Lenovo Flex-2 14 "teardown"

For some strange, unknown reason, I had to find out what kind of hard drive was inside my Flex 14. Btw, evidently the model I got is the Flex-2 14, a newer model that does not have a detachable battery.

Taking the laptop apart was not too difficult after I located the Flex2 14 Hardware Maintenance Manual (google it!).

The Flex14 has several steps to perform before getting to the innards (unlike say my macbook pro or m6400 (its dead and recycled!) which only required removing the underside panel) - first, the keyboard had to be detached. Not a fun thing I assure you, as it's held in place by clips to the laptop. I had to pry a portion of it using a flathead screwdriver, then used my hands to pop the clips off. Some kind of cable attaches the keyboard to the motherboard, but it's simple to remove.

Once that is done, to remove the rear panel requires the removal of 3 screws hidden by the keyboard (why?!), one of them which has a warranty seal of sorts. 9 other screws are also attached to the bottom panel. Even after removing those screws, the panel was firmly clipped in place, but some finger nail action pried the back panel apart.

There is seemingly space for one more memory dimm, but I'm already at 8gb of ram, and the lenovo website indicates 8gb ram max so... hmm.

In any case, I've had a bit more time to think about the laptop, and I'm not sure if I still want to upgrade to an ssd.

First, the laptop now works pretty reasonably fast even in Balanced mode. I can see the cpu range from 1ghz to 2ghz+ depending on the load, and performance mode just makes it heat up for no point. Evidently, Windows 8 has some kind of cache system that works pretty well, so long as you don't restart the machine. If I do a restart, it takes forever (hyperbole) for the icons to appear on the desktop, and it just feels very slugging. Just shutting down seems to do some sort of hibernate which keeps things very fast.

Right so, back to the upgrade part. I'm not sure if I still want to upgrade to an ssd. It's running fine for what I need now, but, if I see a 128gb samsung hdd that comes with the notebook upgrade kit, I might change my mind. We'll see...