 a USB<=>SATA device like this: USB 3.0 + USB 2.0 to SATA Cable Adapter for 2.5" HDD/SSD Hard Drive
Perform the operations in this step BEFORE installing your upgrade parts into the chromebook!!!!!!

Make a backup of existing SSD so you can restore the chromeos image into the new SSD. The backup is done with the “Chromebook Recovery Utility” from chrome web store as shown in 1st image. You will need a empty 4gb thumb drive.

Write an empty partition table on your new drive before installing it. You will need a linux system with a usable SATA interface and the gparted software to perform this step.

The drive will not be recognized by the system without this empty table!!!! Second image is the “gparted” software screen shot.

You merely need to point the gparted software to the new raw device file and the partition table will be created if it does not exist (it should not if this is a new drive). If it DOES already exist you should clear it so that chrome can initialize it correctly for you later (hint: delete key press to remove a selected existing table row).

You can even perform this prep step for your new upgrade SSD with your chromebook. You would need two things: #1 a working crouton install either on your existing SSD or on a removable SD card (basic Crouton install tutorial). Please note that I am not sure that crouton will fit on the stock SSD drive as I’ve never tried it. And #2 a USB<=>SATA device like this: USB 3.0 + USB 2.0 to SATA Cable Adapter for 2.5" HDD/SSD Hard Drive

Perform the operations in this step BEFORE installing your upgrade parts into the chromebook!!!!!!

Step 5

              Restore chromeos from recovery media!

You will be prompted on your first bootup to the new drive for the media to restore onto your upgraded SSD device. You should have created that in the step 4 above before you actually upgraded your hardware. If you did not create the backup you will have to reinstall your original SSD and start over. I told you to read all the steps didn’t I ?
The images show you where to look to see if your upgrades are working in the chromeos system URL. Just threw this in FYI
If all is well, like my screen shots indicate, you can install crouton and ubuntu and virtualbox and do real computing with your chromebook now!!!!!

You will be prompted on your first bootup to the new drive for the media to restore onto your upgraded SSD device. You should have created that in the step 4 above before you actually upgraded your hardware. If you did not create the backup you will have to reinstall your original SSD and start over. I told you to read all the steps didn’t I ?

The images show you where to look to see if your upgrades are working in the chromeos system URL. Just threw this in FYI

If all is well, like my screen shots indicate, you can install crouton and ubuntu and virtualbox and do real computing with your chromebook now!!!!!

To reassemble your device use reverse order of disassembly.

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                    tcagle53

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Rafael Bernardino - Apr 30, 2015

How big should be the partition?

tcagle53 - May 1, 2015

The partition size is governed by the size of the SSD you install. ChromeOS does this for you when you restore from your ChromeOS image media. I got 107 GB of free formatted space from a 128 GB SSD as you can see above. This seems about right given the original SSD was 16 GB.

Sabria Page - Aug 24, 2016

I have this model and I want a SSD with more storage, this model to be specific: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/seagate-1tb-…

Is it compatible?

tcagle53 - Aug 25, 2016

That link is to a SSHD not an SSD. A SSHD is still a rotating magnetic media drive. As such it will drain your battery even faster than the stock drive does. It also doesn’t give any dimensions for the device. I am not sure if all 2.5" drives have the same dimension in the thickness (smallest) of the three dimensions. I believe the SSD I used was 10mm thick. If you can find the dimension specs and it is similar it will work but you may find your battery life of your chromebook suffers to some extent. If you just want a little more storage the SD card slot is an much easier way to get more storage.

I just checked my original guide and I gave the thickness of my upgrade drive as 7mm NOT 10mm. If any drive you are considering is thicker than 7mm you can forget it because it won’t fit in the chromebooks thin drive compartment.

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